Boris Johnson sows confusion over Northern Irish trade after Brexit

Sam Lowe, trade researcher at the Centre for European Reform, said the effect of the deal is to place the EU’s external border in the Irish Sea. “There will be checks,” he said.

...“The deal also explicitly allows the U.K. to ensure unfettered market access for goods moving from Northern Ireland to Great Britain. There will be minimal targeted interventions.” According to Lowe, what those checks will look like is a live question. “There are certain obligations we will have to meet. Businesses will have to make exit declarations. But there might be flexibility in how that’s done. We’re in a unique situation, where the U.K. is the regulator on both sides of the border. So it’s conceivable that we could find a different way of doing that.”

...“If somebody asks you to do that, tell them to ring up the prime minister, and I will direct them to throw that form in the bin. There will be no forms, no checks, no barriers of any kind. You will have unfettered access.”Is that really right? Lowe was skeptical. “He’s giving massively big assurances without any detail about how it would work,” he said.