Actually, no, companies still would be facing sudden & unwanted barriers and there would still be the unresolved issue of whether the UK would diverge from the Single Market or not. It would still have the potential to wreck several sectors, with companies being forced to trigger their contingency plans. Even just taking the IT industry, with the UK slated to leave the Digital version of the Single Market while repelling talent, it is a disaster by design.

Brexit would certainly be done by now without the border issue. Maybe painfully or imperfectly, but intractable problems don't even have painful solutions.

Ireland isn't even the only border issue to Brexit. There's also Gibraltar.

Are you saying that the Irish border is the only intractable problem in brexit? I don't think that's actually true.

No, but it is a big issue that involves messing with an agreement (the Good Friday Agreement) put in place to stop a bloody conflict. An agreement that is co-guaranteed by the USA and... the EU!

There's plenty of hard problems to go around, but this one is definitely incompatible with any peaceful brexit. Brace yourselves, Troubles 2.0 are coming.

But it's the only part of the problem where the "wrong" solution has a real risk of reigniting armed conflict.

I don't think they are, but it's obviously the biggest. EU want a sea border keeping RoI/NI open, UK won't accept the break up of their union.

In other words, UK wants to keep their union, EU wants to keep their union, nobody bothers to ask the Irish, as usual.

> EU wants to keep their union, nobody bothers to ask the Irish

I don't think so, no. The Republic of Ireland is the EU in this case. Or part of it, in agreement and solidarity with the other parts. There are plenty of statements from the ROI's political leaders to this effect.

Which is hilarious, as NI voted 'Remain'. However, I'm still not sure if it's time for a United Ireland. Still a lot of animosity between the sides.

I don't think there's any good solution: even the current one took over a decade to negotiate. Any territorial changes are unlikely to remain nonviolent - united Ireland, hard border, independent NI, it's all very explosive.

True, and it's much more complicated than it looks from the outside (or even from the rest of the UK)