WE’VE

known for ages that the socalled ‘backstop’ to prevent the return of a hard border between North and South was pure nonsense.

That Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Simon Coveney and the rest of Government fell for such an unachievable and inherently incendiary notion speaks to their utter political naivety.

It was never going to work because it promised that the North would remain aligned to the South despite the UK’s exit from the EU.

It would require an economic border up the middle of the Irish Sea. And that was never going to happen, because if attempted, it would set the North on fire.

The prospect of a Brexit crash-out is growing – with 40,000 jobs on the blocks in the Republic and a collapse in GDP of anything between 4% and 7%.

Hotel and B&B operators on both sides of the border would be well advised to start preparing for an influx of customs officers, starting perhaps as early as next March.