If Northern Ireland is out of time with Great Britain, it will create yet another new divide of the UK

If, as a report of peers says might happen, Northern Ireland ends up in a different time zone to Great Britain, no end of people will cry: so what?

We will be in a similar time zone to the rest of of Ireland and that is more practical for an island, they will say.

Come on, these things are trivial, stopping fussing about old fashioned things in the digital age in which people think globally, they will add.

Other nations have different time zones, so what is the problem, they will ask? And so on and so on, they will say.

Thus another little step towards Irish unity will be achieved, along with all the other little planned steps: the tearing up of nationality and civilisation procedures; the authorising of voting for (and thus campaigning in, and posters for) Irish elections; the creation of an economic border in the Irish Sea, so hindering our most important trade to ensure that the less busy land frontier does not change at all, or have so much as an enforcement camera.

The clock change possibility, which might come about due to a possible change to an existing EU directive in which all 27 states including Ireland switch to summer time in March and back to Greenwich Mean Time in October, as does the UK.

If the EU adopts double summer time, so will Ireland and, possibly, Northern Ireland, putting it out of step with Great Britain. This is what happens when a country allows part of its sovereign territory to follow the regulations of another jurisdiction, as Boris Johnson did for Northern Ireland, betraying his own rhetoric not to allow such an internal UK divide.

The Lords’ EU internal market sub-committee is not sure the clock change situation will happen, but if it does you can be certain of one thing: nationalist Ireland will not tolerate a time change at the land border and so we will be in a different time zone to London and another open ended little barrier between NI and GB will be established.