After a gruelling two months of negotiating with himself, UK Trade Minister Sir David Frost emerged to announce that Great Britain had signed its first-ever free trade agreement with Northern Ireland.
He hailed the deal as a ‘historic first that will keep goods flowing smoothly between the two territories’.
In a rare joint communique, Republican and Loyalist paramilitary leaders said, ‘Bugger! Now we'll have to go back to our day jobs’.
‘I proved a tough opponent,’ Frost continued. ‘At one stage, I was prepared to walk away, but in the end, a solution emerged that was acceptable to both parties’.
He reminded his audience that Great Britain had left the European Union ‘completely and utterly,’ so it would no longer be following European product standards. ‘Henceforth,’ he said, ‘Great Britain will align its product standards with those of Northern Ireland. This is only natural as they too are part of the UK’.
‘Northern Ireland is, of course, self-governing’, he continued, ‘so where they get their product standards from is entirely up to them’.