The DUP education minister has just been dragged into the late 1990s, finally sanctioning a pair of slacks for double maths.

There is a majestic, geological slowness to political progress in Northern Ireland. Fifteen years ago, Naomi Long stood in the Commons to pursue a perfectly earnest query about gender-specific dress codes. She was rewarded with a ministerial brush-off so weirdly colloquial it sounded like a cry for help, featuring an unprompted detour into 'whether to wash, shave or wear blue underpants'.

One can only assume a Home Office mandarin had accidentally pasted in their morning to-do list. Yet, looking back from this week's vantage point, Long's exasperation feels deeply prophetic. The DUP education minister has just been dragged into the late 1990s, finally sanctioning a pair of slacks for double maths, as new guidelines demand schools give girls the option of wearing trousers.

It is a magnificent closing of the sartorial circle. Back in 2011, the policing of female attire was treated by Whitehall as a frivolous punchline. Today, it has taken a full-blown Stormont intervention just to legally permit trousers in the playground. The wheel turns, the goosebumps fade, and one can only pray the DUP keeps its regulatory focus entirely away from the blue underpants.

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