Not an amusing ending - nor a happy one

I was disappointed when I reached the end of an otherwise amusing letter from Robin Williams (Viewpoint, December 30).

How often does it need to be said that the problem of the Irish land border cannot be solved by the UK joining in a customs union with the EU?

Because that happened in 1973 when we joined the EEC or Common Marker, but it was only with the advent of the EU Single Market in 1993 that routine checks and controls on goods moving across the borders between member states could be – indeed had to be – eliminated across the

EU.

However, to be fair to Mr Williams, clearly Boris Johnson held a similar misconception when he pushed for a ‘Canada style’ free trade deal with the EU as a solution.

We now have that trade deal with the EU, but we also have a new customs border in the Irish Sea, and the infrastructure of a hard border on the coast of Northern Ireland facing Great Britain, plus we have left the province behind under swathes of EU Single Market laws.

Mr Williams wonders whether I could prepare a simply phrased statement of my proposition to resolve the current difficulties, a statement which could possibly be comprehensible to Foreign Secretary Liz Truss who is now in charge of our negotiations with the EU.

Well, as it happens, I have already sent a letter to draw her attention to the suggestion I first made in February 2018, and repeatedly offered to Theresa May (Viewpoint February 22 2018, “Easy solution to EU border conundrum”)

But as she is not my constituency MP I cannot say whether she will even see that letter, let alone consider the clear unilateral stepwise plan that I laid out.

Dr D R COOPER Belmont Park Avenue

Maidenhead