In their desperation to stop Brexit, Remainers are peddling rubbish about Ireland

In the last few months, the issue of the Irish border has been used and abused by those who see it as the best last hope to frustrate Brexit. Yet very few of those who have expressed grave concern over the matter have spent much time familiarising themselves with the details. The issue is complicated but it is not insoluble.

The prophets of doom have been at work in London and Brussels. Anna Soubry has said the only way to avoid a hard border – and threats to the Good Friday Agreement – is for the UK to remain in the Customs Union. Michel Barnier has said ‘It’s important to tell the truth - a UK decision to leave the Single Market and Customs would make border checks unavoidable’.

So as pressure mounts today in Westminster to force the UK Government to stay within the Customs Union, the EU Commission and the Irish Government are working in tandem to support their Remainer allies in London, using the Irish border as their weapon. Using their December Joint Report on phase one issues, both the EU and Dublin are insisting that should all else fail, then Northern Ireland will be required to remain inside the EU Customs Union and the Single Market, detaching Northern Ireland economically from the rest of the United Kingdom and requiring a customs border in the Irish Sea.  This is what the Irish Government is calling the ‘Backstop’ option.

It is estimated that around 1.6% of the Republic’s exports are to Northern Ireland, while 10 times that amount is exported to Great Britain. In addition, 80% of the Irish State’s total exports use the UK transport system to access world markets.  It would be sheer folly for the Dublin Government to insist on the Backstop as, in the final analysis, no British Government, and especially not a Conservative administration dependent on DUP support, could agree to a Backstop and survive.  To push this option to its most intransient conclusion risks scuppering the wider EU/UK deal, with consequent serious impairment of the Irish economy.

The present prominence given to Ireland in the Remainers’ plan is not in the long-term interests of Ireland. The best policy option, and by far the most logical, would be for Ireland to lead a Free Trade Agreement between Brussels and the UK, with no tariffs and the minimum of red tape. Ireland should also be lobbying for a mutual recognition regime between the customs services of the UK and the EU.  This approach already has the support of the British Government. Now is the time to get Brussels to sign up fully.

There is no rational argument in favour of a maritime border in the Irish Sea.  It is being put forward for the sole purpose of scuppering Brexit. The imposition of a border in the Irish Sea would bring about greater Unionist alienation and would raise questions about the sincerity of the Irish Government’s oft-proclaimed interest in their welfare.  If the Good Friday Agreement and the commitment to parity of esteem for both traditions in Northern Ireland is to mean anything, then the Irish Government should abandon its aggressive championing of an option which would have the effect of isolating Unionists from their fellow British citizens in GB.

The avoidance of physical infrastructure at the land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland has become the main sticking point in the Brexit negotiations. There is a fear that new physical infrastructure at the Irish land border will be unpopular, is likely to be widely evaded and may attract violent opposition. Yet claims that there is a threat to ‘peace’ in Northern Ireland, made by Tony Blair and John Major among many others, are now discounted after rebuttals by Gerry Adams and Colum Eastwood, leader of Northern Ireland’s SDLP.

The UK’s proposals for the border include innovative use of technology, trusted trader arrangements (already standard at EU borders), customs clearance by computer (again already standard), electronic border checking and customs exemptions for small traders. All of these can be achieved although exemptions for small traders will be an innovation for the EU. The EU’s own customs authority advises that new technology means that future borders can move beyond current practice and both the head of HMRC and his counterpart in Dublin agree that a frictionless border is completely possible.

All of the UK proposals are currently rejected by the EU which sees continued UK membership of the EU customs union as the solution to border problems in Ireland and elsewhere. This view is echoed by prominent Remainers within the UK. Leaving the EU while remaining within the customs union would however be nonsensical for the UK. No independent country other than Turkey has devolved its trade policy to a foreign power. The Turks did so from a position of weakness, in the (probably mistaken) belief that the customs union was a precursor to full EU membership.

And what of the charge by people such as Anna Soubry that Brexit is endangering the Good Friday Agreement? As Lord Bew, Professor of Irish Politics at Queen’s University Belfast, has argued, this position is hard to support as both the EU and the UK have put the Good Friday Agreement at the centre of their proposals.

In many ways, support for the Good Friday Agreement is stronger now than when it was first brokered. The DUP – who opposed the Agreement twenty years ago – either speak in favour of it, or at the very worst use neutral terms. Sinn Fein, meanwhile, who had similar reservations at the time, now support it.

Furthermore, there are signs that both parties are working to restore the power-sharing executive at Stormont.

A breakthrough would show that the settlement in Northern Ireland – and the Agreement – are stronger than any challenge presented by Brexit.

Graham Gudgin is Chief Economic Adviser to Policy Exchange and a former special adviser to the Northern Ireland First Minister; Ray Bassett is Senior Fellow for EU Affairs and a former Irish Ambassador to Canada