摘要：Very few analysts would have predicted three years ago that the question of the Irish border might be the rock upon which the Brexit dream would perish. In 2016, as the debate on the merits and demerits of Brexit raged across the United Kingdom, it focused on industry, sovereignty, outsourced labour and of course immigration. Those who fl agged the poten- tial for the breakdown of peace in Northern Ireland or the ultimate rupture of the union due to the anger of Scottish nationalists, were drowned out in a debate obsessed by the narrow concerns of ‘Little England’.
