Tom McGurk

Rugby has long been transformed from a sport to a business. Now, that business has been shut down, just as it was set to negotiate a suite of global television deals. Given that many clubs and national unions were already strained, can it adapt to a world of social distancing?

The Brexit project was launched in the context of a whole series of economic presumptions and assumptions. Many have now changed, many disappeared. Nobody involved with the original Brexit project could have envisaged an economic scenario anything like this.

Sinn Fein is a political offshoot of the Northern troubles, a maverick campaigning force that has made up its socialism as it has gone along. Working from issues not ideology, it retained an anti-establishment cred that has attracted so much youth.

Today, at 11.00pm, Britain leaves the European Union. And with its departure, the nature of Anglo Irish relations will change once more, with Ireland firmly taking into an independent place in the wider European project.

Boris Johnson must be ecstatic at the size of his parliamentary majority, but it also contains economic and constitutional time bombs. And the performance of the economy in the North will be central to both.

This week’s Westminster election may reshape Northern Ireland’s political landscape along Brexit fault lines – but on a UK scale, it still looks set to return a majority set on unrealistic trade expectations, raising again the prospect of a no-deal.

Confused signals began to emerge about the future of the wall. For those of us reporting from the Czech/German border, there was nothing to do but to urgently start the six-hour drive to Berlin and to a profound moment of history.

In their time the DUP has said that there would never be the Good Friday, IRA disarming or power-sharing with Sinn Fein. Now they are telling us that the new version of the Irish backstop will never be accepted. We shall see.