His false claims about the withdrawal agreement reveal an utter lack of interest in Brexit’s consequences for Belfast and Dublin
The difficulty for other governments in dealing with Boris Johnson is to figure out whether he is lying or merely ignorant. There was so much weirdness in the general election campaign that it was easy to miss a moment that would have once caused something of a sensation. But in this new era, it was barely remarkable that a friendly foreign government had to intervene to say that important statements by a British prime minister were patently untrue.
On the weekend before polling day, Johnson told Sky News that there was “no question” of checks being needed on trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom under his withdrawal agreement. The Irish deputy prime minister, Simon Coveney, pointedly and publicly refuted this absurd claim: “Goods coming from Great Britain into Northern Ireland will need to have some checks to ensure that the EU knows what is potentially coming into their market through Northern Ireland.”
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