Opinion

Patrick Murphy: Soft-border Sammy out of touch with hard truths

No matter what the DUP's Sammy Wilson says, post-Brexit we can only have a soft border based on a common customs arrangement between the UK and the EU
No matter what the DUP's Sammy Wilson says, post-Brexit we can only have a soft border based on a common customs arrangement between the UK and the EU No matter what the DUP's Sammy Wilson says, post-Brexit we can only have a soft border based on a common customs arrangement between the UK and the EU

FAR be it for this column to suggest that the DUP has a somewhat slender grasp of economic reality, but it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Sammy Wilson, for example, is not closely acquainted with the theory or practice of borders.

Indeed it is tempting to conclude that the party's understanding of political geography in general, places it in an alarmingly elevated position on the Boris Johnson index of border ignorance.

In fairness to Mr Wilson, he has a wonderful grasp of DUP policy and he can hold his own in a TV shouting match, which is libellously referred to here as political debate.

But when it comes to borders, he and his party are somewhat out of their depths.

This conclusion is based on his radio comments this week that a soft post-Brexit border could be achieved using traffic cameras similar to those on Dublin's M50 toll bridge.

Motorists can pay in advance or later, which means they do not have to stop. It is a fine theory, with one tiny flaw: the M50 is not an international boundary.

Traffic cameras record number plates, but they do not reveal what is in the vehicles, ranging from legitimate goods to illegal immigrants.

So, unless vehicles are stopped and searched, cameras will not tell us what is being transported across the border. And where will the cameras be to monitor those boating on Carlingford Lough and Lough Foyle?

Thus the idea of a soft border appears impractical while the UK remains outside some form of common customs agreement with the EU, especially since there are 275 official border crossings.

The number of unofficial crossings depends on geographical necessity, the weather and the relative price of diesel.

Large container lorries could be monitored by computers and cameras, but the vast bulk of cross-border traffic is for small businesses, work and social purposes.

So why is the DUP trying to achieve a soft border through technology, rather than a common customs agreement, even though no such system appears to exist anywhere else in the world?

The answer is that they do not appear to know what the border - or the entire 26 Counties - looks like or how it got there. Both failings stem largely from what is called spatial perception.

Many unionists view the border from a flat-earth perspective. This means they tend to see it as the edge of the known world beyond which you fall off the planet into the Free State's darkest depths. To them the border only has a northern side.

Older readers may remember when local television used to show the north as an island during the weather forecast. Mind you, RTE came close to that last week when their storm warnings stopped at the border...

The border is based on the boundaries of counties, which were introduced by the English to make it easier to rule Ireland.

These boundaries were based on townlands which, in Gaelic Ireland, were the smallest administrative unit with their boundaries following rivers, streams and other physical features.

Thus the line of the modern border marks the edges of townlands, which can date from 2,000 years ago and bear little relevance to modern social and economic activity.

In Belfast, for example, the equivalent would be placing an international boundary between the adjoining townlands of Ballymacarret and Ballyhackamore.

Sammy Wilson's solution would require cameras on the Newtownards Road, where it crosses the Connswater, which divides the two townlands, to monitor the movement of goods and people.

Unlike the Irish border, most international boundaries are relatively modern in origin and tend to take account of historically recent human activity patterns.

The spatial perception of most nationalists is that Ireland is a single geographical unit on which a border has been inscribed. That shows a greater understanding of the border as a recent imposition on social and economic activity. In one part of South Armagh it even runs down the middle of a small road.

So post-Brexit, we can have a hard border with checkpoints or we can have a soft border based on a common customs arrangement between the UK and the EU.

I can see no other alternatives, which is why this column suggested that the UK should have a common customs policy with the EU, a year before the Brexit referendum. This idea is now Labour Party policy, with support from northern nationalists.

It is difficult to know whether the DUP will come around to this view, but the good news is that if they do not, we can always be thankful to them for pointing out that we have a soft M50.