Boris Johnson must learn there is more to life than Brexit

I know we’re not supposed to be shocked or even surprised by anything Boris Johnson says any more – “Boris is Boris” and all that. But still I find that one of the comments revealed in Alex Spence’s excellent Buzzfeed scoop about the Foreign Secretary is gnawing at me. It’s this:

“It’s so small and there are so few firms that actually use that border regularly, it’s just beyond belief that we’re allowing the tail to wag the dog in this way. We’re allowing the whole of our agenda to be dictated by this folly.”

He was referring to the small matter of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, to which so much attention is paid in the Brexit talks.

There are reasons for that, of course, and not just reasons of parliamentary arithmetic. Even if the May government was not dependent on the DUP, the questions over Northern Ireland would be the same.