Boris Johnson heads to Northern Ireland this week. I wait with bated breath to see whether he’ll actually visit the border, or just swan around building sites and swanky buildings whilst talking up just how great the whole United Kingdom – or his appallingly coined “awesome foursome” – will be following a no-deal Brexit. I suspect he might eventually make his way to some outpost in Fermanagh or Derry, but even in that instance, I still don’t truly believe that he’ll actually grasp the challenge posed by the border any more than his overzealous, Brexiteer-filled cabinet does.

We’ve three months until the United Kingdom will apparently leave the EU. Barring another extension – something the incoming EU Commission president is admittedly open to – it looks more and more likely that it will exit without any sort of deal in place. For the border, that means customs checks and a whole swathe of pointless bureaucracy that would cause a headache for even the most prepared and logistically-sound business. According to the new Prime Minister, technologies that may or may not exist yet (they don’t) and that may or may not cause delays of up to an hour (they do) will solve any potential hard border issue, after which Northern Ireland won’t have to worry about anything, the UK economy will stabilise and all will be right with the world again.

Much has been made of just how farcical such an approach to the Irish border is (and rightly so).  “The technology will exist,”Brexiteers insist earnestly, all the while dodging questions about what firm the technology will come from, and how soon it can be implemented. Many Brexit-supporting commentators and politicians pointing to the Swiss or Swedish border as an example of how customs checks can work in a post-Brexit UK: “See, Switzerland/Sweden-Norway has customs checks, and they’re absolutely fine” is a depressingly common Brexiteer statement.

All this focus on border technology, however, has obscured deeper issues that, even if such technology did exist, would be nearly impossible to erase, namely issues of identity, history, and conflict. Any form of technology, any customs posts, any border paraphernalia, will be immediately seen by many who live in border communities as an implement of the British state that has been forced upon them against their will. I don’t say that as an ardent republican, by the way. I’m someone who has been called a ‘West Brit’ more times than he can count. But still, even I know that it’s an undeniable fact that border posts and checkpoints will be seen as a consequence of a decision made by the British government. In the best-case scenario, the worst thing that will happen along the border will be non-compliance with customs regulations; in other words, smuggling. In the worst-case? A full-blown re-emergence of the conflict that claimed thousands of lives.

And yet, the sheer arrogance and blasé attitude through which many of the most ardent Brexiteers have approached the border question is staggering. One could argue that it’s blinded them entirely. Take their Sweden-Norway or Swiss border examples; yes, Sweden and Norway do have border crossings, but they don’t have a fairly recent and painful history of violent sectarianism that scarred their respective nations in the decades following. You can drive a car from Germany to Switzerland and not get stopped at customs for too long, if at all? Again, yes that’s fine, but (a) they still have delays for goods vehicles, and (b) Switzerland is a signatory of the Schengen Agreement, an agreement I can’t imagine Brexiteers view in a positive light (in spite of free movement’s many economic and social benefits).

Such arrogance has also caused more people than the British government realise to harden their resolve and resist any attempt to put a border between North and South. People who, just a few years ago, weren’t politically active in the slightest, are now campaigning against its potential imposition. It has caused many of us so-called ‘plastic Paddy’ and ‘West Brit’ types to become more antagonistic in our defence of Irish and wider EU interests. Heck, it’s made people in the South actually support the approach taken by Leo Varadkar and Fine Gael, even as they’re presiding over an ever-worsening housing and health service crisis.

In the past Boris Johnson has said he is “pro-having his cake and eating it too”, and that with a positive spirit and open-armed approach to the world, the UK can make a success of Brexit, deal or no deal. Yet it is this very arrogance, this “why isn’t he called Murphy like the rest” approach to the border – and indeed, the negotiations as a whole – that has blinded him and his team to the fact he is playing a dangerous game when it comes to peace in Northern Ireland. No amount of technology, real or otherwise, can cover the scars of conflict. The backstop may annoy them and their DUP backers, but it is a necessity, particularly at a time when dissident activity is still sadly a reality in the North.

I hope Boris realises this if he does visit the border this week; otherwise, a collapse in the value of pound could prove to be the least of his worries come November.