Brexit’s dark cloud limits possibilities

If Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe felt the ground moving under his feet as he delivered Budget 2020 in the Dáil chamber yesterday, as he surely must have, he gave no indication that that intrusion would distract him unduly. Neither did Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.

Just hours before Mr Donohoe delivered the budget, Downing St — increasingly shorthand for the zealot Dominic Cummings — leaked details of how the Johnson administration expects Brexit negotiations to collapse later this week. This latest outburst of Silly Bullingdons’ hubris suggested “Varadkar doesn’t want to negotiate… he has gone very cold and in the last week the official channels and the backchannels have also gone cold… Varadkar has also gone back on his commitments.”