London has good reason to be wary of joint political approaches from the devolved governments

The finance ministers of those three devolved countries, including Conor Murphy of Sinn Fein, yesterday called for “serious engagement” on UK spending decisions ahead of the Budget this week.

They met the chief secretary to the Treasury, Steve Barclay.

Meanwhile, a Scottish minister for ‘constitutional relations’, the Welsh equivalent, a second Scottish minister, and Stormont’s first and deputy first minister, Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill, issued a joint statement.

They told Downing Street that “there must be a meaningful, comprehensive and transparent process for the devolved governments to influence the UK’s negotiating position — something that has clearly not happened so far”.

Nothing in the latter statement was of overt difficulty for unionists in NI. Mrs Foster could not have signed it otherwise. It talked in generalities such as “ensuring the interests of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are protected”.

The problem is that there is an almost permanent Labour majority in Wales, and strongly nationalist local government in Scotland. Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland one of the two key parties in the executive does not want Northern Ireland to exist.

You can see why Boris Johnson’s government is unlikely to be giving any such influence to three of the four devolved parties represented yesterday in these statements.

It did not even give influence to the fourth of the parties, the DUP, when it propped them up in power, so it certainly will not be giving a say to anti Brexit parties, some of which want to end the UK.

While the DUP cannot easily get out of these joint initiatives, and while the party has seemingly neutered some of the rhetoric, it is hardly ideal that unionists have to be part of them.

The top priority for unionists now is that as much as possible of what Sammy Wilson is calling for on the opposite page (see link below) is adopted. At the very least, we need a robust UK interpretation to the detail and implementation of the disastrous NI protocol, with its internal UK frontier.

• Sammy Wilson: The Brexit Withdrawal Agreement is the worst of all worlds, not the best of both worlds