Well, after this afternoon's session in the EU parliament, if anybody in the western world was under any illusion that there was some 'wriggle room' in the Withdrawal Agreement to allow the backstop to be quietly extracted, they will surely have been enlightened. The great and the good of Europe lined up to tell the UK the WA is closed, finished and done. And the backstop was not going to be removed.
Juncker, with Nigel Farage sat close by, said the EU told the UK that the WA could not be reopened in November, again in December and after the first meaningful vote earlier in January. It must seem to Michel Barnier like trying to convince a double glazing salesman that you're not interested in new windows.
The backstop problem stems from a belief by Brexiteers that you can have independent customs, regulatory and legal regimes in two neighbouring countries without a border. The only area where there is an invisible border between nations is the EU single market. This does not exist anywhere else in the world and no credible experts know of any means, high tech or not, that might allow countries to dismantle all their borders. High tech solutions are fine if only law abiding people crossed borders. It's the ones who don't declare stuff or declare one thing as something else that need border checks.
The only potential way of avoiding a hard border (which Theresa May said was one of our objectives in her Article 50 notification letter dated 29th March 2017) is having regulatory alignment and a customs union. Things we have expressly ruled out.
But this is only the first paradox. The second one is that the PM is still under the impression that we can negotiate a trade agreement which will make the backstop unnecessary outside the SM and the CU. Even some Brexiteers seem to believe this is possible. John Whittingdale was suggesting this afternoon it could be done - and even within the 21 month transition period! He also still believes in the GATT Article 24 fairy.
Since the Brexiteers continue to make these fantasy suggestions one wonders if they realise the trade deal, assuming we ever get that far and it provides an open border in Ireland, is inevitably going to look like something very close to single market and customs union membership?
I think this is what's behind the EU's insistence on the backstop. There must be concern that when the Brexiteers see the price they will need to pay for keeping the Irish border open, they will baulk at it and we will never be able to agree an FTA, at least not one Rees-Mogg and the ERG could sign up to.
