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One of the Brexit conundrums - what would constitute a "credible proposal" regarding the Irish border that looked different from either put forward so far? Unfortunately it looks different in London and Dublin / Brussels 1/
Conservative / Brexiteer view on Irish border proposals - either - if no-deal means border checks, then even a year or two of deal will be better than that - or - we're not putting up checks anyway, so up to the Irish, their border. 2/
Dublin / Brussels view on border - only close alignment in at least Northern Ireland prevents border checks, those are the rules. We might be able to find work-rounds in some cases, meaning UK less of rule taker, but not as general case. 3/
There's little commonality then between London and Dublin. The latter think the UK wants to diverge in terms of regulation and customs and have no checks and no oversight, essentially leaving the EU market unprotected 4/
Brexiteer view varies between EU wanting control of UK law, Ireland should leave EU, or this is easy technically. However the Alternative Arrangements Commission report tended to support the Dublin view with regard at least to agriculture 5/
Add to the problem the fact that Ireland doesn't really want to say what will happen to the border in a no-deal Brexit as it is so politically sensitive (same applies in the UK but we pretend it isn't), and we have an environment in which no deal seems possible 6/
Any credible solution has to address the main issue on both sides - EU / Dublin belief that London wants to pretend you can have frictionless borders in all circumstances, and Brexiteer's belief that the EU just wants the UK to be rule-takers. As yet no solution has done so 7/
The current backstop proposal is included in this criticism - it clearly entails UK following rules over which we have no say, for an indefinite period. The response of "that's your choice" is not overly helpful in negotiations 8/
A solution to the Ireland backstop problem is easy to envisage in theory - the UK is given some say over regulations we have to follow, and the EU finds ways to move away from border checks, which will take many years. Unfortunately it looks politically untenable on all sides 9/
This is also the first of many issues which will affect relations in exactly the same way - of the UK being affected in some way by EU regulations over which we have no say. The Irish backstop issue has become a proxy for diverging views on the future UK-EU relationship 10/
I can only see a solution to the Irish backstop if the UK Government accept we are going to have a relatively close relationship with the EU in future. The EU will otherwise see their market as being threatened by any deal. The UK majority may accept that, the ERG will not 11/
Given the distance between the parties in understanding, I'm not overly confident that the Irish backstop conundrum will be solved in the coming weeks - but if we understand the problem we stand more chance 12/ end
