[hibeejim21]

Jacob Rees-Mogg is great. He's a cartoon version of himself, a sort Anti-Bash-Street-Kid, their polar opposite from a parallel universe. His purpose on earth is to remind people why they should never vote Tory. Everyone should remember he has had sex several times and try to envisage that awful picture. It should linger like an etiolated mushroom cloud.

The difference with the Troubles is that the border's function was largely about what was coming from the south into the north. Now with the Irish Republic in the EU, it is acting as the agent of the Commission. It is inventing a scenario to form just another page in the comic that is Jacob Rees-Mogg's political career.

If you spend your life believing yesterday will recur if you move on to tomorrow, you might as well slit your wrists now.

Ireland is not acting as an agent of the commission at all, it is simply trying to protect its own position. If its a hard brexit its border towns could end up backdoor export platforms and criminality would no doubt increase.... and we know certain paramilitaries would be involved.

Logistically a hard border would be a nightmare, consider the A3/ N54 in the Republic, which crosses and re-crosses the border four times in just six miles.

The people of northern Ireland by the way didn't vote to "move on" to anything. They voted to remain, for things to stay as they are. Instead, their lives could be turned upside down.

As for Dublin, they know from bitter experience, that Perfidious Albion cannot be trusted and that a written commitment from the UK Government showing how Irish requirements will be met must be secured.

I've always said that the "implementation period" is much too short to negotiate anything with the EU that is beyond an off-the-shelf free trade agreement, eg. the one with Canada and certainly anything between GB and US/India/China/Australia/Russia will not replace 40% of the external GB trade with the EU. And we will be damn lucky to get even that.