Who is popular today?

Whoever replaces Lord Frost will “need to find solutions” to make the Northern Ireland protocol work, the North’s Deputy First Minister has said.
Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday Politics programme, Michelle O’Neill said Lord Frost had “negotiated Brexit and he has worked to undermine it every day since.
“I am less concerned about what is going on in the Tory Party and the dismay and the disruption,” she saida.
“What I am more concerned about is that the protocol is made to work, that pragmatic solutions are found, that certainty and stability is achieved for all of our business community here who have been left high and dry in terms of uncertainty because of the uncertainty because of the Brexit mess.
“David Frost will be replaced by another minister and whoever that minister is, they need to find solutions, work with the EU, make the protocol work and provide that certainty and stability that is desperately required,” Ms O’Neill said.
The UK government’s chief negotiator with the EU, Lord Frost resigned as Brexit minister on Saturday, citing in his resignation letter “concerns over the current direction of travel” of the British government and telling the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, he hoped he would “not be tempted” by “coercive measures” to tackle Covid-19.
Lord Frost was the UK’s lead negotiator in talks with the EU over the operation of the Northern Ireland protocol - the part of the Brexit withdrawal agreement which avoided a hard border by placing a customs and regulatory border in the Irish Sea - which are due to resume in the New Year.
The DUP and other unionist parties in Northern Ireland are opposed to the protocol because they argue it causes difficulties for trade and the supply of goods including medicines and undermines the North’s constitutional position as part of the UK.
The DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson has repeatedly threatened to collapse the power-sharing institutions by withdrawing his ministers from Stormont unless satisfactory progress is made and the Irish Sea border removed.
In a statement issued late on Saturday following Lord Frost’s resignation, Mr Donaldson reiterated this stance and warned that his departure “raises more serious questions for the Prime Minister and his approach to the Northern Ireland protocol.”
He said the DUP wished Lord Frost well and had “enjoyed a strong relationship with him and his team.”
However said he UK government was “distracted by internal strife, and Lord Frost was being frustrated on a number of fronts.”
The Northern Ireland protocol, he said, had been “deeply damaging for the people we represent” and warned the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, “must now urgently decide which is more important - the Protocol or the stability of the political institutions.”
However the SDLP leader, Colum Eastwood, said it was “telling” that in Lord Frost’s resignation letter he “failed to make even a cursory mention of Northern Ireland.
“The truth is that his approach to the negotiations over the operation of the protocol were aggressively influenced by narrow ideology, almost always at odds with the needs and wishes of people and businesses on this island,” he said.
Mr Eastwood warned the negotiations over the protocol “cannot become a victim to the chaos at the heart of government in London” and Lord Frost’s resignation was an “opportunity to reset the approach to the dialogue with the European Commission, to refresh the relationship with the EU and to return to the solutions that are presented to these challenges in the Good Friday Agreement.”
He also said it was clear “Boris Johnson’s days as British Prime Minister are numbered” and said “the next phase of politics between and across these islands must be marked by a commitment to cooperation in the best interests of the people we represent.”
The Ulster Unionist Party leader, Doug Beattie, said it was important a new lead negotiator was put in place “quickly who understands the issues that need to be dealt with.”
Mr Beattie said protocol negotiations were at a “critical juncture” and what was needed were “solutions that remove the Irish Sea border and fully respect Northern Ireland`s place within the United Kingdom.
He warned “Northern Ireland cannot be the collateral damage due to the instability within the Boris Johnston Government yet again.”
ENDS