(Bloomberg) -- Theresa May said she was looking at the border between the U.S. and Canada as a possible model for the frontier between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit. There’s only one problem: Ireland’s prime minister rejected that idea six months ago.
Taking questions on her Brexit strategy in Parliament on Monday, May was asked by Labour lawmaker Emma Reynolds to name “an international border between two countries who are not in a customs union, who have different external tariffs, where there are no checks on lorries carrying goods at the border.”
May was dismissive. “There are many examples of different arrangements for customs around the rest of the world,” she said. “And indeed we are looking at those, including, for example, the border between the U.S. and Canada.”
Unfortunately for May, her Irish counterpart Leo Varadkar has already looked into that option, visiting the border last August. “Just visited Canada-US border,” he tweeted. “It’s high tech and highly efficient, but make no mistake -- it’s a hard border.” The frontier, he told reporters, features “armed guards, dogs, flags and checkpoints.”
May’s government continues to struggle to explain how it will deliver the three things it is committed to: no border checkpoints in Ireland, no checkpoints between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K., and no customs union between the European Union and the U.K.