To say the UK government was unprepared for the eventuality of Brexit is the understatement of the decade.
As we hurtle on out of control towards the Brexit no deal scenario, this will be the defining political event that will shape all our futures.
Few economic experts predict that outcome to be a financially lucrative one, most predict disaster.
And yet the DUP, against the will of the majority of people who live here, continue to double down on their 'all or nothing' stance.
Leader in all but name Nigel Dodds said this week that his party was ready to withdraw support for the government on key domestic legislation if there is any move to 'break up or fracture the union'.
Anna Soubry, a Tory remainer, told BBC's Stephen Nolan Show that the DUP were a 'blooming nightmare'.
She should try living here.
Mr Dodds said he had sought assurances from the prime minister at Westminster that Northern Ireland will not be left in the EU single market when the rest of the UK leaves as part of any backstop deal.
Despite this EU negotiators are right to demand a 'backstop to the backstop' to prevent a return of a hard border.
Theresa May has insisted that any backstop must be time-limited, but our situation is not time-limited, the border problem will not simply sort itself out in time.
Those who call for a Brexit at any cost, have either forgotten - or possibly never encountered - just what the border once looked like.
Small roads closed off to the detriment of rural communities, soldiers, checkpoints, watchtowers, long tailbacks and needlessly lengthy journeys.
Standing at the side of the road in the rain while soldiers pulled apart my dad's Austin Princess, the overriding memory of every holiday border crossing.
Brexit never took into consideration the impact leaving the European Union would have on the land border between north and south.
No one had considered how it would affect families and businesses that live and operate in the border counties.
Not just the physical impact that these complicated negotiations are struggling to find a solution to, but the more long term consequences such a decision will have.
As a security journalist it frustrates me when politicians or commentators use Brexit to scaremonger about an immediate return to violence at the border.
The dissident republican organisations that may at one time have posed a threat are now all but eliminated.
The constant monitoring of key figures, the infiltration by intelligence agencies and the rejection of their political direction by nationalists have all contributed to that.
Loyalist blogger Jamie Bryson said this week that any special circumstances for Northern Ireland to remain in the single market and would, "almost certainly trigger a grassroots unionist reaction that would dwarf the anger of the flag protests and Drumcree".
I don't believe that loyalists want to go back to that place any more than nationalists do.
However, you have only to look at the history of Ireland and the generational cycles of violence to know, that while a return to conflict isn't going to happen in the short term, that doesn't mean that it never will.
To put infrastructure of any kind at the border will reinforce the image of partition in the minds of a new generation.
There is a very real danger of radicalising those too young to remember the horror of violence and what it did to those who lived though it.
To risk that eventuality in the long term is foolish behaviour by those who should know better.
As the former head of the British army General Lord Richard Dannatt said this week that would amount to political failure on the part of negotiators.
"I don't think it will happen, I don't want it to happen, it would be a disaster if it did happen, it must not happen", he said.
There is a heavy burden on Theresa May's shoulders, her confidence and supply deal with the DUP has already played much too big a role in how she is negotiating with the EU.
This is an event bigger than her leadership, bigger than her party.
This is a crunch time in negotiations that stand to change life for generations of people, both British and Irish, for decades.
It must be a decision bigger than one party's demands, bigger than one person's leadership.
