Jacob Rees-Mogg was pilloried in some quarters as arrogant and out-of-touch when the leading Brexiteer declared he didn't need to visit the Irish border to understand the challenges Brexit posed for border communities.

He insisted last month that a visit to the Irish border wouldn't give him anymore insight "beyond what I can get by studying it", adding: "My going and wandering across a few roads isn't going to tell me anything about that further."

On Tuesday he agreed to come with Sky News to meet people who live in these border communities and listen to their concerns. He said he was coming with an open mind.

Image: Mr Rees-Mogg thinks Theresa May should tell Dublin to implement a hard border

"I'm very interested to hear what people are concerned about and to see if those concerns make me think again. I think it's always sensible to be open to the possibility of changing one's mind. But I wouldn't put money on it," he said as we drove out of Dublin to the border.

Barely discussed during the EU referendum campaign, the Irish border has become one of the most politically charged and biggest stumbling blocks of Brexit.


Both sides agreed in December 2017 "that the UK remains committed to protecting North-South co-operation and its guarantee of avoiding a hard border". But they cannot agree on how to go about it.

The EU has argued that the island of Ireland should remain in common regulatory area to ensure the free flow of goods, but that implies a border down the Irish sea - an idea Theresa May will not tolerate.

.@Jacob_Rees_Mogg said visiting the Irish border wouldn’t give him any further insight “beyond what I can get from studying it”. So @ShonaSkyNews and I took him. Did he change his mind? > https://t.co/CCt3AgIZuS — Beth Rigby (@BethRigby) June 27, 2018

Meanwhile, the UK has committed to leaving the customs union and single market, which Brussels says makes leaving the border completely open impossible under EU rules.

Michel Barnier, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator, is clear that any solution to the border conundrum must respect the integrity of the single market and customs union. Ms May's red lines cross his.

It looks like an impossible circle to square and yet for Mr Rees-Mogg the Irish border issue is simple: the prime minister should unilaterally declare that she will not impose a hard border on the island of Ireland and challenge Dublin to put it up instead.

"I think it's an obvious negotiating point which is that if you want a border you put it up," the chair of the Eurosceptic European Reform Group told Sky News.

"You negotiate with your best cards and you've got to call the bluff of the other side when they are suggesting things they simply will not do."

It's a game of chicken the Brexiteer is certain London would win, with the prize being no return to a hard border and no need for the UK to remain in some form of customs union with the EU.

"The idea that the Irish government, which used to claim that the whole of Ireland was its territory, would pit a wall up along 300 miles or so of border is, I think, for the birds, and we must therefore challenge that and say, 'Go on if that's what you want to go and do,'" he added.

Image: John Sheridan, an anti-Brexit sheep and cattle farmer

Mr Rees-Mogg - along with other Brexiteers such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove -- believe Brussels is using the border as a political stick to beat the British government into submission and force it to remain part of the EU market forever more.

But the sight of an upper-class Englishman pronouncing on the fragile politics of Ireland from a parliament that sits over 400 miles away undoubtedly grates with many people.

His approach to the Irish border was described on Tuesday by Fine Gael Senator Neale Richmond as "ignorant" "feckless" and "blinkered" as news emerged of our trip.

As a theory it might work, but in practice his proposal is risky and complicated, argue some of those whom he meets on the border. Uncertainty over the Irish border risks disrupting trade and stoking sectarian divisions put to rest through the peace process.

John Sheridan, an anti-Brexit sheep and cattle farmer based just north of the border, worries that any change to the status quo could ruin his business. He talks about the spectre of cheap meat from non-EU countries like Brazil and the US flooding the market. He is concerned that the movement of livestock will be disrupted.

"There's no such thing as a soft border," he tells Mr Rees-Mogg as he looks down into the valley where the Irish border winds around his land.

"Because someone will infringe the rules that will put the integrity of Europe on hold and then there will legislation and over the years the soft border will become the hard border."

Image: Mr Rees-Mogg talks to Mr Sheridan

"We use the island as one economic Ireland and nobody wants to take any step back," says Mr Sheridan.

"I completely agree with that," replies Mr Rees-Mogg.

"Your theory is fine Jacob, but in practice it's a different ballgame," says Mr Sheridan.

"I think in practice it is fine if there is a political will to do it," insists Mr Rees-Mogg.

"What seems to me is happening is the political will is to try and use the Irish border to force the UK to stay in the single market. There is a perfectly sensible solution of not imposing borders on each other."

But the argument has not just annoyed Mr Sheridan, it has irked Mrs May too who worries that mishandling of the Irish border situation could put the peace process and the Union at risk.

Mrs May is reported to have told Mr Rees-Mogg that she is not confident of certain victory in an Irish border poll if the citizens of Northern Ireland were given the option to vote for their own future.

She allegedly told Mr Rees-Mogg that she was not as confident as he was that the Northern Irish would vote to remain part of the UK and warned him it was "not a risk" she was prepared to take.

"I'm not getting into private conversations," he told me when I asked him about their conversation on our drive to the border town of Blackloin.

"She's indicated she's concerned about Northern Ireland's continued membership of the United Kingdom."

In the small town of Blacklion, joined to Northern Ireland by a road across a bridge, Sinn Fein supporter Chris McCaffery is perhaps the embodiment of Mrs May's fears. Keen to engage with Mr Rees-Mogg on the Irish issue, he points out that in this part of Ireland more than 55% of people voted to stay in the EU.

He is unhappy that the decisions on peoples' futures here are being made in Westminster, adding: "A lot of people are saying it went over our heads."

He said: "I know we have the DUP in a supply-and-confidence deal with the Tory party, but the DUP don't have a single MP from a border constituency in the north of Ireland. They are not representing the people who might suffer of be a most risk of a hard border post-Brexit.

"The people here on the border would feel like Theresa May and this Conservative government don't understand just how important the Irish border problem is."

Image: Mr Rees-Mogg with business owner Harold Johnston

This 22-year old man, who travels the border everyday for work, wants a border poll to let the people of Ireland decide.

"Political viewpoints are changing," he tells Mr Rees-Mogg. "And I think its probably the right time to call a border poll, in light of Brexit and what's happening. Let the people decide if they are ready for reunification."

From Dublin to Brussels, from Brexiteers to Remainers, Mr Rees-Mogg may be right that different parties are using the Irish border problem as a Trojan horse to shape their form of Brexit.

Maybe Brussels does want to use it to keep Britain in the single market; perhaps republicans will use it to try to reunify Ireland; Brexiteers may want to downplay the political intricacies of the border issue to give them they clean Brexit they so crave.

Mr Rees-Mogg, standing on the bridge that links Blackloin in the south to the town of Belcoo in the north is still adamant that his solution can, and will, work, if only Mrs May will face down Dublin and Brussels too.

But that is a card she is not willing to play; she is determined to find a compromise that all sides in this fraught negotiation can live with.

It feels a very long way off.