With reports circulating that Liz Truss is planning to tear up the Northern Ireland Protocol, and Sinn Fein sweeping to victory last week, voices across the Irish Sea are turning to what might come next: a diplomatic breakdown with the EU? Threats to the union? Maybe nothing at all? Or maybe, as Professor Cathal McCall argues on Irish national broadcaster RTE’s website today, a full blown British invasion…

According to mad McCall, it’s not “beyond the realms of probability” if Boris steps down as Prime Minister that his bloodthirsty, imperialist successor – Gove, Truss, Raab, Rees-Mogg or Priti – decides it’s not worth the hassle of negotiating with Sinn Féin, so Britain may as well call them “terrorists and bandits” and get the battleships ready. The fact RTE published this, even with an inevitable disclaimer at the bottom, is incredible. 

McCall explains how it would play out:

“Such a Tory Prime Minister, less than wedded to democratic principles, may well eye the size and purpose of the Irish Defence Forces and conclude that reclamation would be a doddle. No Provos roaming around the drumlins of South Armagh and Louth or lying in wait in the bogs of Tyrone and Monaghan to worry about either. No heroic Ukrainian-style resistance likely. And all done in the name of ‘peace and security’.

Would NATO care about the fate of non-member, neutral Ireland? NATO tends not to care about non-members and neutrals, especially when the neutral in question has just been subsumed within the Organisation’s key member, the United Kingdom.”

Yes, because if there’s one thing the Ukraine war has taught us, it’s that NATO doesn’t care about non-members. He even suggests that the government would spin it as a way to fix the Northern Ireland Protocol. Whilst it’s certainly one way of removing the border, Guido thinks it might cause a few diplomatic repercussions…