MOVES to keep Northern Ireland inside the EU single market are just a ruse for a “minimalist Brexit,” Irish communists have warned.

The Communist Party of Ireland (CPI) accused Brussels, Westminster and Dublin of “ruling by fooling” in a Wednesday night statement.

It said “regulatory alignment” between Northern Ireland and the republic, agreed this week between British PM Theresa May and EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, was intended “to keep Britain and the EU as close as possible.”

That deal, sold as a guarantee against a “hard border” within Ireland, was swiftly scuppered by Ms May’s DUP allies.

The CPI said the border issue “has been used by both the British and the EU to further their shared goal of a minimalist Brexit, using the Irish people as pawns in their game to achieve the same shared ends.”

Westminster and Brussels want Britain to retain “the maximum economic and political relationship with the EU,” charged the party, “leaving in words but remaining in practice, thereby frustrating the democratic decision of the British electorate.”

Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said on Wednesday night  that he hoped Ms May would offer a new proposal by today to continue nearly a century of free movement between the two countries.

He said the issue was an “absolute red line” to his government, which insisted last week that keeping the north in the single market was the only solution.

The CPI said: “The Irish state is a willing player, albeit a bit player, in this strategic game of manoeuvre by representatives of both British and EU monopoly business and financial interests.

“The British state is using the contesting demands and exploiting the supercharged pro-EU forces in the republic to create enough momentum to advance its strategic goal.”