The ever expanding admissions around the Irish Sea border

There has been either denial of the reality of what Boris Johnson agreed with the EU or distortion. The prime minister came to Northern Ireland after his deal with Leo Varadkar and told Tory loyalists that anyone who got forms could throw them in the bin.

Unembarrassed at this nonsense, he said only weeks ago that an internal UK border would be over his dead body.

Those denials were plain wrong. The distortion has come when the reality of what has been agreed is slowly admitted. Every admission has been disguised by soft words.

First there was an insistence that movements of goods from Northern Ireland to Great Britain would be unfettered, when the EU insisted it would involve exit declaration forms. Brussels still expects that. And why would it retreat? It has parties from Northern Ireland making clear that they fully support the EU approach and politicians from across the spectrum at Westminster insisting it is wrong of the UK to legislate against ambiguity or clashes in treaty obligations.

Indeed, they say, Downing Street’s UK Internal Market Bill, which has minor scope, is an affront to the deal with the EU.

Then Michael Gove denied on a visit to NI that the money he is offering to businesses is a proof of the fact and the cost of the internal UK border (if so, why the need for money?).

He also described the GB to NI border as just a slight extension of existing animal checks and said that other goods face some “extra processes”. That is quite the understatement. All manufactured goods in NI are in the EU single market. NI is also effectively in the EU customs zone.

Now Brandon Lewis says NI-GB checks on agri-foods after Brexit are merely “building” on checks in place since the 19th century. See? Building on. More than before, in other words.

It is all a scandal, rooted in a betrayal of a part of the UK so there was not so much as a camera at the land border. And barely a business or a politician has any complaint about it.

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