Brexit is Groundhog Day all over again

Tomorrow, then, we will all have another go at making two and two make six, and we will fail

For once, I’d say Jeremy Corbyn got it right. Theresa May’s statement about Brexit was very much, as he said, “Groundhog Day”. She said that everything was fine, apart from the Irish border question. Which is where we have been since the last time we had a “Brexit breakthrough”, just before Christmas last year.

If you remember, that was when the EU came up with the “backstop” idea of an economic border down the Irish Sea, and, desperate, the UK solemnly agreed to it, albeit as a theoretical construct. The Commons (ie the Tory rebels) subsequently passed a law making such an arrangement illegal anyway. Now Ms May quotes the clause in the statute with misplaced pride. The backstop was, by the way, also something that Boris Johnson and David Davis, as cabinet ministers at the time signed up to. No wonder the British are referred to as “perfidious Albion”. Treachery sprouts everywhere.

The only way those of us writing about Brexit can keep sane, well I speak for myself, is to remember that the Irish border issue is a conundrum with no answer, like many an Irish question before it.