Oh god – David Frost is talking about the Irish border again

David Frost, the booze-pedlar turned Brexit negotiator turned Telegraph space-filler took to social media in the aftermath of the stabbing in Belfast, in which a man was attacked with a knife, leaving him with severe injuries to his upper body. The attacker was a Sudanese man aged 30.

“The Irish people happily check vehicles and people going south when they want to,” Frost told his social media followers. “Yet apparently we can’t police our border with Ireland. Instead we let people wander across it & give them asylum,” he thundered, before concluding: “The back door into the UK via Ireland needs closing.”

Frost posted this on the evening of June 9. It is very hard to see this as anything other than a response to the Belfast knife attack.

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But as ever when Frost opens his mouth, or writes anything for public consumption, the first question always has to be “does he have any idea what he’s talking about?” And, as ever, the answer here is a firm “no”.

First of all, the idea that, having reached the Republic of Ireland, immigrants would then immediately try to reach the sunlit uplands of the UK is questionable at best. Last year, the Republic enjoyed economic growth of 5%. That’s more than triple the UK figure, no thanks to Brexit, which stuffed the UK economy. Frost of course, was – and still it – a pathological Brexiter.

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But perhaps more potty is the idea that anything at all would be made better by reinstating a hard border on the island of Ireland. Does Frost know absolutely nothing at all about history? Does he have the faintest idea of what happened during the Troubles?

Frost’s suggestion that the Irish border “needs closing”, suggests that the answer is a firm “no”.