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I’m not so sure about that. Hard border is the recipe for disaster here. It really cannot be policed safely and effectively. I have a notion that I predicted the Irish Sea border some time ago as anyone here knows the implications of a hard land border. The DUP had a good bargaining position until the election when that position was lost. They, effectively, are now a dog with no teeth as far as the UK government are concerned.
NI continues to be the hard to get at pimple on the arse of the UK. As it sits, the UK border should be policed on the mainland as there is free movement (excepting Covid things in the south) across the land border.
Do the DUP care that it's an impossible task? I would guess that they just want the massive hardening of positions that the return of British soldiers to the border and NI would create.
Demographic change over time and the gradual reduction of strong Union beliefs are the existential enemy of the DUP - setting the border on fire to solve that may be a price they're willing to pay.
Dammit-
I think hardening the border is a step too far for even the DUP. The resultant backlash does not bear contemplation. The main problem with the political (and some so-called ‘political’) parties is that they are completely opposed to each other - no middle ground exists. Things are slowly changing but we have had 40 years of aggression which has recently reduced but there is an underlying current that could bring it back again quite quickly. The border issue being one of the reasons that violence could return very quickly.
I’m not sure it’s been mentioned here but there was a thread on Reddit relating to why people vote for a particular party and the one reason which wasn’t mentioned was history - I found this rather odd. Families will vote for a party irrespective of the parties policies - and I mean generations of families. That is why things are so slow to change here. That and lack of viable political parties who can bring this country out of the 1970s. It won’t happen in my lifetime and likely not in my daughters - that’s the depressing truth.
TGR
I’m not so sure about that. Hard border is the recipe for disaster here. It really cannot be policed safely and effectively. I have a notion that I predicted the Irish Sea border some time ago as anyone here knows the implications of a hard land border. The DUP had a good bargaining position until the election when that position was lost. They, effectively, are now a dog with no teeth as far as the UK government are concerned.
NI continues to be the hard to get at pimple on the arse of the UK. As it sits, the UK border should be policed on the mainland as there is free movement (excepting Covid things in the south) across the land border.