Hard to understand how the DUP expects to solve the Northern Ireland Brexit issue - Yorkshire Post Letters

Finally, the DUP has meditated and cogitated and at last have come up with their verdict. The latest attempt to reconcile the Northern Ireland question is unacceptable.

They didn’t like the ‘backstop’, they didn’t like the ‘protocol’, and now the ‘accord’ fails to hit the spot. With a curious degree of hubris, however, they have offered to cooperate with the government on solution number four.

Since we were told that the best minds available strove over ‘Windsor’ to offer the best possible answer, it is difficult to see what they could offer that was any different.

The actual answer is really quite simple. We have been attempting to find ways for one single sovereign territory to operate under two different and conflicting economic regimes with two different and conflicting lines of ultimate legal appeal, and to guarantee that there will be no physical borders or checks on any side of that territory. This is logically, mathematically and logistically impossible.

This is not some sad old remoaner taking advantage of 20:20 hindsight, or opportunistically being wise after the event; this precise problem was articulated in numerous articles and letters (I recall writing a number of those myself) published in 2016 and 2017.

But of course, these faint whispers of logic were drowned out in the general raucous choruses of ‘Get Brexit Done’ and the rest.

I make no secret of my ongoing opposition to the principle of leaving the EU. For me, there are political issues, but that is not what I am here referring to.

The Good Friday Agreement brought an end to nearly a century of strife, and when it was negotiated, there was no question that Northern Ireland would not remain perpetually as part of the same economic bloc as the Republic and the rest of the UK; a condition essential to the agreement.

It is still rightly seen as an outrageous notion that the Good Friday Agreement should be in any way compromised, just as the DUP regard as outrageous the idea that Northern Ireland should secede from the United Kingdom.

I look forward with some bemusement to what new ideas the DUP may offer the Sunak government and the EU, but I confess that I do not expect the basic rules of logic to be circumvented or displaced any time soon.