The spectacle of Micheál Martin defending Keir Starmer and risking the wrath of Donald Trump in the White House on St Patrick’s Day says as much about the current healthy state of British/Irish relations as the warmly worded communiqué that followed the meeting of the Taoiseach and British prime minister in Cork a few days earlier.

A decade on from Brexit, and all the tensions and bitter recriminations between the two governments that followed in its wake, it is hard to believe that relations with Britain are returning to the warmth they achieved at the time of the late British queen Elizabeth’s state visit.

The principal reason for this is not simply Starmer’s obvious affection for this country, but his determination to act on it. After he became prime minister in 2024, he announced that one of his priorities was to engage in a reset in relations between the UK and Ireland, as well as the wider EU.

That led to a summit between Martin and Starmer in Liverpool last year when it was announced that this would become an annual event. Last week’s meeting in Cork was the second round of this process. Ireland is the only country with which the UK has entered into such a formal arrangement.

At one level, the annual summits are designed to compensate for the fact that since........

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