If there’s one thing the UK is learning at this very moment, it’s that it is most definitely possible to be part of the EU and control your own borders.
This is being amply demonstrated by France, which has banned lorries carrying freight from Britain amid fears over the new mutant coronavirus strain.
It’s even written in lights on big signs at the Port of Dover.
If this sounds eerily familiar, it’s because Brexiteers have spent the last five years harping on about just how important controlling our own borders is.
At the forefront of the Brexit charge was one Nigel Farage.
Yet now that France has done just that, Farage is more than a little annoyed, accusing European countries of acting like “thugs and bullies”.
His tweet drew a scathing response.
Farage wasn’t alone in his Brexiteer outrage – Tory MP John Redwood called the chaos “bad news” and then suggested we pave one half of the country while using the other half to grow all the fruit and vegetables we import because they aren’t suited to a British climate.
Another Tory MP, Andrew Bridgen, called the move a “massive overreaction” and accused “dictator” France of “trying to hold the UK to ransom”.
He then suggested there was a grand fish-based conspiracy and not just general concern over the spread of an even more contagious strain of a highly-contagious virus.
In the latest developments, France appears set to end a ban on hauliers crossing the Channel that was imposed due to fears about the spread of the new coronavirus strain.
Its transport minister Jean-Baptiste Djebbari said a protocol would be adopted at an EU-wide level “to ensure that movement from the UK can resume”.
The UK has been cut off from large parts of Europe – and some other areas of the world – as authorities imposed bans on passengers because of concern about the more infectious mutant coronavirus.