BORIS Johnson's "endless shenanigans" over Brexit and the protocol is inadvertently increasing the likelihood of a united Ireland, according to acclaimed film-maker and writer Kevin Toolis.
The author of Rebel Hearts: Journeys Within the IRA's Soul, says Irish unity "looms closer not by design but by disaster" under the current Downing Street administration, and a prime minister who "fails to understand that British rule in Ireland can only be maintained through the acquiescence, even indifference, of the vast majority of the Irish people of the Republic and the apathy of the English".
Writing in The Irish News today, the paper's one-time parliamentary correspondent believes the Tory leader is destabilising the status quo and that for the union, "all political change is dangerous".
He argues that the late Ulster Unionist leader Jim Molyneaux, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson's mentor, believed "every day of such English apathy was another day of victory for the union".
"Unlike Jeffrey Donaldson, Molyneaux played it long, dissembling, exhausting any hope of political 'progress' but avoiding direct confrontation," Toolis writes.
"His reaction to news of the Provisional IRA ceasefire was telling which he described as 'the most destabilising event since partition'."
But Boris Johnson's "constant attempts to bully the Dublin government", alongside his reneging on aspects of the withdrawal agreement, "profoundly undermine all faith in the British government".
"Instead of being a far distant land to the north, useful for cheap booze trips, for which we care little, Northern Ireland now threatens to destabilise the Republic economically," he says.
"Johnson is turning the union, the existence of a different jurisdiction on the island of Ireland, into a Dublin government problem and therefore an Irish political problem. A problem that can only be solved by Irish unity."
Toolis argues that the Tory leader is "playing an old Sinn Féin political tune that the cause of all of Ireland's woes is partition itself".
"A tune that a future Sinn Féin-led government in Dublin will not hesitate to re-echo to its own electorate and the world," he says.
"Depending on how long he lasts, Johnson could indeed be the very last prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland."
