The broad strokes of your reporting on the pitiful state of British and Northern Irish politics is correct, but at times could be accused of making convenient omissions. An example of this is the assertion in your recent podcast that the UK government prompted the DUP to oppose the NI protocol. This is wide of the mark: unionist leaders have never needed any encouragement to stir up grievance for their own electoral gain. Indeed, the trigger for the DUP abandoning any pragmatism they had for working with the protocol was the EU commission’s inadvisable decision to trigger article 16 last year, which the podcast chose not to mention. While the UK is the architect of the vast majority of the recent deterioration in relations with most of its European neighbours, these details matter, and the Europe Correspondent for the Irish Times should know better. I say this as someone who continues to take a lot of joy from listening to this podcast and was previously a patreon subscriber.
