Sunak prioritising reaching deal on Northern Ireland protocol came as a surprise to many in UK

Struggling in opinion polls and with an election less than two years away, Rishi Sunak's decision to prioritise resolving problems over the Northern Ireland protocol wasn't obvious to most voters in the UK. The repeated failure to resurrect Stormont might have been an issue on the island of Ireland but wasn't top of anyone's list in the key marginal constituencies in Britain now known as the Red or Blue Wall. The state of the National Health Service, a wave of strikes and, above all, a flatlining economy are all far bigger issues. The link between the UK's poor economic performance…