Boris blows himself up on the Irish border

Part of Boris Johnson’s appeal to his supporters – now much diminished in number – is that he has a free form approach. He’s authentic. Insurgent. He doesn’t think too far ahead, if at all. He goes with his gut instinct. The contrast is with opponents who are too rigid, spun and boring. In his pomp this made Boris a favourite to be leader of the Conservative party.

Those days are in the past, and on the evidence of the Foreign Secretary’s disastrous performance on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme earlier, in the past they shall remain.

Boris was pressed on the subject of the Irish border and Brexit. The charge is that because the UK government’s position in negotiations with Brussels is to be out of the Single Market and not replace the existing EU Customs Union (the underpinning of the entire EU) with a new customs union or agreement, then the British have a moral and practical duty to deal with it seriously and have a plan that keeps the UK, divided Northern Ireland and the Republic content, and not undermine the imperfect, but much better than nothing, Good Friday peace deal.

This was put to Boris on Radio 4, and here is what he came up with:

“We think that we can have very efficient facilitation systems to make sure that there’s no need for a hard border, excessive checks at the frontier between Northern Ireland and the Republic. For people listening, there’s no border between Camden and Westminster, but when I was mayor of London we anaesthetically and invisibly took hundreds of millions of pounds from the accounts of people travelling between those two boroughs without any need for border checks whatever.”

Seriously? Camden and Westminster are not in two different countries. There is no border between the two over which blood has been shed within living memory. It’s not some little local difficulty. The comparison with congestion charging is insulting, to those in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland. It’s insensitive. It’s glib. It’s casual. It’s brain-scramblingly silly. And he’s not some backbencher. He’s the Foreign Secretary, for goodness sake, at a critical moment when the Tories need to show they take Ireland seriously and the peace deal seriously.

The presenter Mishal Husain suggested that the comparison between Northern Ireland and the workings of the congestion charge was bogus. Boris doubled down.

“‎I think it’s a very relevant comparison, because there is all sorts of scope for pre-booking, electronic checks, all sorts of things that you can do to obviate the need for a hard border, to allow us to come out of the customs union, take back control of our trade policy and do trade deals.”

For months now we have heard a lot of huffing and puffing from the more hardline of my fellow Brexiteers, calling others stupid when they ask what the precise plan is to avoid a hard border or a break down in the peace process. Assurances are vague. Technology will do it, somehow, we are told. Even as a Brexiteer I think we’re well past the point where magical thinking and bland assurances will suffice.

Of course the Irish question – as it has numerous times – requires compromise. Technology may be part of a fudged solution. If so, the British government should be much further advanced towards saying exactly how it will work, to offer reassurance across the island of Ireland, and if it is further advanced than it appears then a senior member of the government should be able to explain it without reference to Camden, Westminster and the congestion charge. Statesmanship and sensitivity are needed. Ramshackle improvisation and Boris bumbling will simply not do.