Will Sunak's breakthrough on Northern Ireland change his political fortunes?

Rishi Sunak has made the EU climb down further; they've agreed that Northern Ireland can freely participate in all trade deals the UK does with the rest of the world. I suspect what persuaded the EU was a UK promise to deploy more troops to Eastern Europe - the EU is nervous about a war with Russia, especially as most EU states have pathetic armies.

The DUP pronounced themselves satisfied and are ready to resume power-sharing in the devolved govt of Northern Ireland.

Will Sunak get any credit? After all he's proved to be a better negotiator than Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss - they should have played the military card earlier, after all we're not spending on defence so others can free-ride.

Sadly, I don't think Sunak will get credit. People will register that he's good at negotiating, and they'll say, "He's fixed it, that's nice", and forget about it by next week. Because the public doesn't care much about Northern Ireland.

The people in Northern Ireland do care, but they vote for sectarian parties, so they're no help to the Tories in a general election.

The sad thing about politics is that you can do important things, but if people don't personally feel it, they don't care. And we then wonder why politicians ignore the important stuff.