We must understand risks and reality of Northern Ireland border and Brexit backstop – Yorkshire Post letters

WE have heard much of the difficulties and unfairness of the Backstop. The current invisible border has operated without major difficulty for years. Supporting this, Ireland receives significant funds from the EU, and similarly Northern Ireland receives significant funds from the UK.

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Why would people really want change? Repeated but brief references have been made to the technical management of the border as a way forward but are we largely left to imagine what this would mean?

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With health and safety governing much of our lives, many of us are familiar with risk analysis. What are the risks associated with a future invisible border, the potential of a perhaps limited control of people crossing on a regular or irregular basis?

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What simple provisions would be appropriate? What are the risks of a perhaps, at the worst, an imperfect control of goods or people crossing? If in 2017 £2.7bn, 33 per cent of Northern Ireland’s trade, goes to the Republic and if this principally involves about 100 firms, how difficult would that be to control?

By comparison £1.3bn, 1.4 per cent of the Republic’s trade, passed to Northern Ireland. How significant a risk, economic or political, might be involved?

Politicians and political leaders can make their case, for their own diverse, often suspect reasons, for emphasising the difficulties of new border arrangements, but when it comes specifically to visualising the issues associated with crossing the border, neither the politicians nor the media have helped. It is surely essential to have a clear understanding of these issues to judge respectively, the justification for the EU rejection and the practicability of the proposal?

From: Martin Phillips, Leeds.

A DEAL is the sort of arrangement you make when you enter into marriage. A settlement is what both sides agree to in a divorce. One is something at the beginning and the other refers to a closure. Theresa May’s deal – for anyone who has not read it – basically kept us in the marriage with the EU but without the conjugal rights.

From: Harry Brooke, Leeds.

HOW can it be democratic for the likes of Sarah Wollaston, Anna Soubry and other MPs who were supposed to represent constituencies that voted Leave to swap parties and vote against the will of the people? If MPs choose to switch political parties, they should automatically have to fight a by-election.