5 February 2018updated 24 Jun 2021 12:26pm

The government struggles, but the big concession over Brexit has already been made

The decision point was actually in December.

One of the more mystifying elements of the government’s deliberations over the customs union is that they have already made a decisive move as far as the final shape of the United Kingdom’s relations with the European Union goes: in the agreement Theresa May struck at the end of the first phase of the Brexit talks in December to guarantee that there will not be a hard border on the island of Ireland.

While you can argue over the form of words that this agreement will have be fulfilled with, the only way to avoid customs and other checks at the Irish border is to have a large degree of regulatory and customs alignment with the EU27, not just on exit day, but in perpetuity.

As Oliver Norgrove, a former Vote Leave staffer, notes on his essential blog, a soft exit from the EU is “more likely to be brought about by logistical reality than ever it is the views of parliamentarians”. You simply can’t reconcile the United Kingdom’s political objectives in Northern Ireland – maintenance of the Good Friday Agreement and the open border between the Republic and Northern Ireland – let alone its legal obligations agreed to at the end of phase one to do the same with a drastic breach from the European Union.

The only question is whether or not those politicians seeking a harder exit have the means or the will to force the government’s negotiations either to a halt – remember that as Article 50 has been triggered we leave regardless of whether an accord has been reached on 29 March 2019 – or to harden the government’s position to the point that any deal ends up being vetoed by the Irish government. (Although the Article 50 process is legally done via qualified majority voting, member states have agreed to make decisions through unanimity.)

If they can, then we are heading not only for the hardest of exists but likely a chaotic one. If they can’t, then regardless of whatever form of words you pick, British participation in some form of customs union with the EU after Brexit is an inevitability.