DOMINIC LAWSON: This shabby plot to keep Britain a captive state of the vengeful EU must be crushed.
Plots are meant to be secret. But just because some political manoeuvres are in plain sight, it doesn’t make them less insidious. That is true of the co-ordination between those members of Parliament who want to turn Brexit into a sham and the European Commission’s negotiating team, who have the same purpose.
The way pro-Remain MPs have set out their determination to force the UK to remain in a customs union with the EU, at exactly the same time as Brussels has rejected Theresa May’s plans for a frictionless border between Ireland and the UK post-Brexit, has all the precision of dressage. And it is Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, who is holding the reins.
Last December the Prime Minister broke the negotiating deadlock with the EU by agreeing that, come what may, there should be no hard border between the North and South of Ireland.
Her proposal is that border posts can be avoided by means of technology and the operation of so-called ‘trusted trader’ schemes.
Last week this was dismissed by Barnier’s team, which went on to assert that there was no way a frictionless border in Ireland could be preserved — and hence, they claim, peace — without Britain remaining in a customs union with the EU.
