Talk of a tunnel to Scotland should not detract from the pressing need to scrap the Irish Sea border

Some critics of a fixed link between Northern Ireland and Scotland love to sneer at the idea.

Not infrequently they are opponents of Brexit and perhaps even supporters of a united Ireland.

Such a bridge or tunnel is fantasy they say.

It will never happen.

It is an example of unionist delusions.

And so on.

In fact the idea of an NI-Scotland structure is quite plausible. Some of the world’s best engineers have said it is feasible already, let alone two or three decades from now when technology will have improved yet further.

If any nation in history has the ingenuity to pull off such a piece of infrastructure it is the UK, which since the industrial revolution two centuries ago has been a hub of creativity.

In any event many of the critics are hypocrites. The united Irelanders among them would reverse their opposition to a fixed link and jump at the idea if Scotland went independent.

But there is one respect in which the critics are correct. Boris Johnson is using it to disguise his betrayal of unionists.

To satisfy his own ambition, the prime minister has implemented a full trade border in the Irish Sea, something he travelled here in 2018 to say he would never do.

It is hard to think of greater culpability in an act of wrongdoing. Not only was it pre meditated and done for selfish gain, the perpetrator explained in detail (at the DUP conference) why such a border was unacceptable.

Nothing he says can be trusted. Even now he is flippant when asked about his disastrous internal UK frontier. So his alleged interest in a Scottish link can be dismissed as a gimmick.

Such a structure is physically doable but would be so expensive that traffic levels between Northern Ireland and Scotland would not even come close to justifying it.

One day it will be built, perhaps 50 years from now, or 100, or more. But speculation about it must not distract unionists from their aim of getting rid of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

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