THERE has been enough hot air generated over Brexit, the Northern Ireland Protocol and Article 16 this week to rearrange Boris Johnson's hairstyle.
Mr Johnson, looking increasingly like a hay wain on legs (that's also Ulster Scots for 'tall child'), has been preoccupied by the plan to end England's coronavirus restrictions.
This is understandable. The vaccination programme is going well - unbelievably well by the otherwise lamentable standards of this government's handling of the pandemic - and there are the beginnings of a clear way out of lockdown.
It is a good news story for Mr Johnson. The protocol isn't; he's moved on from that. It's done. Settled, as far as he and English voters are concerned.
For Mr Johnson and his Vote Leave cohorts, the useful idiots in the DUP have served their purpose.
That context adds pathos to the air of desperation that already lies behind the various efforts to challenge the protocol.
This week alone has seen a judicial review launched by a brains trust comprising the unionist parties, Kate Hoey and someone called Ben Habib.
Given the constitutional issues said to be involved, the case may eventually end up in the Supreme Court.
It has been the scene of previous Brexit-related showdowns, including representations from Northern Ireland; sunt lacrimae rerum...
The DUP has been the cocky go-to-the-chippy, milk-and-no-sugar Theresa, take-back-control, I'm-a-former-MLA... I-don't-care-how-I-get-out-of-Europe, blood-red-line party. Now it's complaining about being screwed-over by the Tories
Meanwhile, the DUP's 'five-point plan' to bin the protocol continues to struggle to find a point. On foot of their famous e-petition, they did however get their debate in the House of Commons.
This barely moved the needle on parliament's Richter scale. Reports rather politely noted that around 20 MPs took part in this exercise, possibly persuaded by Sammy Wilson's offer to buy them each an ice cream and a bag of chips afterwards.
The DUP contingent rhymed off their by now familiar lines. "We have not been so much sold out as sold on to the EU," railed Mr Wilson.
Jeffrey Donaldson said the protocol has "the potential to cause political instability", in the manner of a man whose own party's rhetoric and actions around Brexit has only a passing acquaintance to whatever stability or instability ensues.
We may also have to face the possibility that there are in fact two Jeffrey Donaldsons bestriding Lagan Valley.
I am almost certain that I heard one Jeffrey Donaldson talking in positive terms this week about the Good Friday Agreement and its cross-community consent mechanism; it must have been the other Jeffrey Donaldson who resigned from the Ulster Unionist Party after spending years undermining the self-same Good Friday Agreement.
Arlene Foster, who left the UUP along with Donaldson v1.0 after years of causing David Trimble trouble, has had a similar Damascene transformation. On Wednesday she spoke warmly of the "architect of the Belfast Agreement, David Trimble", as if protecting the agreement had been the guiding light of her political career.
This rather illustrates the contortions the DUP is performing as it seeks to extract itself from the Brexit mess of its own making, sea border and all.
It had the opportunity to sell Northern Ireland's new least-worst, almost-but-not-quite best of both worlds status - as Arlene Foster was initially inclined to - but has comprehensively turned its back on that, even as Invest NI and others realise the opportunities.
In 20 years, we can expect the remnant to realise the errors of today. Bereft of strategic thinkers, that seems to be unionism's curse.
On Brexit, the DUP has been the cocky go-to-the-chippy, milk-and-no-sugar Theresa, take-back-control, I'm-a-former-MLA... I-don't-care-how-I-get-out-of-Europe, blood-red-line party.
Now it's complaining about being screwed-over by the Tories and left forlornly asking the prime minister who once massaged their ego, 'What did we ever do to you?'
They've discovered that thanks to the sea border keeping Northern Ireland in the EU single market for goods, you can vote out any time you like but you can never leave.
And, of course, it's everyone else's fault...
