Border arrogance

FOR months now, top police officers in Northern Ireland have been warning that there is no plan in place for the border should the United Kingdom leave the EU with a hard Brexit, or even with no deal at all. In June, PSNI Chief Constable George Hamilton said he felt ‘in the dark’ about what happens next, not least because of the continuing impasse at Stormont.

Westminster’s Northern Ireland minister Shailesh Vara yesterday dismissed the concerns raised by DUP MP Nigel Dodds in parliament, saying the government there would ‘come up with a solution in due course’.

That is a quite astonishingly blithe response, as arrogant as it is insulting. The border issue is one of the pillars of the EU negotiating stance, and of huge importance to everyone on this island. To see it reinstated would have enormous psychological consequences, partitioning not only the physical infrastructure but sundering the close economic and cultural ties that have been made since the Good Friday Agreement.

Crucially, though, it threatens the peace, as a hard border inevitably will once again become a target. This week, hundreds of thousands of us watched Mother’s Day, the heartbreaking drama about the aftermath of the Warrington bombing and the peace campaign that resulted from the sickening murders of Johnathan Ball and Tim Parry.

We did so with less detachment than we might have done a decade ago. The people of Ireland know what violence is and how easily it is stoked. ‘A solution in due course’ simply is not good enough, when we need answers now.