Does Boris have an answer to the latest incarnation of the Irish Question?

The Irish Question bedevilled British politics for more than a century, from the 1790s to the 1920s. It resurfaced at the end of the 1960s; the Troubles lasted for a generation, until the truce of the late 1990s. Since the EU referendum it has returned to haunt us in a new guise. Will Boris Johnson, who visits Belfast today, succeed where Peel and Gladstone, Asquith and Lloyd George, Thatcher and Blair all failed?

It doesn’t look promising. The new Prime Minister delayed making the customary phone call to Dublin for a whole week. When it came, the Taoiseach’s congratulations seem to have been less than cordial. Leo Varadkar invited his British counterpart for a visit. There was no response. Downing Street’s view is that as long as the backstop is treated as non-negotiable, there is nothing to discuss.

Boris Johnson wants to scrap the backstop entirely and keep the Northern Irish border open by new technology. With goodwill on the Irish side, that could be the solution. But the function of the backstop, for Dublin and Brussels, is not technical, but political. It exists to keep Northern Ireland inside the customs union. Given the present parliamentary arithmetic in Westminster, this means that the whole United Kingdom would have to remain inside the customs union, to avoid the border being moved to the Irish Sea — an outcome that the Democratic Unionists would never accept.

Such an outcome would, however, be equally unacceptable to the new Prime Minister. Boris Johnson, unlike Theresa May, is a passionate Unionist. Like his mentor and former editor at the Daily Telegraph, Charles Moore, on Anglo-Irish affairs he belongs to the school of the late T.E. (“Peter”) Utley, the paper’s most influential columnist before Boris himself. (Utley was also the grandfather of the deputy editor of TheArticle.)

High Tory Unionists of the Utley persuasion are rare beasts these days, but the Prime Minister is one of them. His threat to lie down in front of a bulldozer to stop the third runway at Heathrow was mere braggadocio, but he is deadly serious about defending the Union. That is the significance of his adoption of the symbolic title “Minister for the Union”. Boris will fight — and Boris will be right.

Leo Varadkar is no less in earnest about his backstop. It has already defined his premiership and he could not renounce it even if he wanted to, given his dependency on powerful patrons in the EU. The backstop’s purpose for them is to prevent Britain from exiting the customs union, thereby keeping the door open for a future government to return, suitably chastened, to the European fold.

But Varadkar is playing for even bigger stakes. He hopes to go down in history, not merely as the first gay, mixed race Taoiseach, but as the one who reunited Ireland. For him, the backstop is the Archimedean lever that can move the world. By exploiting anxiety about a no-deal Brexit in the North, which had a majority for Remain in 2016, he hopes to drive swing voters in the province to back Irish unity — which could be resolved by a border poll. Such a referendum was envisaged in the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement of 1998, though only if all parties agree.

Sinn Fein is now demanding a border poll in the event of no-deal, but Varadkar is keeping his powder dry. He has another card to play first: to use the Irish lobby in the United States to put pressure on the British. The chairman of the trade committee in Congress, Richard Neal, is threatening to veto an Anglo-American free trade deal in the event of no-deal. The Democratic Congressman provocatively reminded the Prime Minister “that this is not about a return to empire”. No: but it is a return to the days of Irish Americans surreptitiously supporting the IRA.

Boris and Leo are never going to agree on the backstop. But Varadkar leads a minority Fine Gael government. It could fall at any time if the main opposition party, Fianna Fáil, were to end the present confidence and supply arrangement.

A different Taoiseach would have more flexibility over Brexit, especially if Angela Merkel and other EU leaders signal that they are prepared to negotiate seriously with Boris Johnson. The latter has made clear that he will only do so if the backstop is on the table. But any indication that the EU is backsliding on the backstop would completely undermine Varadkar’s position. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that a call from Berlin could remove him from office at any moment. He would not be the first leader of a member state to be deposed in such a way. Who remembers Berlusconi?

Boris Johnson is therefore wise to keep his distance from Dublin for the time being. He should focus on reassuring those who are listening in the North — which means everyone except died-in-the-wool republicans — that a no-deal Brexit need not be catastrophic for their economy. He should also spend time listening to their concerns about the prosperity, security and identity of the province. Boris has already committed himself to work to resurrect Stormont, but Sinn Fein has an effective veto over devolution. So he needs a Plan B, which can only mean direct rule from London, generously lubricated with cash.

The Irish Question remains an enigma, not only for Dublin, Belfast and London, but for Brussels and Washington too. Boris Johnson will be doing well if he can persuade all sides to put off any attempt at a solution until after October 31. He will need all his skills at “wiff waff” to keep the Irish ball in motion for as long as possible.