To say the Conservative propaganda operation swung into action like a well-oiled machine after Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit speech would be far too charitable. They wheeled Boris Johnson onto the BBC’s Today programme and he made a fool of himself, as usual.

In his speech, Mr Corbyn proposed “a” customs union between the UK and the European Union after Brexit. He said: “Labour would seek to negotiate a new comprehensive UK-EU customs union to ensure that there are no tariffs with Europe and to help avoid any need for a hard border in Northern Ireland.”

It is a solution that, if implemented, means calls by Brexiteers to scrap the Good Friday Agreement – the deal that has kept the peace in Northern Ireland for 20 years – would have been premature.

But never mind that! Mr Johnson turned up at the Today programme studio and tried to convince us all that the Tories could manage a hard border with Northern Ireland because “there is scope for pre-booking, electronic checks”.

He said: “There’s no border between … Camden and Westminster, but when I was mayor of London we anaesthetically and invisibly took hundreds of millions of pounds from people travelling between those two boroughs without any need for border checks.”

He was referring to the congestion charge for London traffic.

But, you know what?

The border between Northern Ireland and the Republic isn’t the same as an imaginary line on London’s streets. Nobody being asked to pay the congestion charge is likely to start a bombing campaign.

But the dissolution of the Good Friday Agreement because the Tories are too weak and stupid to see the danger could certainly re-spark sectarian hostilities – and they could spread to the mainland.

Hence this exchange on Twitter, in which I was involved:

Before anybody writes in, I’ve since checked and the bomb crater is caused by the detonation of an unexploded bomb from the war – which makes the comparison with the Troubles all the more relevant.

If Mr Johnson and his Brextremist friends get their way, the metaphorical unexploded bomb of renewed sectarian hostilities may transform into very real explosives.

That makes him – and the Conservatives who would rather ditch the Good Friday Agreement than accept that Labour has put forward a good idea – a danger to the citizens of the United Kingdom.

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