Of course there is: Cancel Brexit.

The Irish have a lot to lose in the event of a hard border. If there's a reasonable chance they'll get one in April this year, surely realpolitik has to come into play. The backstop is there largely to protect Ireland's interests as a member state. Any movement on the backstop needs to come from them.

The real thing to bear in mind here is that the ball is now firmly in their court.  As we will be managing our own trade borders and whatnot we can just say "ok, so we won't check stuff coming in from Ireland over the borders ".  

The issue is stuff going the other way, without a free trade agreement they do sort of need to check our stuff. But it is intrinsically their problem really, rather than ours.  How the heck TMPM manages to convince them that we can have a free trade enclave with Ireland I do not know because it opens up all sorts of cans of worms elsewhere.  That is the reason for the impasse.

this is the most english thing I have ever seen, in summary

1. Votes for Brexit

2. changes leader

3. serves withdrawl notice

4. holds election

5. whistles for a bit

6. figures out irish border might actually be a tricky issue

7. proposes to EU "if we can't agree anything else here is a backstop to protect irish and nothern irish referendum on good friday agreement" 

8. declares backstop unworkable

9. declares everything unworkable

10. whistles for a bit more

11. votes that everything is unworkable

12. declares victory and that EU will have to come up with a solution to the unacceptable proposal made by the UK to the EU which is now unacceptable to the UK

13. Assumes ireland will save the day because "reasons"

so yeah, this, plus twitter

You forgot the part where various Tory twots suggested that the best solution would be for Ireland to leave the EU and join the UK.

rees mogg merely demanded that the irish leave the EU (without joining the uk, those pesky paddies). he's a humble feller innit

Firstly, WTF did your dentist do to you?!

Secondly, in a nutshell, we are all fooked.

The only way MPs can avoid a no deal is to vote for the shitty deal on the table. Yesterday's votes showed us that there will not be a Peoples' Vote, a delay or a cancellation.

and on balance I would rather have the shitty deal than no deal

it's weird how the brexiteers get the whole self identity part of brexit for English people and then completely fail to see why Ireland, which for most of it's history (as a republic) has been poorer than the UK and arguably would have been economically better as part of the UK, might not want to join the UK especially now that it has equalised (possibly surpassed) living standards and made itself corporate headquarters for hald the major corporates operating in the EU

Ray, presumably your mind is on WTO rules when you say that, whereas what I'm suggesting is actually a unilateral deal from our side to the EU rather than making everything tariff free from every other country.

If we did that we would then breach MFN under the WTO Rules which bind us.

No, that's what I'm saying, rather than take a gats breaching mfn route we could set up a trade partnership (which is allowed) with Ireland (which probably isn't under eu law but let's worry about that later) which is unfair to us but tariff free to them.  No hard border with Ireland necessary from our side so the only ones in danger of potentially breaching the spirit of the GFA would be the eu itself (or Ireland herself).

Fixed!

You cannot unilaterally lower tariffs with one country without breaching WTO (which we are a member of and are bound by). Them's the rules.

"Firstly, WTF did your dentist do to you?!"

This.

He's an surgical orthodontist. I was having screws inserted in my jaw to link my upper and lower jaw and bring them back into line following a dislocation last year.  He'd been trying to do it using braces alone.  Apparently I have very dense bone.  The bone on my right lower jaw cracked a little.  It MAY already have had a hairline crack on it.

The output is he doesn't want to try that again... and he's going to fix further braces at the back and use elastics to move the jaw across.

It's actually ok... but I got to cancel a meeting tomorrow because of it... but I was impressed with it technically being a fractured jaw :)

Ouch.

Hope the drugs are indeed good!