Brexit chaos: govt confirms ERG Irish border 'solution' is a pack of lies
Brexit chaos: govt confirms ERG Irish border 'solution' is a pack of lies
Now, the European Research Group (ERG), which backs a "clean-break Brexit", has suggested another way, which avoids the need to follow all those EU rules.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, who chairs the ERG, said it provided a solution for the Irish border "in a way that any reasonable person would think meets the requirements of the European Union's concerns over the single market".
It has similarities to an earlier government plan, which proposed the continuation of some existing UK-EU arrangements and the use of technology to make it easier to comply with customs procedures.
Perhaps the most difficult issue for the Irish border is the movement of food and agriculture products.
Those products are the major component of cross-border trade but they also face some of the strictest EU rules.
The rules mean consignments of food or animals can enter the EU only through specified border inspection posts.
Those involve mandatory document checks and a significant proportion of consignments must also be physically checked.
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It is likely the challenge posed by those rules nudged the prime minister towards the "common rule book", which would involve signing a treaty committing the UK to continued harmonisation with EU rules.
The ERG approach is for an "equivalence" arrangement, where the EU would accept that, while UK food and agriculture rules would be different, they would still be as good as EU rules and would not put consumers at risk.
It backs this up with reference to a World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement on food and plant safety, suggesting this would require the EU to offer equivalence
However, many trade experts believe this overstates the particular strength of that agreement.
The ERG document also mentions the equivalence provision in the EU-Canada trade deal - but it doesn't add that under that deal there are still documentary checks on all meat and dairy imports, with 10% subject to physical checks.
The EU has been prepared to remove requirements for border inspection but only with countries that have adopted its rules.
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