Brass tacks, Brexit and the border... it’s a real pleasure for timely Leo

‘NO, not at all, it was an opportunity to visit Belfast which is always a pleasure,’ said Leo Varadkar when asked if yesterday’s trip up North had been a waste of time.

No deal on power-sharing then, but an excellent opportunity to visit Lonely Planet’s No.1 destination for 2018. He got up early too. And, it has to be said, Stormont is a superb spot for taking selfies.

No.2 on the Taoiseach’s list of reasons of why his visit wasn’t a pointless endeavour was his meeting with Theresa May.

This would have been No.1 on most of the assembled journalists’ lists too, had the British prime minister not hand-picked a trio of pre-approved questions, none of which shed any light on Brexit.

After standing around for hours on a frosty morning underneath Edward Carson’s raised right hand, the gathered press pack had little to do until nearly 5pm, when all the press conferences came at once.

First it was up to government buildings to see the SDLP, then Arlene & Co, followed by Sinn Féin 2.0, with its new leader Mary Lou McDonald out in front.

But a deal nearly being made doesn’t make for very exciting copy, and so we streamed back down the hill towards Stormont House, where Leo, Simon Coveney and Theresa let us wait a little longer.

‘What we agreed is to cooperate at an official level,’ Leo said of his meeting with the PM, a sentence hardly evoking the romance of the Richard Curtis film he so excitedly referenced upon their first meeting. This was all brass tacks, Brexit and the border.

Once, the Taoiseach thought he could score points with the nationalist community by insisting Britain sort out the border question themselves.

‘It’s the United Kingdom, it’s Britain that has decided to leave and if they want to put forward smart solutions, technological solutions for borders of the future and all of that, that’s up to them,’ he said last year.

‘We’re not going to be doing that work for them because we don’t think there should be an economic border at all. That is our position.’

Yesterday brought the realisation that Britain, if left to sort out the border by itself, probably wouldn’t bother.

And so the sun set on Stormont yesterday, with no deal on power-sharing or any solutions on the border. But certainly not a waste of time.