RICHARD LITTLEJOHN on the Cornish Republican Army

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN on the Cornish Republican Army

As if we haven’t got enough trouble with terrorism, holidaymakers are facing another imminent threat. Never mind Islamic State and Al Qaeda.

Even if you have decided to stay at home this year, after attacks from Tunisia to the South of France, it seems nowhere is safe any more. The South-West of England is the new front line.

An outfit calling itself the Cornish Republican Army (CRA) has announced that a number of ‘active service units’ are poised to carry out attacks this summer. 

They are claiming responsibility for setting fire to a Rick Stein restaurant and have tested an explosive device in a former brewery in Redruth.

An outfit calling itself the Cornish Republican Army (CRA) has announced that a number of ‘active service units’ are poised to carry out attacks this summer

The group claimed responsibility for the attack on Rick Stein's restaurant last month

Now they boast that they have their first suicide bomber primed to strike, in the fight to stop the ‘ethnic cleansing of Kernow’. In a statement, the CRA said: ‘Our organisation has grown and we now have one member who is prepared to pay the ultimate price in the battle for Kernow. She is prepared to sacrifice herself although we shall not ask for this lightly â€" only as a last measure.’

Kernow may sound like a suburb of Srebrenica, scene of a gruesome massacre during the Balkans war. But it’s actually the Cornish language name for Cornwall.

In the former Yugoslavia, ‘ethnic cleansing’ led to the murder of thousands of innocents. In Cornwall, it refers to wealthy outsiders buying second homes and cluttering up the beaches.

Over the past few years, picturesque former fishing ports such as Rock and St Ives have been colonised by rich Londoners, including the young royals and Call Me Dave, who was photographed on the beach at Polzeath changing his swimming trunks under a Mickey Mouse towel. Traditional chip shops have given way to trendy restaurants operated by Rick Stein and Jamie Oliver, who also has a Cornish outpost.

Last month, ‘freedom fighters’ set fire to a bin containing gas cylinders at Stein’s branch in Porthleven. They have torn down ‘English Imperialist’ flags â€" what the rest of us call the Cross of St George â€" outside hotels and other public buildings.

It’s not difficult to understand locals aggrieved at being priced out of the housing market and driven from pubs by braying Sloane Rangers and Hooray Henrys, chowing down on organic quinoa wraps at £12.95 a pop.

If you g rew up in Padstow, you probably wouldn’t react too well to every butcher, baker and candlestick-maker’s shop being turned into yet another extortionate franchise of the Rick Stein empire.

Even so, mounting ‘resistance’ along the lines of the IRA, or Islamist nutjobs, is a bit drastic. The Cornish are already planning to target second homes in the county.

The most worrying development, though, is the revelation that Cornwall’s answer to the White Widow â€" the female English fanatic preparing to die in the last ditch for Izal â€" is ready to make ‘the ultimate sacrifice’.

She wouldn’t have much difficulty blending into the crowd.

At seaside resorts across Britain there is no shortage of women who look as if they are about to explode at any moment, as they emerge from the nearest Wetherspoon’s brimful of Bacardi Breezer and Greggs steak bakes.

You certainly wouldn’t want to be downwind of any of them if they did detonate without warning.

A lean-to bin store which housed three gas cylinders was set alight and firefighters who extinguished the blaze said it was just 15 minutes from destroying the restaurant

The CRA claims to have new funding from other Celtic groups and says it changed its name because of copycats who had prompted 'many arrests'

Maybe that’s the plan. The Cornish Republican Army admit they are short of weapons, so they may have to improvise.

In the absence of Semtex, they might have to pack their volunteer suicide bomber full of pasties before sending her out on a martyrdom mission.

It would need more than a mobile phone signal to set her off. Perhaps they will take their lead from Monty Python’s Mr Creosote.

So if you’re wandering through Padstow and spot a lardy bird in a lumpy T-shirt about to pop a wafer-thin mint into her mouth, best dive for cover. She may be a human IED about to meet her maker â€" and splatter a couple of hundred pounds of meat and potatoes over a wide area.

