An Irish Sea border would damage British-Irish relations

Dublin and London had been fairly tight since December 1993 and the Downing Street Declaration—until yesterday morning. The Times led with ‘Irish want sea border with UK after Brexit’. The DUP’s Sir Jeffrey Donaldson rushed breathlessly on to the Today programme to say there was ‘no way’ his party would accept it.

The notion isn’t new.  The idea is that the customs and immigration checks move away from the land border, and are done on ports or planes reaching either island. It pours cold seawater on Downing Street’s preferred idea that a ‘frictionless border’ can just rely on nifty cameras. ‘We do not want to pretend … we can solve the problems of the border on the island of Ireland through technical solutions like cameras and pre-registration and so on. That is not going to work,’ Ireland’s foreign minister told EU colleagues.

From Dublin’s perspective, it puts the wind up Arlene Foster, which is always fun.