This is quite funny really: for months if not years this issue was cited as the major stumbling block to leaving the EU: part of project fear. And surprise surprise so it has proved. In his haste to “get Brexit done” Johnson signed up to a deal he either didn’t understand or for which he didn’t care about the consequences, I’m not sure what’s worse. It’s true that the EU are playing harder ball over this than they should but the reason is that they simply do not trust Johnson nor his chief negotiator Lord Frost, who to be honest is a disgrace.
There is a compromise being offered for now: each side trusts the others checks, but for some reason Johnson won’t go with it, thus creating the suspicion that he’s looking for an excuse to blame the EU and throw the whole thing out. You can’t conduct international affairs like that.
The trust quota is already low: it would be rock bottom if that happened.
Most amusing of all is the attitude of the DUP, which seems to be blaming the EU when it’s a combination of their own inexplicable backing of Brexit plus covering for the humiliating reality that post the 2019 election they were impotent to influence the British government: it went from panicked phone calls between May and Foster to Johnson calmly breaking the promise he’d made to that party at their conference previously.
Now Foster has gone to be replaced by Paul Givan (assuming he’s not blocked by Sinn Fein, which seems like he might be)
Perhaps as a creationist he think he can sort it all out in six days and have a nice day off on the seventh ;-)