LIFE LESSONS

Stop calling it the Irish Border problem

HAPPY Brexmas everyone. This year Santa (JeanClaude Juncker) says we’ve been very naughty boys and girls so no pressies. Instead, we are getting borders, backstops, DUP demands and more ‘no deal’ ordeal. Just what no one asked for.

It feels like an eternity ago, but I covered Brexit from London as it happened. It was a tense night and horrible morning. London felt different as I travelled back to my desk after two hours sleep.

No one could quite believe it. It felt like finding out you had been cheated on then getting dumped, by text. If only we had known then that it was worse than being cheated on, this was like being cheated on by Ryan Giggs.

At that time, as an Irish writer writing for an Irish newspaper in London, we were all worried about the Border but no one (understandably) cared or wanted to read about it. Now, the ‘Irish Border problem’ is top of the agenda.

I heard comedian Andrew Maxwell on Radio 4 the other day and he articulated brilliantly what I think a lot of Irish people in Britain are feeling right now. He said: “Stop calling it the Irish Border, it’s the English border in Ireland. The Irish Border is the sea!”

Even without the Border issue, the whole thing is what Malcolm from The Thick Of It would describe as a clusterf *ck. The ringleaders have deserted (Cameron’s fled, Farage’s disappeared, Bo-Jo ducks behind a bin anytime he’s asked anything) and Theresa May is left grey, weak and transparent. I’d love to employ my favourite expression: “Not my monkeys, not my circus”, but it is my circus. And it’s been run by clowns.