Big Al the EU has used the Irish border as a means to bully the brexit negotiations from day one. The EU picked on the border because they knew that making an issue of it could possibly inflame old wounds.Calling their behaviour duplicitous is a very mild rebuke.It is nor moral high ground.It is a simple statement of fact. To choose the one single item that could cause dissent,and to belabour it constantly indicates to me the weakness of their position. Making the border a stumbling block will hurt the Republic far far harder than the UK, as many realists acknowledge. A shame the political class are not as clued up.