Is Britain bordering on conceding that it will leave Northern Ireland?

The only logical solution... is for Britain to declare that it will withdraw from the North, writes Fergus Finlay.

IT WAS a wise Irish civil servant who told me once, years ago, that the time to be afraid of British negotiators was when they offered a flurry of ideas. “Read them,” he said, “and you’ll notice one thing. They’re trying to trap you into discussing points of detail, so you end up ignoring the fundamentals.” His remark was made in the context of Anglo-Irish negotiations about the Northern Ireland peace process, but it applies just as much to Britain’s position in the Brexit negotiations, at least where Ireland is concerned. Their negotiating stance is based on an age-old truism — get them haggling about price, and they’ll forget the point of principle.

The good news is that the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, and his team, saw the Brits coming. In a really astute report from Brussels the other night, RTÉ’s correspondent, Tony Connelly, pointed out that the Brits had published a 27-page paper full of technical suggestions about how you could have a border in Ireland, but that it wouldn’t really be a hard border. The EU had responded with a much shorter paper, refusing to engage with the technical stuff and pointing out that Britain had entirely ignored the fundamental issue of principle.