It's really quite simple. The EU has controls on its outer frontiers because it has a system of rules to keep certain things out be they counterfeit airline spares of adulterated foods. It's a system, it's *their* system, and they want to keep it intact.
The UK has decided that it does not want to be inside of this system. If we didn't share a land border with the EU then that wouldn't be much of a problem. But we do. And it's a big problem...
If the UK diverges and does as Rees-Mogg suggests and dismantles regulations and standards designed to protect the integrity of the EU market, then there is a back door for those wishing to evade EU controls.
It means that goods arriving anywhere into the UK can pass freely into the EU customs territory without inspection and evading duties and tariffs. If the EU allows this then in effect it allows the UK to unilaterally set the lowest bar of market entry.
So ask yourselves why they would allow that? Who would grant authority to a foreign power to decide who and what can come in? (apart from our MPs circa 1973-2016). Nobody, that's who.
So there is really only one way around this. The UK, having decided to leave, is the one asking the EU not to police its outer frontier. It will agree to this provided the UK can provide a guarantee that its own standards and controls will not be circumvented.
Having failed to grasp the mechanics of how the system works we've had various iterations of the same proposal based on the same repackaged flawed thinking based on technology and customs surveillance. This doesn't work.
What seems to have escaped just about everybody on all sides is that the major component of frictionless trade is regulatory harmonisation. It is that which eliminates inspections. Enter London Tory think tankery....
Here we have a class of upper middle class know-nothings who have never had a real job, don't know how the system works and do not know how to conduct fact finding research. They only time they get it right is when they steal the work of others.
Being arrogant Tories and ideologues they assume they already know everything, can't be told anything and won't even be told by Brussels (or even fellow Brexiters) that they have got it wrong.
Between them they have got it into their heads that we can have mutual recognition of standards and that is sufficient to carry on as normal - failing to note that the EU does not do mutual recognition of standards where there are already harmonised rules.
More to the point, what matters is not recognition of standards but recognition of conformity assessment. In other words without full adoption of the rules, inside the EU's supervisory system, frictionless trade simply is not possible.
And if that is true for Northern Ireland it is also true for Calais. This though has not sunk in. The options are limited. Either it's a special status for Northern Ireland or a whole UK solution - both of which require full single market harmonisation.
Politically neither is welcomed by the UK government. May is right that no PM could ever sign an agreement leaving NI as part of the EU customs territory. So that leaves her with only one option. The single market.
Being that the Westminster bubble is utterly cloth eared and unable to heed loud and clear messages from Brussels they have sought to concoct a cherrypicked version of the single market for goods, which the EU has said it will not allow - countless times.
Here the Toryboy think tank idiots make it worse by insisting the EU can and should break its own rules and if we wait long enough the EU will cave in. It won't. It values its system integrity more than it values UK trade. Especially when it can cannibalise UK market share.
Being that the EU is the superpower with its own regulatory gravity in this equation, it does not have to make any concessions to the UK. We have decided to leave and it is for us to choose from the modes available the model for future trade.
We've had several months to get to grips with the issues and come up with a proposal, but each time they produce amateurish garbage to the point where their understanding is actually regressing. There is, therefore, a vanishingly small chance of a deal.
We are, therefore, in the last chance saloon. May either has to concede to single market membership - or walk away. Since the ultras have a head full of "fwee twade" radicalism, they will not allow her to concede. They will push us over the cliff.
Only a radical change of government can now change course. Mrs May has boxed herself in on all sides and cannot carry off an EEA Brexit without the support of the opposite benches in the House of Stupid - and even they cannot be trusted to get it right. We've had it, basically.
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