You deflected my point, which was about the EU in its various forms having kept the peace in Europe, the Balkan conflict and the Troubles in Northern Ireland apart, for nearly 75 years. You decided to start talking about going back to the Common Market again, as though that would ever be possible, and you started talking about De Gaulle refusing us entry to a club we had helped set up but had made very clear we didn’t want to join, until we saw how successful it was.
Ok, once again, the fact that the open border in Ireland which has been one of the main benefits of the Good Friday Agreement is only possible because both the Republic and ourselves are members of the EU is well known. It was always obvious that if we left the EU under any terms we would have to find a solution to this conundrum but it is also increasingly obvious that there simply isn’t a solution.
The Irish border is over 300 miles long and has over 300 major and minor roads, plus a multitude of farm tracks and footpaths crossing it, none of which are controlled in any way. Some roads cross and recross the border several times in the space of a few miles, as the border is far from being a straight line. There are more border crossings between the Republic and NI than there are between the EU and the countries to the east, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, and Turkey, in a border nearly 4,000 miles long.
Please explain what this temporary technological solution is and how it works. Does it involve closing all the crossings apart from a few manned by armed troops, as was the case during the Troubles? That is a good way of making the people of NI decide to leave the UK and rejoin their neighbours in the south in the EU.
