Brexiters urge ‘imagination’ over Irish plan. It’s fantasy

When Owen Paterson urged everyone to use their “imagination” over Brexiters’ so-called solution to the Irish border, alarm bells started ringing. Fantasy is their stock in trade. This 19-page Irish border dossier from Jacob Rees-Mogg’s European Research Group (ERG) is no exception.

The Brextremists say there don’t need to be any frontier controls immediately after Brexit as we’ll have the same rules as the EU. But if and when our standards diverge, we’ll introduce border checks up to 20km away from the frontier. That would be needed if, say as part of a trade deal with Donald Trump, we wanted to import chlorine-washed chicken from America, which is banned from entering the EU.

The first problem with this “solution” is that it amounts to a harder border than we have today. This is exactly what the UK and EU have agreed must be avoided to preserve peace and prosperity on the island of Ireland. It is a step backwards for the North-South cooperation laid out in the Good Friday Agreement. The EU would refuse to do a deal on this basis.

The ERG argues that the EU would still have to accept UK goods because World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules say that, where “identical or similar conditions prevail”, the importer must accept the exporters’ standards. There are at least four problems with this:

• The decision over whether the “appropriate level” has been reached is in the gift of the importer (the EU);
• If the Brexiters are in charge, product standards won’t be “identical or similar” anyway because they believe in deregulation;
• WTO rules still allow for “reasonable access … for inspection (and) testing” by the importer, so checks would still be needed;
• And the WTO itself is being trashed right now by Brexiter pin-up Donald Trump, putting it in an increasingly weak position to ensure fair play.

Yet another problem with the ERG’s non-plan is that it is not clear how these customs checks 20km away from the frontier would actually work. But it is pretty clear it would be harder to catch contraband or substandard goods than if you had the controls at the border.

The EU is already worried about persistent smuggling into the UK. It’s not going to say yes to a new system that amounts to a green light to smugglers. The ERG casually dismisses the issue as a “feature of any border”.

Finally, the ERG only talks about goods, ignoring everything else that crosses borders such as services, professionals and electricity. Martin Donnelly, the former top civil servant in the department of international trade, has explored this in more detail for InFacts.

Paterson described the Good Friday Agreement as having “outlived its use”. It’s unsurprising the ERG report doesn’t take Ireland, and its two decades of peace, seriously.