You can tell Brexit is headed for disaster by several stories appearing in The Telegraph on the same day. Firstly, Asa Bennet who writes regular whistling-in-the-dark pieces says (HERE) "EU leaders are coming to Theresa May's aid – she is their best hope for a smooth Brexit" as if Brussels has decided to concede everything in case she is toppled and they get someone worse. This is hardly a ringing endorsement of Mrs May.
Meanwhile Nick Timothy and Andrew Lillico have both written articles in the same edition suggesting ways the PM can square the customs union circle. Nick Timothy (HERE), Mrs May's former advisor, says the EU is ignoring its own negotiating guidelines by rejecting 'Max Fac' (Maximum Facilitation) - one of her customs options the EU have already rejected since the technology to do it does not even exist.
Andrew Lillico (HERE), an economist and former member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee, offers some advice to the prime minister with an option he says both leavers and remainers should be able to accept. Both articles are behind a pay wall so I can't reveal the details but what does it tell us?
These are both men who cannot believe the Irish border problem does not have a solution outside the CU and the single market. They are desperately scrambling around to come up with an answer to a problem they and the rest of the Brexiteers have known about since June 2016. As the deadline approaches and they can see Brexit slipping away they are starting to panic.
Over at Brexit Central, a website for the hard of thinking, another Brexiteer is pitching in desperately with a solution. This is Dr Graham Gudgin, Chief Economic Advisor to Policy Exchange (HERE). Essentially, Mr Gudgin's seemingly tautological answer is that an Irish border without infrastructure is fully attainable, provided we can agree an Irish border that has no infrastructure. Among his rather threadbare ideas is Smart Border 2.0 as proposed by Lars Karlsson (which needs gates and cameras) and then allowing small traders to do as they like across the border (rejected by the EU and probably by the WTO).
He also says "supporters of UK membership of the EU Customs Union assert that no border exists anywhere in the world without some physical infrastructure. This is true but irrelevant. Mr Karlsson says that arrangements without physical infrastructure have been successfully trialled on the Norway-Sweden border. The only reason that they have not been adopted for general use on this border is that the existing border arrangements are satisfactory and hence the cost of new electronic systems is not justified".
Poor old Graham. Nobody seems to have told him that Norway and Sweden are both in the single market. Either he is proposing we do the same (doubtful) or he is completely ignorant about how that border works.
Nearly two years on and this is what we have. Old ideas being tossed about like worn out items in a diplomatic jumble sale. The EU must look upon it all and shake their heads in wonderment - how a once proud nation has sunk to this level.
