Theresa May has painted herself into a hopeless corner. More importantly, she has painted the people of Ireland into a hopeless corner. The fact that the DUP are standing guard to see she doesn’t come up with some wild scheme to escape from that corner only underlines how serious things are.
Back in December, May agreed with the EU three possibilities for dealing with the Irish border problem in the light of Brexit. The third of these options, that the north of Ireland would be given special category status and remain within the customs union and much of the single market – was laid out in legal terms by Michel Barnier the other day. Theresa promptly gave it a bleak-faced thumb’s down “No British Prime Minister could ever agree to this divide within the UK” she told the House of Commons. The fact that she had agreed to just that as a possible option, known as the back-stop, didn’t seem to bother her one teensy bit.
The first of the three options agreed in December was the idea that all of the UK would remain in the customs union and the single market. Again, May agreed to this as an option, but showing her usual form has declared that Britain will NOT stay in the customs union or the single market. “Brexit means Brexit” she reminds everyone, which is a bit like saying “The boil on the cat’s back means the boil on the cat’s back”. (Now that I think of it, that’s a not-bad metaphor for Brexit: an unsightly growth, painful to the touch and filled with pus.)
So if Options Three and One are gone, May is left with Option Two for the Irish border. And that was, there’d be a border but it’d be frictionless. Modern technology, drones, number-plate recognition, that kind of thing.
As someone pointed out the other day, the Canadian border with the US has fewer points of entry than we have, and it requires hundreds of officials and armed guards and documentation to keep it in place. Plus Canada and the US doesn’t have our history of border violence. So Option Two, the only May has left herself, is, barring some miracle cooked up by heir apparent Boris Johnson, an impossibility.
Well done, Theresa. No to Option Three, No to Option One, but welcome Impossible Option Two.
Her speech in the House of Commons should be quite interesting today. That’s interesting as in watching a giraffe skin itself alive.
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