In Britain’s banger battle with the EU, pig-headedness is a delicacy

As the Northern Ireland protocol is threatened in a row about sausages, Will Gore salivates over the prospect of a ‘boudin noir’

Out of the frying pan: occasionally there would be arguments around the dinner table about who got which sausage, size vying for crispness (Getty/iStock)

So, the United Kingdom and the European Union are engaged in a sausage war. Given the amount of willy waving that’s gone on over Brexit, it’s perhaps inevitable that it would come to this.

Pedants point out that in reality very few sausages travel from the British mainland to Northern Ireland, and that actually trades in other chilled meats are rather more important. But just as Monty Python’s Jesus blessed the cheesemakers as a catch-all reference to manufacturers of any dairy products, it seems reasonable to allow headline writers to boil the present row down to the humble snag.

Never mind of course that the war is a result of the UK not wanting to follow the regulations willingly agreed by our government in order to get Brexit done. If we don’t like rules we’ve signed up to, who is the EU or anyone else to say we have to stick to them? What does the Northern Ireland protocol matter when the Liverpool to Belfast chipolata trade is on the line?