Planning for hard Brexit - Sobering reality check on border

OUR report that officials are secretly identifying where post-Brexit customs checkpoints might be re-established along the almost forgotten Northern Ireland border is a sobering reality check.

You can either have a border or not; the idea of a barely noticeable frontier between the EU and a disenchanted former partner is wishful thinking.

One European leader after another has said, in recent weeks, that the terms which will be offered to Britain must ensure that post-divorce Britain must be less attractive, less comfortable than it is today.