IS Boris Johnson the greatest threat to the union since Michael Collins?
A British 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.
Of course Boris Johnson does not have a secret plan to hand Belfast over to Dublin. Or much of a plan on anything apart from daily clinging on to office. But his endless shenanigans over Brexit, the protocol, his lies and deceit, do profoundly threaten the current post Good Friday Agreement dispensation.
Under Johnson a united Ireland looms closer not by design but by disaster.
Over the centuries Ireland's 'Troubles' wax and wane. When the union is strong, as with the creation of the sectarian state of Northern Ireland from 1922-1969, the 'Irish Question' disappears off the British cabinet agenda.
In my days as a parliamentary correspondent for The Irish News in the early 1980s the entire annual budget for Northern Ireland would be voted through a ghost House of Commons in one late night session. Four billion pounds nodded through in the same amount of time as a couple of episodes of Coronation Street.
Deep down no-one in London, even the Tories, wants to hear from Her Majesty's Irish Province because they don't really care about this historical left-over.
Nor did the IRA's bombing shake this tectonic English indifference. Once it was clear, after 1972, that the IRA's bombing campaign was just another failed Irish rebellion, not a revolution, the union was as safe as the Tower of London. The Brits could not leave under the threat of IRA bombs.
As the then canny Ulster Unionist leader Jim Molyneaux calculated, 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. His reaction to news of the Provisional IRA ceasefire was telling, which he described as 'the most destabilising event since partition.'
For the union all political change is dangerous.
Molyneaux also recognised that the apathy of the Dublin government, and an indifferent southern electorate, towards the distant 'North' was also his greatest ally. For most of the Troubles Northern Ireland was walled off from southern politics, another country.
But Johnson's Brexit has changed Ireland utterly.
Now Northern Ireland, the protocol, and the latest crisis returns month after month as part of a much wider struggle over EU trade and so-called British Brexit sovereignty. Ulster is Johnson's tool, his crowbar, to unpick his own Brexit deal and cover over the unravelling economic failures of Brexit. There is no end to these Troubles.
His constant attempts to bully the Dublin government, the going back on deals agreed months before, the threats to EU trade, the obvious lies and deceits and the naked disregard of the Good Friday Agreement profoundly undermine all faith in the British government.
Does anyone doubt that if he could, Johnson would swap his 'Irish Sea border' for a customs post on the Dundalk-Newry road tomorrow?
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.
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.
Unknowingly Johnson, in his stupidity, 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.
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.
:: Kevin Toolis is the author of the acclaimed Troubles chronicle, Rebel Hearts Journeys Within the IRA's Soul.
