'What’s clear is that the Brexit idea about how Britain’s withdrawal from Europe would work depended on a vague assumption that the E.U. would throw Ireland under the bus, and that the U.S. would, too, in the rush to conclude a free-trade deal with Britain. That didn’t happen.'
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/10/there-will-be-fire-rory-carroll-book-review-ireland
Did they really think that the E.U. sees Ireland as a insignificant country? Not that we like at all their tax practices, but the whole point of the EU is to help each other (in a deeper sense than NATO does). If the UK is not in the EU, all of the power of the EU goes with Ireland in any kind of conflict with the UK, as much as it is not detrimental of the whole EU. And the EU is bigger and more powerful than all of the UK. That was obvious. How could they be so blind?
