Professor David Phinnemore:

I have three very brief comments. First, we obviously have to view developments around the protocol within the context of the wider UK-EU relationship. My observation here is that under the current British Prime Minister there seems to be greater emphasis placed on the further development of better relations between the UK and the EU than there is the prioritisation of addressing all the concerns coming through on the protocol. There is slightly more prioritisation there on the wider EU-UK relationship. That will change the mood in the EU-UK relationship and should help facilitate a deal; not that that necessarily means a deal will come about.

Second, there is a growing appreciation within the UK that there may need to be some shifts in the broader UK-EU relationship to accommodate solutions within the protocol. The issue about regulatory alignment is key here. What is interesting from our polling is that this is low down on the list of issues of concern in Northern Ireland. It is obviously of very high concern among our most ardent Brexiteers but what we are also seeing is that having regulatory alignment in the areas of UK and the EU, in respect of Northern Ireland more broadly in the UK-EU relationship, would be a vital element to this process. What we are also seeing coming through in Great Britain is traders into the EU market are now recognising the disruption being created by the lack of alignment and that may shift opinion there and there may be a softening. That is the optimistic take on this. I really stress the point here of political leadership locally in Northern Ireland. One of the key findings here from recent polling is political parties for which people would consider voting are seen as being the most reliable on issues around the protocol in terms of provision of information. That really points to the need for political leadership here. If there is a deal, it needs to be sold by the political leaders.

The third point relates to the role of the UK and the EU in this. They need to be honest about what is in the deal. They also need to sell the deal collectively and have a shared narrative around it. We need to avoid a situation which we had earlier this year where the medicines issue was to a significant extent addressed and was possibly oversold on the EU side, but totally undersold on the UK side. We find a good number of people are not aware of what actually has been agreed on that front.