SENDING TOULOUSE SAUSAGES TO PARIS

 It seems that Macron did not suggest that Northern Ireland was not part of the UK, but simply that Northern Ireland is a separate country. The position as to this is not obvious at all. For at least some purposes, the United Kingdom is not so much a country, but a union consisting of two countries (England and Scotland), a principality (Wales, albeit that the local government of Wales now asserts that Wales is a country in its own right) and a province (Northern Ireland, albeit that purists note that Ulster is, or was, a province, and that only six of Ulster’s nine counties are in Northern Ireland, the other three being in the Republic of Ireland). Northern Ireland plays football, and many other sports, as a separate country. Like Scotland, it has its own national laws which are different from those of England and Wales. If the separate parts of the United Kingdom insist on referring to themselves as separate countries, it is hardly surprising that Macron does the same.There are serious issues at stake in relation to the Northern Ireland protocol, but this is not one of them.