Now, a few notes. First, the open untruths in the piece. The CTA is not about goods, but about people. There was a Hard Border in the past with the CTA. Suggesting the CTA means no Hard Border is misleading and dishonest.
Managing increasing divergence is not one of the primary functions of the GFA. Strand Two is about reducing divergence by joint North-South policy-making. That’s just a flat-out lie. There’s no other word one can use. It relies on readers not having read the GFA to mislead.
The repeated, recurrent untruths trying to suggest there was a policy change, and it’s all that nasty Leo Varadkar’s fault - lads, there has been no change, it was Enda and Charlie Flanagan built the coalition of support in the EU27 while you were flexing and throwing shapes.
That you didn’t notice Enda and Charlie doing it because you were too busy throwing shapes doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It means Enda and Charlie put the policy in place, Leo and Simon continued it, and you only noticed it was there when your fantasy bubble collapsed.
Second, linked particularly to that, is the perennial refusal to engage. The techno-unicorn nonsense persists, despite it being long-since destroyed in detail.
The claim the Border is low-risk for non-compliance with HMG on customs... Well, I’d say, “Get up the yard”, were it not that there’s probably a cross-Border red diesel pipe running under said yard.
And, again, the stark refusal to accept that the EU gives small states like Ireland support and agency. Facing that truth would be fatal for the Brexiter worldview of “We *are* a Big State, Big States do the telling and you get told.”
These people don’t want to engage with reality, because reality spoils their nicw fantasy.
And if fantastists drive policy, it doesn’t end well.
And if fantastists drive policy, it doesn’t end well.
