The EU talks are still in danger of collapsing because of Northern Ireland at a time when the majority of people who live there think they will be part of a united Ireland within ten years, according to Lord Ashcroft’s September poll.

Northern Ireland has long been a millstone round the neck of the rest of the UK and to fail to take back our independence because of it would be an historic tragedy. It is not widely known that it costs the UK more to support Northern Ireland than it does to be in the EU.

In 2016-17, according to HM Treasury figures, total expenditure by the Government on Northern Ireland was £20.6 billion. HMRC reports that tax receipts from Northern Ireland in the same year came to £11.7 billion, a net payment of £8.8 billion.

There is more than one way of looking at the cost of the EU, but if we use the official figures published by the European Commission, which include payments by Brussels to the UK’s public and private sectors, the net average annual cost for the five years from 2014 to 2018 was £7.8 billion (after deducting the UK’s payment rebate).

In other words we pay a net £7.8 billion to gain access to a market of about 450 million people (after deducting our own population) and we pay £8.8 billion a year to 1.8 million people in Northern Ireland.