The EU is hoping to catch Liz Truss on the backfoot over Brexit

A vital part of gamesmanship, according to the British author Stephen Potter, is to disconcert your opponent before they have joined the game. True to form, gamesmanship has already begun in earnest on one matter likely to be high up in Liz Truss’s pending in-tray: the Northern Ireland Protocol negotiations. It comes both from the EU and from Irish nationalists.

The Protocol is that part of the EU withdrawal arrangement aimed at preserving the integrity of the EU single market, despite the existence of open borders between the UK and Ulster and Ulster and the Republic. It provides two things: limits on state aid to Ulster enterprises, and administrative checks on goods passing between the UK mainland and Ulster in case non-compliant goods somehow seep into the EU from the UK by way of re-export. Neither problem is very significant in practice; but this has not stopped the EU fairly cynically weaponising the arrangement to drive a wedge between the UK and Ulster by demanding disruptive customs checks, restrictions on goods that can move between the mainland and Ulster, and intrusive oversight of the Northern Ireland tax system.