The manufacturing success story behind London's red buses

It is extraordinary that the modern updated versions of the much loved hop on/hop off red buses, that are such a famous symbol of that global metropolis London, are made at a factory in the heart of Co Antrim.

Boris Johnson, the flamboyant mayor of that great city, has waxed lyrical before about the Wrightbus product, and did so again yesterday at the factory that makes the vehicles.

Mr Johnson was in the Province to mark the deal, worth £62 million, to order almost 200 more of the buses. There are, he pointed out, now 1,000 of them on the streets of the capital.

Speaking later at Hillsborough Castle, the mayor gave a speech to a reception for the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in which he said how helping to keep London moving was in turn helping to keep Northern Ireland moving.

His talk included humorous motoring allusions to his support for Brexit (about who is in the driving seat), aware that he was addressing a body whose members are 80% in favour of remaining in the UK.

There are sharp disagreements on the merits of Brexit on both sides of the Irish Sea, and within Mr Johnson’s Tory Party. The stark disagreements within Northern Ireland were apparent by the presence of the staunchly pro EU deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, at Wrightbus and eurosceptics including the first minister, Arlene Foster, the local MP Ian Paisley Junior, and the secretary of state, Theresa Villiers.

But everyone came together in agreement on the merits of Wrightbus, and the example that it sets.

Mr Johnson struck a confident note when he said that the future was bright regardless of the coming referendum. If the quality of manufacturing that is apparent in the Routemasters could be widely replicated elsewhere in Northern Ireland and the UK, that would assuredly be true.