Isn't that interview with Arlene Foster genuinely weird in so many ways. For a start she argues that:

Mrs Foster also criticised Tánaiste Leo Varadkar and Minister for Foreign Affiars Simon Coveney for their handling of the Brexit process, blaming their "aggressive nationalism" on the growth of Sinn Féin.

Given that she shared government with Sinn Féin that's curious from the off. I mean what about her fault in regard to SF's rise in the North? But the idea that SF's growth or not is contingent on some very mild rhetoric indeed from Dublin is bizarre. Anyone in the Republic could point to the self-evident reasons why SF has assumed the prominence it has on the political landscape and partition, and nationalism, while in the mix are far from the key ones. Indeed it's the process led stuff that Foster's party and others of the right of centre share with FF and FG that is paramount - housing, healthcare and so on.

And there's a further curiosity. She never raised a concern about any British Prime Minister supporting the Union. Why is it somehow unreasonable for the political representatives in the Republic to express their aspirations that one day there might be a United Ireland?

She appears blind to the reality that it is Brexit, a hard Brexit that she herself championed, that has made partition live in a way that it had not been for a generation or so. If SF was uniquely well placed to capitalise upon that is not the fault of Dublin. And it is precisely why that rhetoric, again rather mild one might think, was uttered by Fine Gael. But then her understanding of the dynamics of politics in the Republic appear at best nebulous and at worst shockingly absent for someone so heavily involved in politics on this island.

As to the stuff about the Protocol and that "Boris Johnson gave into pressure to accept the Northern Ireland Protocol "as proposed" by the Irish Government." That's simply absurd. She appears to have no great appreciation of how the politics of this actually function - in the sense that this is between the EU and the UK albeit the ROI has a key role. Where there's a kernel of truth appears to be the charge that Johnson simply wanted shot of the whole thing and conceded at that point in order to row back later.

Perhaps most dispiriting is the following:

"I couldn't have done any more to alert the Prime Minister to the problems that would arise, but when you are the DUP leader you are blamed regardless."

This complaint appears almost an attempt to position her as  a victim of dynamics beyond her input. But that's again absurd. The DUP had every opportunity to stand foursqure with other parties in Northern Ireland in relation to Brexit, had every opportunity as it de facto supported the last but one Tory government in Westminster, had every opportunity to park its short term ambitions to somehow roll back aspects of the GFA/BA and instead attempt to carve out a dispensation that would leave NI within the Union but with a unique openess to the Single Market. At every point the DUP and Foster took paths which exacerbated rather than ameliorated the situation. That was a deliberate choice. Unfortunately we are now all living with the consequences.