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Just before European Union leaders agreed their guidelines for the Brexit negotiations last week, the president of the EU council, Donald Tusk, said: It is clear that progress on people, money and Ireland must come first. It was rather startling to find Irish concerns up there on the list of fundamental priorities, with the rights of EU citizens in Britain and with the settling up of the final bill. And when the guidelines were agreed, it was clear that this was more than rhetoric.

EU governments have essentially committed themselves to allowing Northern Ireland to rejoin the EU if Ireland is united. This is a very big deal. It suggests at one level that Brexit really does mean Brexit – in the very literal sense that the entity that is exiting is Great Britain and not the United Kingdom.

There has been a habit of using Britain and the UK as synonymous terms, but of course they are not. The very name of the state – the United Kingdom of Great