Yesterday, the
Brexit Tories finally produced their ‘plan’ for handling the
Irish border after the UK leaves the single market and the customs union. As I read it, there are four elements to the
plan:
1. There will be a hard border, but we’ll
pretend that there isn’t by doing all the border checks somewhere that isn’t at
the border at all.
2. We will use technology which hasn’t yet
been devised to control the border.
3. The government in Dublin and the one in
Belfast that doesn’t currently exist and to which the relevant powers have not
been devolved will work together to come up with a more detailed plan.
4. There shall be a good sprinkling of
pixie dust, generously applied, to ensure that 1-3 above can work in practice.
Actually, I made
up the fourth - which is a great pity because it’s just about the only thing
that would make the other three into feasible propositions. The only reason that this is being given any
credibility at all is because of the strange notion that ‘balance’ requires
fantasy to be treated as the equal of hard analysis.
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2 comments:
One of the central planks in the Leave campaign was ..
"We need to protect our borders." What they meant of course was well-monitored borders to keep out immigrants, foreigners, asylum seekers, etc, etc.
Why is no-one challenging these shysters on this 180 degree about turn ??
They were wrong two years ago. They are wrong now.
I'm not sure that it was really one of the central planks in the Leave campaign; I believe that they were merely using the issue of immigration (something about which most of the campaign leaders actually care very little) to attract the votes which they needed to achieve an entirely different objective. The result is that we have a government which is keen to 'control our borders' because it thinks that's what people voted for being faced down by Brexiteers in the governing party who don't think that border control is in any way important, and for whom breaking down borders is part of the route by which they pursue the breakup of the EU itself.
Add to that a lack of knowledge or interest in all things Irish (to say nothing of an inherent belief that the Irish aren't really 'foreigners' at all and should submit to the Crown like the rest of us) and we have a perfect recipe for the sort of half-baked nonsense which we are seeing.
And I suspect that even those who did think that they were voting very specifically for 'control of our borders' thought that that was all about the movement of people, not goods and services; and only 'foreign' people at that - it was never expected that it would prevent or impair the movement of British people, who are, as we know, unique and special.
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