Editorial: While East-West trade has been gravely damaged, London has quietly stepped up North-South relations with Dublin

The British Irish Intergovernmental conference met yet again yesterday.​

The BIIGC meets now four times a year.

When was this agreed? Why is it meeting so often?

After all, Chris Heaton-Harris and Steve Baker of the Northern Ireland Office have not been shy about presenting themselves as fearless Brexiteers.

Mr Baker in particular has been highly critical of the Northern Ireland Protocol, as have recent prime ministers, including the one who agreed it, Boris Johnson. Central to the criticisms that minsters have made of the Irish Sea border is that normal east-west trade movements have been shattered, and this they say is completely unacceptable. So why are north-south relations stepping up a gear?

The BIIGC did not meet for almost 18 months after Sinn Fein collapsed Stormont in early 2017. Part of the reason for the coolness in London-Dublin relations was that the UK saw Ireland under Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney adopt an uncompromising position on the outworkings of Brexit.

But on those rare occasions when a UK government stands up to an Irish one, there are always officials across Whitehall and beyond who push for a resumption of warm relations with the Republic – which tends to me UK politeness and silence while Irish ministers are partisan.

So at some point the BIIGC has moved towards quarterly meetings despite the fact that there is little sign of resolution of the constitutional problems caused by the Irish Sea border.

Yesterday, as Micheal Martin demanded that the DUP return to Stormont, Mr Heaton-Harris was nodding in approval. Not once from 2017 to 2020 did British or Irish ministers criticise Sinn Fein for keeping Stormont down (Mr Martin, then in opposition, did).

There is no harbinger of UK resolve on the protocol.