Duty move a joke and won’t work

LIKE almost everything else about Brexit the tariffs that may be imposed in the event of the UK leaving the EU defy logic and will more than likely be unworkable.

While the disclosure there is to be no hard border is to be welcomed there is little else about the plan which warrants anything but ridicule.

The notion a company can export goods into Northern Ireland without tariffs but face a 40% hit if sent directly to Britain is beyond absurd.

Could the same firm not just divert their products destined for a UK city through the North via Scotland to avoid the hefty tax?

What is to stop a French or Spanish company with goods to be delivered to the UK sending their containers on a ferry to Dublin and through Belfast to beat paying the cash.

What the British Government appears to have done is what they accused the EU of trying to do – cut off Northern Ireland from the UK and make it a separate economic entity.

By imposing different tariffs on goods between the Republic and the North and the rest of the UK, Theresa May’s Government has done just that.

Not only is this unworkable, the tariffs will also have disastrous consequences for business on both sides of the border.

As well as causing severe economic damage these taxes also risk souring the good relationship between the this country and the UK.