NI was always the fly in the ointment for the Brexiters. Setting aside the implications for the GFA for a moment, when we are no longer in the Single Market, how are we to prove that our goods are fully compliant for their market if selling them into the EU? And vice verse? /1

There have to be border checks somewhere. If the EU ban the use of a certain kind of pesticide on health grounds, how will there be assurance for EU citizens that their food will not be compromised by that pesticide being brought through a back door if Britain do not agree? /2

The same is true the other way. If the UK decide to ban a particular chemical which is not banned in the EU, why would they want that coming in via a black market? The UK would be looking to put in place a policing system for such divergences. /3

The ability to diverge is the whole point of Brexit is it not? Isn’t that the reason the sovereignty argument is yelled? To diverge you need a system to check goods at a border going both ways. Do they adhere to your regulations, do you adhere to theirs? /4

The United Kingdom have turned a trading environment where it is just US to a Them and Us. /5

These questions have never changed. The UK are no longer in the EU, the SM or the CU but the bottom line is that means they voted to have a border where there was none before. But then we get to the very reason the GFA is under threat! /6

The brexiters claimed to have solved that conundrum with Boris Johnson’s WA, the oven ready deal.

If the UK breaches that international agreement, that’s on the UK 100% and the world (even the foreign world) is not stupid, it sees right through Johnson’s bluster. /end