Patrick Mercer: Forget Troubles threat on our doorstep at your peril

The plotters need to be careful of what they wish for, though. Whoever topples Mrs May will inherit the Tories’ new-won frailty, the quicksand of Brexit negotiations and a louring Jeremy Corbyn. Meanwhile, Kremlinologists will turn themselves inside out speculating about which big beast will be the first to claw at the Prime Minister’s perch and which faction will be the next cuckoos in the nest. I bet, though, that they’ll miss the most potent threat to this Government – terrorism.

This particular brand of terror, though, will come from a source most have forgotten, a source that has been nurtured and fed by the Tories’ own amnesia.

First, think about terrorism in general: violent death grabs the headlines in a way that no other event can. It brings certainty to a squealing halt, it jams the breaks on policy, causes U-turns and radically alters opinion. Remember how Spain’s election was thrown on its head in March 2004 when Islamist terrorists killed 192 people? Remember the shuddering jolts of the Manchester bombing and the London Bridge attacks just a few weeks ago? Fear works.

Next, look at these statistics. Europol’s 2017 terrorism report revealed that across the European Union there had been 142 failed, foiled or completed terrorist attacks last year. Staggeringly, more than half of them – 76 – were in this country. At first, it’s hard to believe this: where were these attacks? A quick Google reveals the most overused headline of the election period ‘Three Attacks in Three Months’ whilst spectre-like spooks tell us that they’ve saved us from another handful. But what about the other 65 or so?

Look no further than our own backyard – Northern Ireland. I’ve just returned from a visit to my old stamping grounds – Strabane, Crossmaglen, Ballymurphy – names that were once familiar in the UK but have now dropped out of the public’s consciousness. In these deeply Nationalist areas the police ‘stations’ (well, that’s what they’re called officially but they’re still known as ‘barracks’ to the locals) are bomb-proofed forts and the ‘Peelers’ still patrol in armoured Land Rovers. In my short visit there were three grenade attacks – there were no casualties but neither was there any mention of them in the UK press. None of this was unusual or surprising – what was, though, were the new, chilling, murals.

Again, there’s always been a tradition of such paintings which shout the loyalties and traditions of the hard-line areas that you enter, but the theme used to be predictable – ‘Informers will be killed!’, ‘No Surrender!’ etc. Now there’s a new message. From gable ends masked machine-gunners and bombers stare down proclaiming ‘Unfinished Business!’ There are no pikes or 1916 vintage Lee Enfields here, just grim weapons, grim men and a grim slogan.

The other side of the tribal tracks, though, was just as worrying. The 12th July Battle of the Boyne celebrations had been marked by giant bonfires, the expected marching and drumming on the Shankill Road, but none, as the local press proclaimed, of the usual sectarian trouble. I put this to someone I’d known during by service in Ulster – an articulate, thinking man of undoubted, Loyalists sympathies. His reply was revealing: “Trouble? Even the Shankill boys will behave when they know that the DUP have got them Tories by the short hairs!” And that’s the point, isn’t it? How can the Government slip so blindly into bed with a party that opposed the Good Friday agreement of 1998, split over power sharing and oversaw the ‘cash for ash’ scandal? None of that is as important as the fact that by nailing their colours to the mast of just one of the Ulster parties, our government loses any hope of impartiality. One DUP councillor even mocked up a picture of an Ulster Volunteer Force flag flying over No 10 to celebrate the deal. Westminster’s claim to be the honest broker in Ulster’s affairs was always fragile, now the pact with the DUP has snapped it.

There’s a power vacuum in Ulster. Conventional politicians might push a number of conventional buttons to fill that vacuum, but in Ulster there’s another lever that can be used: violence. Even the threat of such violence might be enough to topple a government as febrile as the one we now have and it’s not the slightly remote threat of occasional Islamist violence: it’s the stark all-too-well-understood threat of a new bout of ‘Troubles’. This isn’t the outlandish idea of Britain falling under a twisted Caliphate, its the realistic, well remembered fear of parts of our country becoming ungovernable again.

As a desperate government stumbles, edges myopically forward, they would do well to remember the threat on their doorstep: there may be Troubles ahead.

Patrick Mercer OBE served extensively in Northern Ireland before becoming an MP and Chairman of the Counter-Terrorism Sub-Committee.