Any Brexit staging post must not be tied to the backstop

There is some general confusion on this matter.

The arguments for extension or even temporary arrangements are very strong.

But no unionist could support them if they were accompanied to the Withdrawal Agreement (WA). In that case, they would merely make Theresa May’s Brexit deal even worse.

The WA inflicts large and ultimately unknowable damage on the Union, as Jeffrey Dudgeon’s article opposite explains - the latest in a long line of critiques of the thoroughly unacceptable backstop.

If extensions or temporary arrangements were an alternative to the WA, that would be a very different matter, and worthy of serious debate and scrutiny.

The problem is that not only is the clock ticking hard, but the government is adopting a joint approach with Labour.

Both Labour and the current Conservative leadership are committed to the backstop, despite the internal UK border that it creates.

Now they seem to be edging towards some sort of agreed stance.

This will likely be the worst of all possible worlds: a WA that has the agreement but is more fully tied to EU customs.

This development is all the more regrettable now that Ireland is coming under some pressure.

While the discussions between Leo Varadkar and Emmanuel Macron and then, yesterday, Angela Merkel, were ostensibly shows of solidarity, the EU does seem to have been outlining to Dublin that it will ultimately have to introduce border checks in the event of ‘no deal’.

Yet at this very same moment, the Conservative and Labour leaderships are making clear to the European leaders that it does not need to move at all to help prevent such a British ‘crash out’ from the EU.