The first rule of politics: don’t raise expectations that you can do impossible things. The most impossible thing on this island is controlling the Border. We know this from the Troubles. We know it from Brexit. And yet, according to a poll published last weekend in the Sunday Independent, 50 per cent of respondents think “there should be checkpoints at the border with Northern Ireland in Ireland (sic) to limit the number of asylum seekers coming here from the UK”.

Amusingly, more supporters of Sinn Féin than of the Government parties believe this. A hard Border is now, apparently, a patriotic cause.

Oh, how we laughed at the Brits when they were spouting this kind of nonsense! Have we already forgotten “alternative arrangements”, the fantasy spun by the Brexiteers, including Boris Johnson as prime minister, that the flow of goods and people across the Border could somehow be managed without physical barriers?

Some wonderful technology that did not yet exist was going to make it possible to track all movement without border posts or officials on the ground doing checks. To which we replied: don’t be so stupid.

The Brexiteers had, at least, the excuses of ignorance and indifference. Johnson and his crew knew nothing about the realities of the Border and cared less. It was the Irish greenfly in the perfumed ointment of Brexit – they would say anything, concoct any fiction, spout any old guff that seemed to promise an alternative to either the infamous backstop or the........

© The Irish Times