A certain group of Brexiteers have got everything they wanted - but they still yearn for the impossible.
Even the keenest Brexiteer must feel that the process has been tortuously long. / That has been, in large part, because successive British governments have refused to accept the trade-off between untrammelled sovereignty and friction-free access to the EU’s single market, a refusal that shapes today’s increasingly testy relationship.
SDLP’s Brexit spokesman says Frost’s attempts to unpick NI protocol risking investment.
The Treaty of Versailles established arrangements to prevent a hard border between Germany and Poland in Silesia. It failed, becoming a flashpoint in the relationship between the two countries. Even a permanent backstop is a poorer guarantor of peace in Northern Ireland than remaining in the EU. (Thea Don-Siemion)
The question, set less by Brussels than the logic of Brexit, is how the UK government can in one move leave the European union’s single market and customs while also maintaining the flow of trade and people on its one land border with the bloc in Ireland.
The Tory leadership race has brought a no-deal Brexit closer. Most candidates have either elevated No Deal to a heightened form of Brexit - a "clean" Brexit - or have insisted it is preferable to an extension beyond the current Article 50 deadline of 31 October.
"It is crystal clear that the measures do not alter the fundamental legal effect of the backstop, as previously and correctly explained by the Attorney General. The backstop will endure indefinitely, unless and until superseded by another agreement, save in the extreme and unlikely event that in future negotiations the EU acts in bad faith in rejecting the UK’s demands."
This evening, Michel Barnier said the EU was ready to offer Britain a unilateral exit from the customs union while maintaining the other elements of the backstop.
Many people in Britain are unaware that Ireland is a separate country at all.
The Good Friday agreement allows people to identify as Irish, British or both. We’re being forced, once again, to choose sides.