Let’s not lose focus after a good week
IT has been a good week for Leo Varad-kar. While the Taoiseach has occasionally seemed unsure of himself on domestic issues, he clearly had a strong view of exactly what he wanted on the border issue - and he got it.
After Monday's false start, the deal agreed on Friday was a good one. But let us be clear - in all but semantics, and admittedly now with repercussions for the entire UK, for Northern Ireland it was little different to the deal that was on the table at the start of the week.
The principal players - Dublin, West-minster and Brussels - had agreed it and only intervention by the Democratic Unionist Party threatened to derail it.
The potential rejection of a deal that would have given Northern Ireland a unique trading relationship with Britain and the European Union exposed the DUP's hypocrisy.
The mere idea that Dublin believed it had secured a good deal spooked the DUP and the response was a depressingly familiar and perennially juvenile 'No'.
The party said it would not accept any-thing that left it misaligned with the UK. Such a view had not troubled it on mar-riage equality and reproductive rights.
Only the prospect of the collapse of the Tory government and of Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister galvanised it into accepting what apparently had been anathema at the start of the week.
Leo Varadkar must find himself in a much happier place than Theresa May this morning. His team achieved a border without checkpoints, the Good Friday Agreement intact, the Common Travel Area protected and all of it, as he said, probably carefully, 'bulletproof'.
That should not make him complacent, however. Yesterday, another prominent Tory, Michael Gove, wrote in the Daily Telegraph that a future British govern-ment could change its mind. He neatly positioned himself to succeed Mrs May if dissidents in her party decide to mount a heave against her leadership.
As Mr Varadkar said, borrowing from Winston Churchill, this is only the end of the beginning. If the four days of chaos that followed a deal that was ostensibly already agreed are any indicator, Phase Two of the negotiations will be even more fraught and strewn with landmines for Theresa May. Another foot wrong and she will be jettisoned without mercy.
She has proved a hapless prime minister, charged with implementing the leave decision that she herself had campaigned against. She is now dangerously exposed.
For her, for Ireland and for the EU, many small victories must be achieved before the UK exit can be deemed a success.
It will be important for her to win one or two battles to silence her doubters. Cer-tainly, it is odd to agree with Nigel Farage's withering appraisal that she had moved on to 'the next phase of humiliation'.
Ireland must remain focused. We had a good week, but everyone effectively agreed and finding similar consensus in trade talks will be a great deal more dif-ficult. We must aim to be as clever and determined in the weeks to come as we were in the week we prevented a return to the physical partition of this island.