A few weeks ago Dominic Lawson said we anti Brexit marchers were out of step with reality (HERE) but this week he has obviously done a little skip and joined us in becoming out of sync with reality himself by claiming the Swiss option offers a solution to the Irish border problem (HERE).
His column yesterday was completely baffling. The Swiss option as an answer for the Irish border problem is risible. First, he confuses himself by talking about Switzerland as a template for a "frictionless" border rather than the lack of a hard border.
Let's remind ourselves that, "The United Kingdom remains committed to protecting North-South cooperation and to its guarantee of avoiding a hard border" (paragraph 49 of the joint report from last December). Boris Johnson told us as recently as November last year, "I repeated exactly the pledge to which she refers: there can be no return to a hard border. There can be no hard border. That would be unthinkable, and it would be economic and political madness" (Hansard 21st November column 848 HERE). In 2016 Johnson said it would be "absolutely unchanged" (HERE).
Mrs May on 23rd October last year in The House (HERE column 35) confirmed, "no physical infrastructure at the border and no return to the borders of the past".
So the commitment is to avoid a "hard" border. Lawson talks of a frictionless border. They are not the same. Lars Karlsson's report (HERE) for the EU parliament is for a frictionless border but, make no mistake, it's a hard border, including automatic "gates". Even Mr Karlsson now admits it won't work in Ireland.
The series of over 80 bilateral agreements and 120 multilateral agreements (HERE) on which the Swiss - EU relationship is based, took about 45 years to negotiate. It doesn't include financial services for the obvious reason that the breaking of one agreement means the end of them all. No bank could operate with such uncertainty. And the EU don't want to repeat the Swiss experience anyway.
We have never suggested it and the EU have said our red lines rule it out (HERE).
Next Lawson tries to minimise the problem by quoting someone saying the business and human traffic that crosses the Swiss border is "massively more" that crosses between the north and south of Ireland. But the volume of trucks crossing the Swiss border is 20,000 per day (HERE - page 6). In Ireland the number is 177,000 lorries, 208,000 vans per month (HERE), about 12,800 per day, less but hardly "massively" so.
Finally, to bolster his argument even more he says that claims of a return to violence are either "cant or scaremongering" and quotes Labour spokesman Barry Gardiner to support him. Unfortunately, people who live on the border, politicians on both sides as well as the PSNI disagree with him and believe there is a big risk. This is why the government, "remains committed to protecting North-South cooperation and to its guarantee of avoiding a hard border".
Effectively, Lawson addresses the wrong problem, tries to minimise it then declares there isn't really a problem anyway. But then he offers what is perhaps the most complex Swiss model as a solution, one that neither side supports and would take decades to negotiate.
This surely demonstrates more than anything how important the Irish border is becoming and how, as the moment of truth approaches, Brexiteers like Lawson are becoming more and more anxious - not to say muddled.
