Thanks to Brexit Northern Ireland faces another pointless election

Last month, amid all the turmoil in the Tory party, there was a brief flurry of interest in the emergence as a candidate for prime minister of the man more than one British reporter referred to as "the Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis".

- Fintan O'Toole

Lewis was not the Northern Ireland secretary. He wasn't even the previous holder of the office - he was the one before that.

Likewise, when Rishi Sunak was eventually selected, at least one distinguished British commentator proclaimed him the first person of Asian heritage to become prime minister of a European country. Actually, he had been preceded by Leo Varadkar, who became taoiseach in Dublin five years ago, while Portugal's António Costa can claim to be the first.

These are minor slips, and all the easier to forgive when political events are following the vertiginous logic of a fever dream. But they do serve as a reminder that the so-called border down the Irish Sea is not just a trade barrier. There is also a haze of psychological detachment - keeping track of who's in office in Dublin and Belfast is not, for most people in England, all that important.