It was back in February that European Commission president Jean Claude Juncker greeted the Irish Taoiseach in his office in Brussels and proceeded, for the benefit of the cameras, to show Leo Varadkar a giant card from a well wisher bearing the legend: “Thank You From Ireland.”

As a smirking Varadkar looked on, half proudly, half sheepishly, Juncker pointed out the message inside, which, it later emerged, included the words: “For the first time ever, Ireland is stronger than Britain.”

For the Taoiseach, who’d ridden high in the polls for months as a result of standing up to the British – never an unpopular stance back home – it was a high point for Irish soft power. A weakened Theresa May had failed to get the withdrawal agreement through the Commons, but the Brexiteer “ultras” were weak and outnumbered, and a resurgent Remainer Parliament would soon stop Britain crashing out at the end of March without a deal.

Ireland was united with the other 27 nations. Stronger together, you might even say.

Fast forward a few short months, and things couldn’t look more different. A worried Irish public is being browbeaten with warnings about the dangers of an increasingly likely No Deal Brexit on October 31st, including the latest prediction from Dublin’s Central Bank of 100,000 job losses. The Irish “do or die” strategy on the backstop has been knocked for six by the equally bullish “come what may” approach of new Prime Minister Johnson; and, if the cricketing analogy can be extended, the country’s government seems now to be suffering the political equivalent of the second innings batting collapse which the national team recently endured in its first Test against England at Lord’s, despite an equally promising start.

At least one poll now finds rising dissatisfaction with the Taoiseach’s confrontational handling of Brexit, and the settled assurance of a majority of Irish people, as expressed in that absurdly oversized greetings card, that the backstop would survive every eventuality, has been dented, perhaps fatally.

Any hope in Britain that this might change the approach in government circles in Dublin would be sadly premature, however.

It’s true that there has been a growing number of articles in the Irish press questioning the wisdom of Varadkar’s government putting all its eggs into the single basket of the backstop, and joining in so gleefully with the EU’s determination to show Britain who’s boss. Ireland now faces the threat within weeks of being forced by the EU to erect customs infrastructure on the Irish side of the border to protect the single market, despite Jean Claude Juncker personally assuring members of the Dail, when he visited last year, that Europe would not do so under any circumstances. As such, and unless some rabbit can be pulled out of the hat, those who predicted that the backstop would make a No Deal more likely, thereby hurting rather than protecting Ireland, can say with some justification that they’ve been vindicated.

All the same, public criticism of the government’s overall strategy is still a trickle in Ireland rather than a flood, and it would be misreading the situation to suggest that the Irish public is about to turn on its own Backstoppers, much less learn to love the Brexiteers across the Irish Sea and north of the border. Even the poll at the weekend which found that 43 per cent of Irish voters disagree with the Taoiseach’s handling of Brexit might not be as dramatic as it seems at first glance.

It is, after all, the same proportion as disagree with Varadkar’s approach generally, after a wounding series of domestic scandals and blunders around health and housing.

There are other perturbing signs that the official effort to deflect awkward questions by rallying Irish people together in one last patriotic push for victory has not weakened in the slightest. One telling incident this week involved Timmy Dooley, a TD with the opposition Fianna Fail party, who tweeted on Tuesday morning: “The stand-off with our nearest neighbour is as a direct result of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s failure to engage in basic diplomacy over the past two years. The Government’s lack of experience and arrogance will hurt Ireland in the coming months.”

He wasn’t saying more than had already been stated by certain backstop-sceptical newspaper columnists. Indeed, his own party leader, Michael Martin, has questioned the Taoiseach’s naïve over reach on more than one occasion. Dooley was nonetheless forced to delete the tweet within hours, under pressure not only from a predictable social media backlash and rival parties including Sinn Fein, who insisted, butter not melting in their mouths at all, that “Irish politicians need to act in unison to protect our interests”, but also by Martin himself.

The Fianna Fail leader didn’t directly defend Leo Varadkar, whose government he’s propping up in an uneasy confidence and supply agreement, but he did criticise Boris for demanding that Ireland and the EU begin new talks on a trade deal without preconditions, which he denounced as “not within the realms of normal diplomatic or political behaviour.”

