So, what to make of Priti Patel? She’s the disgraced former International Development Secretary and Tory Brexiteer who suggested yesterday that the Irish could be starved into submission in order to force concessions on the backstop question.

Okay, she didn’t quite put it like that. What she did say in response to a leaked analysis from the British Government was that Ireland would also suffer in a no-deal Brexit scenario – even to the point of experiencing food shortages.

“Why hasn’t this point been pressed home during the negotiations? There is still time to go back to Brussels and get a better deal,” she told the House of Commons.

Clearly, no-one reading such an estimable website like this would be ignorant of the historical sensitivities, but Priti, like most Brexiteers, is woefully ignorant of basic Irish history and the diplomatic niceties about how Britain’s nearest neighbour should be treated.

It’s easy to be offended by her crass stupidity, but look at it this way. Half-crazed Brexiteers in the Conservative Party know they are losing. They can sense momentum is slipping away from them. They are lashing out and kicking the vending machine.

Having been forced to resign from Theresa May’s Cabinet last year because of a series of unsanctioned meetings with Israeli politicians and business figures, Patel conceded in her resignation letter that her behaviour “fell below the high standards that are expected of a secretary of state.”

Quite. Ignore Priti, she isn’t going to be running anything more important than a bath anytime soon.

Someone asked me the other day whether the hoo-haa over the backstop was indicative that there was indeed a great deal of concern at Westminster over Northern Ireland being treated differently than the rest of the UK.

On the contrary, I argued, most of Theresa May’s party – around two-thirds of her MPs – are willing to back the Prime Minister’s compromise withdrawal deal which quite openly treats Northern Ireland as a place apart.

Only a quarter of them or so – along with the DUP – are opposed to it because of the backstop. Many of her other critics on the backbenches want a second referendum. Labour and the other instinctively pro-EU parties want an election. As usual, the House of Commons is generally unmoved about the impact on Northern Ireland.

But if you’re a hardline Brexiteer, drunk on your English nationalist fantasies, you assume Paddy will give way if you prod him in the chest hard enough. Well, dear Brexiteers, Paddy has 26 other friends standing behind him who are heartily sick of your nonsense. John Bull doesn’t get to starve the Irish again.

The fundamental point though is that the backstop is not some deliberate attempt to humiliate the UK, it’s the obvious price that needs to be paid for having a land border with the EU, without upsetting the delicate modus vivendi contained in the Good Friday Agreement settlement.

Brexiteers can’t compute any of this – or they simply don’t think it’s important – but they should be careful. They’re about to be squeezed in a pincer movement.

On one side will be the EU and Ireland. There is simply no wiggle room over the backstop. You either have one or you don’t. It’s either superseded by a mutually-agreed alternative arrangement at some future stage, or it’s not. One thing is clear: there can be no unilateral pull out.

On the other side we have the House of Commons. There is no majority, it would seem, for Theresa May’s deal. But neither is there support for a hard border. If the Prime Minister’s deal falls, then we are in second referendum territory.

The Tory crazies make a lot of noise, but they are now in trouble. All political deals end in compromise, but fanaticism has blinded hard-line Brexiteers to this self-evident truth. Either they opt for Theresa May’s Brexit-lite, or risk losing it all in another poll.

Let fools like Priti rage against the dying of the light. The only shortage is when it comes to the self-awareness of Brexiteers.