When Rishi Sunak and Ursula von der Leyen unveiled the Brexit deal that reset Britain’s broken relationship with the EU on Monday, it was the culmination of almost four months of diplomacy that began on the shores of the Red Sea and ended in the shadow of Windsor Castle.
Von der Leyen, European Commission president, called the UK prime minister “Dear Rishi” as the pair launched the “Windsor framework”, the agreement which aims to end the bitter dispute over Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trade regime.
Relations had been far more confrontational with Boris Johnson, the UK former prime minister who negotiated the Northern Ireland protocol with the EU in 2019 and who has spent the last three years trying to scrap it. “There was no trust in him here,” recalled one EU official.