Ireland has punctured Brexiteers’ wishful thinking

In his column this week, James Forsyth reports there is ‘mounting anger’ inside the government at the way the Irish government are behaving over Brexit. I am sure there is, though it still surprises me that people are surprised to discover that the Irish government is defending its own interests.

Doubtless this is why you will sometimes find exuberant Brexiteers suggesting that the answer to the Irish problem is for the Irish to leave the EU too. That might work in theory; it doesn’t do so in practice. I’m afraid things are a little more complicated than that.

Now it is, of course, tiresome that Brexit is being complicated by the Hibernians. But none of this was unforeseeable and none of it should be a surprise. That it evidently is – and an unwelcome one at that – seems sadly typical of a Brexit process that has, at leas thus far, been built on heroic amounts of projection and wishful thinking.