Theresa May has said that any 'backstop' agreement for the whole UK, or even just Northern Ireland, to stay within the European Union's customs' union beyond the 29th March 2019 must be time limited. Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionists, who support Mrs May's government, have made it clear that they will not accept any Brexit deal which leaves either Northern Ireland inside the EU's customs' union or in any way separated from the rest of the United Kingdom. Simon Coveney, deputy Prime Minister of the Irish Republic, has said that his government cannot accept the imposition of any time limit on the so-called 'backstop agreement'.
Clearly, the positions of the UK and Irish governments are diametrically opposed, while the position of the Democratic Unionists simply seeks to maintain the integrity of the United Kingdom. The Irish government sees Brexit, and particularly the ill-advised agreement on a 'backstop' that was arrived at last year, as an opportunity to advance its ambition of annexing Northern Ireland and will do everything in its power to frustrate all proposals for resolving the border issue in any other way.
Enough is enough. Ireland is a piddling little country which relies heavily on the UK for its economic wellbeing. That the UK's government should be required to satisfy its wholly unrealistic demands and political ambitions is ridiculous. That the European Union as a whole is happy to allow this situation to persist shows just how it will use anything it can find in its efforts to frustrate Brexit.
The European Union is an abominable organisation, hell bent on turning itself into a socialist European 'super state'. It ignores all opposition and every reality in its pursuit of this goal and is an almost perfect parody of Oscar Wilde's description of fox hunting - "The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable". As the populations of various nations become ever more disenchanted with the EU - Italy and Hungary leading the way - its principal adherents, Germany and France, become ever more belligerent in their attitudes to dissent.
Having been founded as a means of avoiding further conflict in Europe, the EU has now become a club for unelected bureaucrats who happily plough their own furrow, regardless of the opposition that is growing amongst the common people. They take vast salaries and perks of all sorts while the people starve; they impose all manner of rules and regulations regardless of the impacts. They steal hundreds of billions of euros, pounds and whatever else they can lay their hands on, every year to spend on pet schemes with little or no real financial accountability. In truth, no one really knows where all the money goes.
That the UK joined this rabble in the first place was a mistake. That it allowed itself to be dragged along with developments such as the transmogrification from Common Market to European Union, the introduction of the disastrous Exchange Rate Mechanism, and the Maastricht, Lisbon and assorted other treaties, defies belief. The difficulties now being thrown up in the face of Brexit show just how convoluted and tentacular are the ramifications of membership of this spider's web of bureaucracy.
Theresa May made a monumental error when she agreed to the lunacy of the 'Irish backstop' at the end of 2017 and the EU leaders must have heartily congratulated themselves on their success in getting her to agree to it. It was always intended to be an impossible sticking point to overcome and so it has proved. The only answer is for the United Kingdom to walk away and leave it for the European Union to see sense.
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