Memo to May and DUP: this ‘dog’ still has teeth!

The air will be thick with anti-Irish insults from the DUP and Tory Brexiteers for a long time after the current nurses’ strike is sorted. And in the run-up to St Patrick’s Day while preparing for ‘B’ day on March 29, their shrillest voices will shift the focus of their attack from Brussels to Dublin.

Why, you may ask, would British Tories demonise the Irish Government rather than the EU? As a candid ‘leaver’ might put it: ‘If you aren’t big enough to kick the man himself, you kick his dog.’

A bully will scapegoat when attacking their principal opponent could invite painful retribution. And given a choice between attacking the 27-member countries of the EU or Ireland, why would Brexit boors not choose a smaller, poorer but friendly neighbour?

There was a trial run back in December. Priti Patel, a former British minister, asked Theresa May why she hadn’t used fears that the Irish economy would fall 7% after a hard Brexit as leverage with the Taoiseach.

Tory spivs see Dublin as the weakest link in their battle to secure their way and will ratchet up their demeaning rhetoric over the coming months. The DUP can draw on an archive of anti-Irish bigotry laid down by their founder, the late Ian Paisley, before his Pauline conversion to partner Sinn Féin on the road to Stormont.

After she won her vote last week, Mrs May was told by a Tory Brexiteer in Westminster to hold her nerve, that it may take some time for her adversaries (the EU and Ireland) ‘to crumble’.

It can only get worse as the British and DUP cajole the Irish Government, offering promises and their good intentions then threaten economic penury as the inevitable consequence of denying them.

And, in the spring, Brussels may lean on Dublin to get a settlement that EU leaders will not countenance in early February.

The big worry is that when the crunch of Brexit comes and the British ask to extend the deadline, exhaustion will supplant the EU’s impatience. But Ireland is not without hope or friends: the IrishAmerican lobby in the US is already warning Britain about a hard border from Brexit threatening the Good Friday Agreement.

And when we are standing on the shoulders of the EU’s 27 nations, among them some of the most powerful and wealthiest in the world, a showdown with the UK becomes much more evenly matched.

We need all the help we can get: yesterday’s showdown with England in Dublin took on more symbolism than is respectable for a game of rugby.

The political shadow over yesterday’s game was in stark contrast to the hope that radiated from Croke Park when Ireland played England in their historic confrontation in 2007.

Sinn Féin and their allies will whip up anti-British suspicion – easily resurrected through this year of historical anniversaries and commemorations.

But it would be foolish to heed anti-British zealots in Ireland or allow atavistic Brexiteers who have lost the logical argument to hide behind perverted patriotism.

But there is no stomach in Ireland for what diplomats call ‘creative ambiguity’.

The guarantee of the backstop must mean what it says: there will be no hard border.