This is, as far as I can tell, a real thing that a British commentator has written in a published article about Ireland. 
There’s something almost fascinating about the extent to which the reality of Brexit has distorted the perceptions of its proponents.
Confronted with the magnitude of their act of self-harm, their paradoxical response has been to discover a kind of radical self interest.
So radical is their position, in fact, that it refuses even to recognise the competing interests of others, much less to accommodate them.
This would be destructive in itself, but more disturbing still is the historical and political ignorance that nourishes it.
Pro-Brexit ignorance of European institutions is almost axiomatic. How else can the surrender of such colossal advantages be explained?
But the ignorance doesn’t end there. It encompasses the UK itself, how it is governed and how it came to exist in its present form.
Such is the lightless chasm of cluelessness in which the parping of The Spectator’s clarion periodically resounds.
Here are the qualifications for writing an opinion piece about Brexit and the Irish border.
1. You have seen the border. Maps don’t count.
1. You have seen the border. Maps don’t count.
2. You have spent longer than a month, cumulatively, in Ireland and the North. Stag weekends and childhood holidays don’t count.
3. You can adequately explain, without recourse to Google, how the border came into being.
4. You have crossed the border multiple times between 1987 and 2017.
