Border chaos blamed on Brexit

Chickens have come home to roost with the hoo-hah about the Irish border which has been so important an issue -- because no-one want a return to the Troubles, of course, nothing to do with trouble-making or punishing theUK.

The UK Government has announced that there will simply be no tariffs on goods coming from the Republic into Norther Ireland. This had an interesting reaction when it was announced with the Republic's spokesperson saying this would require all parties to discuss what to do about the border. Now they can discuss it. Before it was inviolate, of course.

More today in teh Grauniad, slanted in the usual way:

Post-Brexit tariffs will ‘wipe out businesses’ near Irish border 

But who will be imposing these tariffs? 

The UK government’s decision not to apply tariffs on imports from the republic in the event of no deal is an existential threat, they fear, since Ireland, as an EU member, will be obliged to impose steep duties on goods from outside the single market. That differential could wipe out farms and manufacturers facing tariffs when they export to Ireland and unable to compete with tariff-free goods entering from Ireland...“It’s been an awful shock to businesses to comprehend what the policy will do to us,” said Declan Billington, the head of the Northern Ireland Food and Drink Association. “We’ll be facing tariffs exporting to Ireland which could well be 30% to 40% on beef, but beef from the south will come in with zero tariffs... “It will be a disaster if they bring in tariffs one way but not the other,” the 56-year-old farmer said. “The whole country will be at a standstill. There should be free trade. People don’t understand the border.”

There is also a fear of 'industrial-scale smuggling worse than the illegal, paramilitary-backed cross-border trade at the height of the Troubles'

So -- principled opposition to a hard border will be replaced by standard EU tariffs after all. This might well hurt Irish producers. We are not to blame the gung-ho arrogance of the Irish and their EU allies that kept holding up the border as an insoluble issue, however, but the UK Government who has done the obvious thing.

Will any of this lead to what the UK has been asking for -- a custom post-free electronic border and thus no need for a backstop? Do the Irish and the EU want to discuss this now or after Brexit?

The whole Guardian issue is positively awash with scare stories and fears:

'It could be terrible for us': how one British high street is preparing for Brexit 

(This is a story  about a specialist high street in York. There are the usual elements -- fears for the supply of charcoal, just-in-time flower stockists who can't work a day in advance, fears for medicines. The closing of shops is noted, as if that were not happening everywhere, thanks to Amazon. There is only one reservation, tucked well down amidst the list of fears: 'Whether this is because of Brexit is impossible to know'.

Of course, we must not ignore other victims:

Exit Brussels? The UK civil servants under a fog of uncertainty

and this

‘A riskier place to go’: academics avoid conferences in Brexit Britain