Button wrote:The ILB (Irish Land Boundary) is a border between two sovereign countries true, but it comes with a few wrinkles, including: both countries are part of the Common Travel Area, Eire is part of the fiscal territory of the EU, both Eire and Northern Ireland are part of the EU Single Market. The major wrinkle of course, is that border controls are not performed at or even near the border; quite where UK import and export controls* and Eire's (EU) import and export controls* are performed is beyond my will to live, but wherever they are performed, it ain't at the border.
* and I'm talking customs/transit controls, not consumer protection/Single Market ones.
All true. But as the late Howard pointed out several times on here and was often derided for saying it. the land border between the UK and Eire was always going to be an unresolved issue. The economic and geopolitical arguments against Brexit were dismissed with the ludicrous 'project fear' riposte but it was always a fact that the border was governed by an international treaty with outside nations acting as guarantors (most noticeably the USA). Johnson's way of overcoming this was (predictably) to lie through his back teeth.
The inherent stupidity of such an approach is now coming home to roost. And it does the BBC no credit whatsoever that they are too meek and servile to raise that point with the politicians responsible.