Re: Free Travel Area
Free Travel Area for people since 1920s: True.
But there WAS a border. Goods and Services. Even your own test gear needed a Carnet.
Even the trains stopped for customs checks at one stage.
Also true that the Irish Pound was really Sterling till 1978, with parity ending 30th March 1979.
Joining the Common Market in 1973 was the beginning of the end, but a Carnet was still needed in 1978 at least. It was only the GFA that finally removed the physical border.
The GFA only worked because UK and Ireland were both in the CM/EEC/EU. It's an international treaty between Ireland and UK that was produced with the help of some Americans.
The Leave side ignored the GFA, Scotland and NI and lied about EU and what was involved. The Article 50 was largely created at UK insistence and content decided by them. UK signed that off. The A50 sets out how a country leaves. The only negotiating aspect is the bill for future liabilities. Thus the Withdrawal agreement only has aspirations about future relationship. Nothing binding.
Ireland is an EU member, thus the border between NI (part of UK) and Ireland is a UK - EU border and ALSO covered by the GFA agreement, an international treaty. The Leave side lied about how leave would work and BOTH sides ignored N.I.
A no-deal makes UK a breaker of multiple international treaties, all of which were freely entered.
The Squaring of the Circle (Options):
1) Cancelling the A50 invocation due to Referendum being invalid. The Swiss do this.
2) N.I. remains in EU and part of UK. Complicated but legally possible. See Denmark & Greenland.
3) N.I. leaves UK and is either independent in EU, or federated* with Ireland or becomes part of Ireland.
No other option is long term. The May agreement was an EU compromise intended to be temporary. No-one in EU wanted the entire UK Backstop (UK's proposal). Even the original proposal by EU of N.I. only backstop was supposed to be temporary till something better happened.
The current UK proposal creates TWO borders for N.I. Everyone apart from DUP claims it's worse than no deal. Also Arlene Foster left Unionists to join DUP because she hated GFA. The DUP are a minority party, less than 30% of those that vote. They never agreed with GFA.
Cameron created this mess and had the cheek to resign straight after the result.