There is already the whiff of failure about the new taoiseach – and this is his first day in office. Simon Harris is one of those oleaginous politicians who has risen without trace, an all too common breed in the modern age.

His predecessor wasn’t always firing on all cylinders, but Leo Varadkar got some of the big calls right – not least on Brexit, where he ran rings round the British government. (Not difficult I accept. The Conservatives have never been particularly adept in power, but the Johnson-Truss-Sunak combo has plumbed new depths of incompetence.)

Without question, Brexit – which confirms Britain’s decline and fall – has brought us to a point where Irish reunification is tangible. Ironically, by supporting the most extreme form of Brexit, the DUP single-handedly did more to destroy the union than Sinn Féin, Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party put together.

While Varadkar could have done much more to advance planning for the inevitable referendum on reunification, he at least had the political intelligence to realise that unity was going to happen within his lifetime. And his support for it was not in doubt.

Simon Harris’s waffle on Irish unity shows he couldn’t care less about the north – Brian Feeney