LAST weekend the British media were agog at the possibility that John Major, having wrapped himself in the Union Jack and declared war on Brussels, might be preparing to call a "Mad Cow" election.
Andrew Rawnsley wondered about the kind of slogan the campaign would produce. Would something along the lines of "Save the Spunk of British Bulls" be enough to bring back voters who have defected from the Tory cause?
The reaction of what one might describe as the pragmatic/libel press has ranged from embarrassment to derision. There have been warnings that Mr Major has embarked on a dangerous course and that he may find it much more difficult to march his troops safely home from the Berlaymont than it was to send them into combat.
But, whatever happens in the long term, there's no doubt Mr Major's decision to confront the European Union on the issue of British beef has pacified the most vituperative critics in his own party and brought the Tory press, which has harassed him for so long, back on side.
The whiff of cordite implicit in the tabloid headline "War at Last!" may seem absurd to outside observers, but it's clear that the British Prime Minister has struck, for the first time in many months, a chord of public emotion, particularly among his party's traditional supporters.
An opinion poll published in the London Independent on Tuesday showed that 77 per cent of Conservative voters approve of Mr Major's strategy of disrupting EU business to get the ban on British beef lifted; 62 per cent think that, if the ban is not lifted, Britain should take retaliatory action by banning imports from Germany.
Even when Labour and Liberal Democrat voters are factored into the poll there is still a majority in favour of both options. This must make cheering reading for a Prime Minister who has been accustomed to seeing himself described as weak, wet and unfit to "speak for England".
A few weeks ago, in this space, I wrote about the alarming spectacle of the rise of English nationalism and how it would inevitably have an impact on the peace process. At the time, the main evidence for this increasingly jingoistic popular mood was to be found in the speeches of the Eurosceptics in parliament and the blatantly xenophobic tone of sections of the media, the so called quality press as well as the tabloids.
Much of it found expression in crudely offensive comments about Germany which, if we heard them used about this country, would lead to vociferous demands for official complaints to be made.
One respected commentator referred to "the tumescent penis" of German nationalism and MPs compared John Major's failure to stand up to Brussels with Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler. Now, presumably, that slur no longer applies. The Prime Minister has discovered for himself the heady allure of Clausewitz's maxim that war is the conduct of politics by other means.
WHAT has all this got to do with the prospects for peace in the North? Quite a lot. For a start, many of the politicians and journalists who have been most critical of John Major's alleged gutlessness in dealing with the EU are also those who are most vehemently opposed to any moves which they construe as "appeasement" of the IRA.
Having finally persuaded them that he is sound on Europe, he is unlikely to risk alienating them by angering the unionists on Northern Ireland. David Trimble and the Ulster Unionists may be in for a shock in today's poll, but they still have a bloc of nine MPs at Westminster and powerful allies both inside the British cabinet and on the back benches.
Mr Major's war on Brussels has as much to do with rallying his party in the run up to an election as with the ban on British beef. Given the popular response to his decision, it seems likely that this show will run and run.
The implications for Ireland's chairing of the EU presidency and for the good health of AngloIrish relations are depressing. On the one hand, we want to make a success of important initiatives undertaken with our other European partners. On the other, we will have to be conscious that any perception that we are ganging up with them against Britain will have a spillover effect on popular and political opinion in both countries.
But it is in relation to the peace process that real concern must be expressed. Today, as the people of Northern Ireland go to the polls, the path to all party talks seems more tortuous and uncertain than ever.
Even allowing for the fact that a campaign of this kind is not the best time to judge how politicians may behave once the poll is over, recent signals are not encouraging. As well as this, the impression has been growing in Dublin that, understandably perhaps, John Major has virtually disengaged from any active involvement in Northern Ireland policy.
Sinn Fein seems to have accepted that the Prime Minister's problems, the fact that his attention is now focused exclusively on his own political survival, means that this stage of the peace process, based on close co operation between the British and Irish governments, may be over.
Gerry Adams has been telling his supporters that they must not become "fixated" on June 10th as the date for talks. The Sinn Fein leader has not said how his party, or the IRA, will react if the talks do not start then. There has been little discussion of what the Irish Government's strategy should be if Sinn Fein is excluded or if the impasse over decommissioning is not resolved.
PERHAPS I am being unduly pessimistic and these problems will be solved in a way which will allow the talks to start and to reasonable progress.
But, if it is the case that there is little real prospect of substantial political advance until a general election brings a new government in Britain, that raises questions of enormous importance for all the parties who helped to bring about the original IRA ceasefire.
What can the Irish Government the SDLP the benign influence of Irish America do to steady the situation in the meantime? It will not be enough to depend on muddling through the episodes of political theatre which seem all too likely in the weeks ahead.
What is needed now is evidence of a coherent strategy which will enable Gerry Adams to convince the IRA that the next stage of the peace process is going to demand heroic patience, but that nothing will be gained by a return to the terrible, tragic violence of the past.
The overwhelming majority of republicans have learnt, albeit with difficulty, that sooner or later there is going to have to be a negotiated settlement. They say so, often through gritted teeth. The alternative is to condemn another generation to futile suffering and loss.
But getting to that settlement is going to be a slow and difficult business, made even more problematical by John Major's situation. How bitterly ironic that the British Prime Minister should have opted for a phoney war against his European partners at a time when the efforts of Irish nationalists are desperately concentrated on trying to hold an uncertain peace.