Boris Johnson will not sort Brexit border issue unless Tory MPs step in

For opponents of Brexit the Irish land border is a gift that keeps on giving.

It is four years since Phil Hogan, then Ireland’s EU Commissioner, publicly warned that Ireland would “continue to play tough to the end” over the border.

While Helen McEntee, then Europe Minister in the Irish government, told Sky News that “there cannot be a physical border and that means ruling out cameras, that means ruling out technology, that means ruling out anything that would imply a border on the island of Ireland”.

The UK government is still struggling to sort out how to deal with the carriage of goods across that border, and now there is a fresh uproar designed to build up another mountain out of a small molehill, the minor technical problem of the movement of people across the border.

Is anybody in the Cabinet Office going to reassure Poland’s honorary consul in the north than the police will not be arresting Polish farm workers as they cross the border to get from one field to another? I don’t suppose so, it will be more unanswered anti-Brexit propaganda.

Do I believe that the blundering Boris Johnson will be any more capable of solving this minor problem than the last minor problem? Of course not, unless the Tory MPs who put this charlatan into Downing Street step in and prevent him from creating another protocol-style mess.

Dr DR Cooper, Maidenhead

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