How to fix Britain’s gathering EU border crisis

In March last year, the Daily Telegraph ran a headline saying that Rishi Sunak “Was the man to get Brexit done” because the Windsor Framework he had just negotiated was “a triumph and now it’s time to get on with using the great freedoms secured by Brexit to deliver for Britain.”

What a difference 10 little months make, because apparently now the Prime Minister is betraying Brexit, over that very same Windsor Framework. Specifically, “Rishi Sunak offers to sacrifice Brexit freedoms to re-establish government in Northern Ireland”.

In reality, the Windsor Framework is and always was a desperate attempt to deal with the intractable problem of Northern Ireland and the EU. It left Northern Ireland, as the PM put it, “in the best of both worlds”, by which he meant inside the UK and inside the single market. But that meant there had to be a border down the Irish Sea where goods could be checked. The unionist DUP objected to a border separating Northern Ireland from the British mainland and has been in a hissy fit ever since. So much for a “triumph”.

To be fair, the Windsor Framework was the best that could be achieved to fix the total mess that Boris Johnson and Lord Frost had made of the issue. But the latest solution, the one that has led the Telegraph to denounce the offer to “sacrifice Brexit freedoms”, is just the latest attempt to square the circle. How to get the DUP back into government without tearing up the deal negotiated with Brussels.

In a sense the Telegraph and its rabid Brexit supporters are right, the logic of the Prime Minister’s offer is to stay in lock step with EU rules because any changes will mean more checks at the Irish Sea border.

But the idea that the UK could change its rules and regulations, and that this would not hit its trade with the EU was always a lie – and a stupid one at that. With new checks coming in at the border in the coming weeks, this is going to become increasingly obvious.

Rishi Sunak has almost found the obvious solution, but not quite. He has instead given the DUP, of all people, a veto on all future government legislation. And so a party made up of religious extremists, climate change deniers and biblical fundamentalists would have to be consulted on any and all new laws. What could possibly go wrong?

A more sensible solution and one that the government has almost reached, but not quite, is to simply re-join the single market. Hey presto, no border down the Irish Sea, no checks at Dover or anywhere else, less red tape, less expense, more growth, and the DUP back at Stormont, but without a veto at Westminster.

The best of both worlds, as the PM would say, but can’t.

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