A devastating Prospect article has been making the rounds on social media after it accurately summed up Britain’s current predicament.
With tensions over the Northern Ireland Protocol threatening to spill over, the piece echos one of Theresa May’s most grating phrases, saying the “complexity of the present can be most effectively explained by the simplicity of the past”.
May negotiated a customs union backstop with the EU creating a sea border for regulation only. Johnson, on the other hand, hardened it.
But as political commentator Jonathan Lis writes, “both compromised Northern Ireland’s political stability and the UK’s territorial integrity so they could end the migration rights of Polish plumbers.”
The problems that have stemmed from the government’s “self-imposed trade barriers” have been endless, Lis says, and highlights a simple revelation.
“Brexit is the product of basic, inescapable consequences.
“If you erect trade barriers, trade will be harder. If you gut the workforce, there will be fewer people to do necessary jobs.
“If you leave a club, you can no longer enjoy the perks of membership.
“The tragic irony of the last five years is that May’s first, emptiest slogan was both the truest and hardest to accept: Brexit really does mean Brexit.”
Read the piece in full here.