The line between Northern Ireland and the Republic seems like a big problem. But it really shouldn't be

There are few Brexit issues as tricky as the Irish border. Difficult as the issue is, however, there is an easy way to summarise the general British view: you create a border if you want to. The UK has no interest in doing so.

This hasn’t gone down well in Dublin. Britain is being painted as an irresponsible dilettante with no plan for one of Brexit’s most controversial issues. The UK position paper outlines some vague “potential technical solutions” to the border issue, but our government also argues, with good reason, that it is quite pointless to discuss the Irish border before knowing much about how the general EU-UK relationship will work.

Unfortunately, this argument isn’t working. Ireland is now demanding that Northern Ireland be separated from the UK and kept inside the EU single market and customs union. That is a measure not just of Irish anger and EU dogma but of the failure of British diplomacy, which might have headed off this row. To move on from it, the UK should make two things clear: Britain will not be the one recreating Northern Ireland’s old, hated border, and the future of the six counties will be decided by their own people.