Leo Varadkar has been attending a gathering of the global elite in Davos and it was there that he revealed his real plans for a no-deal Brexit.
He said there would have to be a hard border with ‘cameras, physical infrastructure, possibly a police presence, or an army presence to back it up’.
What was even more disturbing was that the reference was to the Irish army and to the Gardai.
This followed reports in the Irish Independent that the Garda Commissioner, Drew Harris, will be seeking volunteers among the Gardai who can be re-deployed to border posts.
All of this shows that the Irish government is getting ready to obey EU orders and impose a border between the two parts of Ireland. They will say that they are reluctant and that it was not their fault– but they will do it anyway.
An Irish imposed hard border will not just inconvenience people who want to travel back and forth across an artificial border. It will lock in partition for a generation. It will cause grave disquiet among Northern nationalists and give succor to the DUP. It will also endanger the current peace that has followed the cessation of the IRA campaign.
For all those reasons it must be vigorously opposed.
If the EU issues instructions for such a border, then the only answer an Irish government can give is a loud NO.
In such a crisis situation it should mount a campaign to pressurise the British to conduct a border poll.
This is the only long term democratic solution that gives people an option for avoiding a hard border.
