Are there really any viable ‘alternative arrangements’ for the Irish border?

Analysis: Theresa May will go to Brussels under instructions from MPs to seek a new solution to the Irish border issue. But does one exist? Ben Chu looks at the evidence

Is the prime minister looking for something that isn’t actually there? (Getty)

Theresa May is returning to Brussels to try to renegotiate the European Union withdrawal agreement to make it acceptable to a majority of MPs in the House of Commons.

But what will she ask for?

On Tuesday night almost all of her party’s MPs and a majority of the Commons voted in favour of an amendment put forward by the senior Tory backbencher Sir Graham Brady calling for the Irish backstop (the insurance clause that says the entire UK will remain in an EU customs union if there is no EU free trade deal struck that manages to avoid a hard border in Ireland) in the withdrawal agreement to be replaced with unspecified “alternative arrangements”.