ninearches wrote:
What puzzles me about this backstop lark is why a border between north & south should be needed anyway for inter Irish trade . I am sure the island of Ireland could work out a system to satisfy both the UK & Irish governments. The only need for a deviation to this would be for traffic crossing the Irish sea to mainland Britain....NI freight & passengers from ports & airports in the north & Eire freight & passengers from southern ports & airports. Everybody & everything needs a ticket or delivery note & computerisation could soon detect any one trying to cross or bring good through the wrong port.
Hadn't you realised that although its only one island, there are 2 seperate countries, ruled by seperate governments and the only reason that free trade currently exists (without a hard border) is because both of these countries are part of the EU.
There are those in the North that believe that Ireland should be one nation but, you will have to encourage more people to sign up for Sinn Fein if you want to see a united Ireland and whilst it remains as 2 nations and assuming there isn't a free trade agreement post Brexit, there will need to be some way of cross border checks.
Northern Ireland is part of the UK, Eire isn't.
It's not so long ago that there was a hard border between the 2 sides with armed soldiers at the check points.
On of the major plus points of EU membership + the good Friday agreement is that these were no longer required.
Ireland is the only place where the UK has a physical border with the EU and things could get pretty messy post Brexit.
It will instantly become a smugglers paradise with people on both sides trying to avoid certain taxes and levies with trade between the UK and Europe and should there be a return to a hard border, we may well see the return of sectarian violence, which has never fully disappeared.
