Sof t border? It’s illogical
Ex-deputy British PM Nick Clegg says notion ‘is just taking people for fools’
FORMER deputy British Prime Minister Nick Clegg has claimed that the notion of a ‘soft border’ after Brexit is ‘illogical nonsense’.
Mr Clegg, an outspoken opponent of Brexit, said the British and Irish governments were conning themselves with its soft border rhetoric.
He said a soft border would be out of the question if Theresa May’s government insists on quitting both the EU Single Market and the Customs Union.
Speaking on Today With Seán O’Rourke on RTÉ Radio One, the former Liberal Democrat leader said he did not believe a special exemption from normal EU border rules would be possible.
‘The claim that you can somehow create a border and yet not have a border – that is just taking people for fools,’ he said.
‘Talk is cheap, talk is easy. It’s easy to say we’ll do our best, we’ll try to get the best possible deal, obviously try to ensure there isn’t a hard border.’
However, the former number two to David Cameron reiterated that any attempts at doing so were impractical due to the decision to cut itself away entirely from the European Union.
‘At the end of the day there is a cold, hard reality which is that the UK government, the Conservative government, has chosen – by the way, they didn’t need to do this, they have chosen – not only to leave the political institutions of the EU, they have chosen to do it in the most uncompromising form possible, by quitting both the Single Market and the Customs Union,’ he said. ‘You cannot administer a border which is inside a customs union with a neighbour that is outside it without having meaningful checks at the border. It is illogical nonsense. ‘If you want to have the exact same benefits outside the single market as inside it, you can’t have that unless you all obey the same rules.’ He then issued a warning to the British government, telling them to come to terms with the difficult Brexit process which will prove Britain cannot stand alone from Europe.
‘They’re going to have to at some stage bite the bullet and admit to the John Redwoods and the Boris Johnsons, and the Michael Goves and those other slightly swiveleyed Brexiteers that the promise that you can somehow sever yourself entirely from a level playing field from the continent of which we are geographically and tectonically a part is not possible,’ he said. Mr Clegg said that he hopes the UK government will finally be forced to clarify their stance on the border in the coming weeks.
He said: ‘I hope that one of the silver linings of this election is that the government will now be put under pressure to explain itself exactly on these kinds of issues.’
On Wednesday, Clegg announced via Twitter that he will run again in June’s general elections after surviving his party’s demolition in the 2015 elections.
It is widely expected that the Liberal Democrats, as a party that opposes Brexit, will perform strongly in the election.
Special exemption ‘impossible’