Clearly Martin does not feel that there is much mileage in being seen as too close to Boris Johnson or too hostile to the Irish government’s approach. He’s a sharp reader of the public mood, and has behaved with exemplary pluralism towards unionists in Northern Ireland when other southern Irish politicians have stirred the sectarian pot. He’s clearly not detecting a decisive shift just yet.

So far voices questioning the backstop are still greatly outnumbered by those insisting that the Irish government must not back down, and State broadcaster RTE, like its BBC counterpart, continues to angrily paint Brexit as a plot by racist Little Englanders to do down plucky little Ireland, and can’t wait for it to fail so that they can gloat over the ruins.

If a No deal happens, and is as bad for Ireland as predicted by the doomsayers, then there will undoubtedly be some damage to Leo Varadkar. He’s never won an election, having taken over mid-term from his predecessor after an internal contest, just as Boris did, though with a notable absence of the indignant cat calls that this was an affront to democracy. Leo could well lead his party to defeat when he faces the electorate for the first time, which is scheduled to take place before April 2021 at any rate, a unique humiliation for any leader.

But while he may face hostility, there will still be enough rancour left over to send Britain’s way. Anglophobia is not a scarce resource on the western board of the Irish Sea. There’s always enough of it to go around.

Irish voters will punish the Taoiseach if he presides over economic damage, but they will also blame the British. It’s not an “either/or” situation, more of a “cake and eat it” one.

And why not? No one likes being pushed around by larger neighbours. Brexiteers don’t like it when the EU does it. They’re pushing back. The Irish don’t like it when the British do it to them. They’ll push back as well. The balance of power has shifted since February, but not the desire to win.

Timmy Dooley’s critics are right about one thing. Irish politicians should act together in the country’s best interests. They just seem paralysed as to where those interests lie.

That’s why Leo Varadkar will probably only blink when Brussels blinks, fearing that every move he makes otherwise will be the wrong one. Boris may have been undiplomatic to wait so long before phoning the Taoiseach, but it was a pointed demonstration of where the real influence lies, and that’s not in Dublin right now. Varadkar’s best bet is to present whatever Brussels decides to do or not do as the Halloween deadline approaches as Ireland’s settled and independent will as well. He’s on that ship. He has to ride it until it reaches the destination or else sinks.

Either way, there is little prospect of Irish opinion turning sharply against the EU. Pro-European sentiment in Ireland survived years of less than benign post-recession rule by the troika, as well as being landed with the lion’s share of European bank debt. There was a slight upturn in eurosceptic attitudes during that time, but not enough to worry Brussels, especially since Irish governments have always shown a willingness to make the electorate keep voting until they reach the “right” verdict. Faith in the EU’s essentially benevolent nature has become quasi-religious.

One writer in the establishment-friendly Irish Times this week even declared, with fawning gratitude, that the EU’s greatest achievement in Ireland had been in “opening our minds”. He sounded like John Lennon at the feet of his gurus in India, imbibing cosmic wisdom.

A No Deal which has the disastrous consequences for Ireland that doomsayers predict will make no dent in this faith, it’s more likely to reinforce it in the short to medium term, just as previous travails sent earlier generations back to the comfort of the Catholic church.

What might make a difference is if No Deal fails to bring about the end of civilisation as we know it, or even turns out to be a success, which will expose Brussels and the media naysayers as last ditch defenders of a broken status quo rather than the dispassionate voices of reason they imagine themselves to be. Voters in Ireland might then start wondering why they allowed their destinies to become tied to a backstop which few of them understood anyway, and whose importance to a partitioned island’s security and prosperity was exaggerated for cynical political reasons. They have done so at the risk not only of stoking fires of Anglophobia which had been dying down for decades, but, more seriously, of undoing decades of bridge building with unionists in Northern Ireland, with no discernible benefit.

Whatever happens, one truth remains incontrovertible. If Ireland thrives in spite of Brexit, then it will be put down to the fraternal aid of friends in the EU. If it suffers because of Brexit, it will be blamed entirely on Britain. That’s not going to change any time soon.