Northern Ireland faces another pointless election thanks to London’s Brexit mess | Fintan O’Toole

Rishi Sunak can begin to make Britain a serious country again by trying to make the NI protocol work. But will he?

Last week, amid all the turmoil in the Tory party, there was a brief flurry of interest in the emergence as a candidate for prime minister of the man more than one British reporter referred to as “the Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis”. Lewis was not the Northern Ireland secretary. He wasn’t even the previous holder of the office – he was the one before that.

Likewise, when Rishi Sunak was eventually selected, at least one distinguished British commentator proclaimed him the first person of Asian heritage to become prime minister of a European country. Actually, he had been preceded by Leo Varadkar, who became taoiseach in Dublin five years ago, while Portugal’s António Costa can claim to be the first.