The disconnect between British government policy and what the people of the North actually want grows ever wider. The ground is shifting under David Frost's feet and he doesn't have a democratic leg to stand on in his stand-off with the EU.

A survey carried out by Lucidtalk for a Queen's University Belfast study has found 52pc of Northern Ireland's adults think the protocol is, on balance, "a good thing", compared with 43pc in a similar survey in June. The percentage of respondents who agreed the protocol provided Northern Ireland with a "unique set of post-Brexit economic opportunities" that could be beneficial also rose, to 62pc.

Even more remarkably, 87pc of respondents said they distrusted the British government's ability to manage Northern Ireland's interests regarding the protocol.

With the DUP currently languishing at 13pc in the polls, it means that virtually every single adult in Northern Ireland, bar its ally, the DUP, now distrusts the British government.

The British government is delaying legislation, agreed by all parties in the North, which would make it more difficult to collapse the power-sharing institutions so that it can use the threat of a collapse as an excuse to trigger Article 16 of the protocol in its dispute with the EU.

Naomi Long has testified to a Westminster parliamentary committee that the Johnson government is using Northern Ireland as a political football in its dispute with the EU, while Alexandra Hall Hall, the lead Brexit envoy to the US, quit her job because she was unwilling to "peddle half-truths on behalf of a government I do not trust".

Is there no low to which Boris Johnson's government cannot sink?