The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority. Absolutely free. Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.

Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud. Each week we choose three pieces from the magazine

and ask their writers to read them aloud. I'm Oscar Redmondson and on the podcast this week.

Katie Balls reads her politics column on Humza Yousif, or The Union's Best Hope, as she says.

Lisa Hazeldine reads her interview with Georgia's exiled former defence minister,

who discusses everything from Putin to poisonings,

and Graham Thompson asked whether supergroups are really that super. Up first, Katie Balls. After the narrow

victory of the Brexit campaign in 2016, it was often said that the result would lead to the

breakup of the United Kingdom. Just 38% of Scots voted for Brexit, Sir Nicola Sturgeon argued that Scotland was being

taken out of the EU against its will, necessitating a second Scottish independence referendum.

And in Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionist Party blocked the formation of a new

power-sharing administration last year in protest at the Westminster government's approach to the Brexit protocol.

Now things look very different.

DUPMPs may have voted against the Windsor Framework,

but polls suggest that Rishi-Soonke's renegotiated Brexit deal is supportive by most Northern Irish voters.

Just 17% oppose it.

Unionist politicians were under pressure to return to power sharing in the coming months as trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain

becomes easier. Yet the factor that is giving both Labour and the Tories the biggest cause for

optimism about the future of the Union is the election of Hymza Yusuf as a new first minister of Scotland.

We only call him by his full name, Hymza are useless, explains a Labour figure.

Conservatives agree. It's the perfect result, says a senior government source.

Yusuf's victory is slim, just 52% of the vote. But instead of trying to unite his party, he offered Cape

...