It is just possible that there are still a few undecided MPs who need persuading why they must take control of the Brexit process this week and extend article 50 to prevent a no-deal outcome. If so, the MPs should look at the Ipsos MRBI poll of Northern Ireland opinion published by the Irish Times on Thursday. It is rare to find a poll that reads so emphatically both as a devastating verdict on a policy and, at the same time, as a blunt warning of the need for it to change. But this one does both.
Northern Ireland is again at the very heart of the Conservative government’s Brexit crisis. This is not an accident. It is there essentially because Theresa May’s government is committed to three things that cannot be reconciled. One is the peace process promise that Brexit would do nothing to restore a hard border between the UK and the Republic of Ireland. The second is the promise that Mrs May made in 2017 to the DUP that there would be no regulatory divergence in the Irish Sea. The third is the Tory’s right’s doctrinaire passion for leaving the EU single market and customs union, which Mrs May very foolishly made into Brexit red lines.
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