What puzzles me is how they managed to recruit this suicide bomber. There can’t be too many volunteers for martyrdom in the Cornish peninsula â€" especially among the women. I mean, they can hardly promise her 72 virgins, can they? Perhaps they’re holding out the prospect of a paradise containing a celestial pick’n’mix counter packed with traditional Cornish delicacies such as Stargazy pies and clotted cream teas.

The incident in Porthleven follows years of bitterness between Stein and the local community where he has taken over many businesses and angered locals with his 'arrogance'

The group had previously claimed that activities against TV chef Jamie Oliver - who also has a restaurant in Cornwall - had ceased

Still, who am I to mock? In the current climate of complete madness, the CRA will probably be taken seriously. Could we be about to send coalition troops into Kernow to keep the peace?

Can Theresa May command a majority in Parliament for a full-scale invasion, or will we have to wait for a UN security council resolution? Will we have to close the border, blockading every bridge across the Tamar?

It may be too late. According to one report, police have uncovered a Cornish sleeper cell in Coventry, of all places. Who knows where else they could be hiding? It will probably only be a matter of time before there are calls to sue for peace.

If the female suicide bomber does succeed in her ‘ martyrdom mission’ and manages to take out half of Bodmin town centre, Jeremy Corbyn will no doubt declare solidarity with his ‘friends’ in the CRA and invite its leaders to tea at Westminster.

We may laugh, but when IRA murderers are hailed as peacemakers, Hamas and Hezbollah stooges are allowed to march through London, and Islamist preachers of hate are given visas to peddle their anti-Semitic, anti-Western sermons at ‘respectable’ conferences over the road from Parliament â€" as happened this weekend â€" who can blame disgruntled Cornish separatists for jumping on the jihadist bandwagon?

It’s not so funny after all, is it?

With cod on our side... 

Fisheries ‘experts’ say cod are deserting the North Sea, causing serious shortages. Perhaps the fish have he ard that Michael Gove has given notice that Britain is reclaiming our traditional 200-mile fishing limits.

Stand by for some ludicrous Remoaner like Vince Cable blaming the shortage of cod on Brexit, just like he did with Wimbledon strawberries.

There really is no limit when it comes to Brexit scare stories. According to a new report, anchovy and chips will soon replace cod and haddock on British menus. No it won’t.

What next for chaps - breast feeding? 

The papers are full of stories about ‘men’ having babies. I’m very happy for them, but let’s be honest: they’re not ‘men’ in the true sense of the word.

So let’s stop pretending they are. Men don’t ha ve ovaries and can’t give birth.

They are women who have decided to become men and elected to have sex-change surgery. But because they wanted the best of both worlds, they froze their eggs before undergoing gender reassignment.

Hayden Cross was born a girl called Paige, but put sex-change treatment on hold while she got pregnant using sperm from a donor she found on Facebook.

Who said romance was dead? Yet we are all supposed to celebrate this fairytale love story. The usual loud-mouthed suspects will no doubt start screaming about ‘transphobia’ but, I emphasise, I’m not trying to ban anything here.

However, that doesn’t stop me â€" and millions of others â€"wondering whether this is a proper way to behave.

Not least Hayden Cross’s family. Her uncle says he’s worried about the child, who won’t be able to avoid growing up seriously confused.

Grandmother Christine Edgeworth said: ‘She’s asked me to call her Hayden, but I can’t. In my eyes she will always be Paige. She wasn’t born a boy.’

Precisely. And here’s what baffles me â€" and, presumably, everyone else who accepts the right of others to have a sex change. If you decide to identify as a man, why would you want to give birth?

That’s what women do. 

Not playing a blinder 

Yorkshire’s answer to the Peaky Blinders, the old-fashioned Brummie gangsters in the BBC TV series, have been arrested after traces of their DNA were recovered from the flat caps they used while committing a series of burglaries.

The DNA was matched to samples found at the properties they robbed. Their distinctive caps also contained shards of glass from windows broken at the scene of one of their crimes.

The burglars were sentenced to four-and-a- half years. They might have got away with it if they’d gone out robbing Ilkley Moor style.

Bar t’at.

This week’s edition of You Couldn’t Make It Up comes from Penrith, where a pest exterminator has been accused of ‘racism’ because he only shoots grey squirrels, not the red variety. 

How long before animal rights activists start chaining themselves to airport runways, waving banners reading: Grey Lives Matter? 

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