Why taking back control of the UK’s borders will mean temporarily giving up control

A government U-turn means the post-Brexit sunlit uplands look even more elusive, writes Sean O'Grady

Vehicles arriving at port in Dover on Brexit day (Reuters)

Now that the deadline to agree an extension to the Brexit transition has effectively passed, Britain is set to “take back control” on 1 January 2021.

However, in order to take back control of the UK’s borders, it seems that the British government will have to give up control over them, if only temporarily. Circumstances have forced ministers to abandon Michael Gove’s plan to collect appropriate taxes from border posts and customs checks. The Covid crisis made this extremely undesirable, given that so much food and medicine cross the English Channel. The emergency measures (especially in a second wave of the pandemic) would risk further chaos and loss of life.

It is also true, however, that even if the novel coronavirus had never emerged, the British would not have recruited the 50,000 additional HMRC and Border Force staff required to make Brexit effective. The previous hard Brexit stockpiles have been exhausted, and planning, for the third time, for a possible no-deal Brexit at the end of the year seems to be something business, particularly the haulage trade, views with even greater horror.