For the Tories to join with the DUP to prop up their government was to sup with the devil. Now comes the food poisoning of that tainted meal. It is now becoming clear that for nearly half a century the nations of Europe have harmonised huge swathes of domestic, business, educational, environmental, security, human rights, health and safety and employment laws and regulations so that the whole Union works as one seamless country.
What the Ireland crisis, a crisis within the Brexit crisis, reveals is a microcosm of the larger picture. If you try to impose barriers the economic and social cost is potentially catastrophic. If you agree not to, the ideologues rise up, preferring to wreck their country rather than agree to a sensible compromise. And if they had agreed then London, Scotland and Wales would have demanded the same treatment.
Ireland is like the UK. Almost everything we do depends on frictionless borders with Europe, especially food for the table and supply chains for industry. So, just as we can see that to keep Ireland, North and the Republic, at peace and in prosperity, they both have to be in the Customs Union and the Single Market, so it is the case for the UK as a whole. And the price for that will demand a status, for all practical purposes, the same as we have now. Except in future we will have no say on how the whole thing is run and under what rules. So why not stay as we are?
The alternative is to plunge off the cliff with no deal. Only crackpots think that a good idea. There is no majority in Parliament or in any of the nations of the UK for it. So the plain fact is that sooner or later Brexit will be over. How and when that will happen is not yet clear, but happen it will. In the end the British people may be many things but we are not stupid.