On 24 July 2019, his election by the voting membership of the Conservative and Unionist Party confirmed, Boris Johnson stood on Downing St and told us:
“The people who bet against Britain [apart from my financier friends of course] are going to lose their shirts because we are going to restore trust in our democracy and we are going to fulfil the repeated promises of parliament to the people and come out of the EU on October 31, no ifs or buts. And we will do a new deal, a better deal that will maximise the opportunities of Brexit while allowing us to develop a new and exciting partnership with the rest of Europe based on free trade and mutual support... I have every confidence that in 99 days’ time we will have cracked it. But you know what – we aren’t going to wait 99 days because the British people have had enough of waiting."
A new deal eh? Watch those 99 days, and remember that "we aren't going to wait".
There will be no Queen's speech, and I will not demonstrate my majority
"I and all Ministers are committed to leaving on this
date, whatever the circumstances. To do otherwise would cause a
catastrophic loss of confidence in our political system. It would leave
the British people wondering whether their politicians could ever be
trusted again to follow a clear democratic instruction. I would prefer
us to leave the EU with a deal; I would much prefer it. I believe that
it is possible, even at this late stage, and I will work flat out to
make it happen, but certain things need to be clear. The withdrawal
agreement negotiated by my predecessor has been three times rejected by
this House. Its terms are unacceptable to this Parliament and to this
country. No country that values its independence, and indeed its
self-respect, could agree to a treaty that signed away our economic
independence and self-government, as this backstop does. A time limit is
not enough. If an agreement is to be reached, it must be clearly
understood that the way to the deal goes by way of the abolition of the
backstop.
"For our part, we
are ready to negotiate, in good faith, an alternative, with provisions
to ensure that the Irish border issues are dealt with where they should
always have been: in the negotiations on the future agreement between
the UK and the EU. I do not accept the argument that says that these
issues can be solved only by all or part of the UK remaining in the
customs union or in the single market. The evidence is that other
arrangements are perfectly possible, and are also perfectly compatible
with the Belfast or Good Friday agreement, to which we are, of course,
steadfastly committed. I, my team, and my right hon. Friend the
Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union are ready to meet and
talk on this basis to the European Commission, or other EU colleagues,
whenever and wherever they are ready to do so."
Greg Hands asked him: "Does [the prime minister] welcome the findings of the alternative arrangements commission, led by [myself] and... Nicky Morgan?" and was told: "I do... the facilitations and the remedies do exist. What it takes now is the political will to get there".
A couple of other things to watch out for here:
- any signs of Johnson "working flat out" to make a deal happen
- any signs of readiness to "negotiate... an alternative" or, in particular, to "talk... to the European Commission, or other EU colleagues, whenever and wherever they are ready"
And one to leave hanging: It would leave the British people wondering whether their politicians could ever be trusted again
You'd think, at this point, he'd be looking for alternatives.
I will not meet these people
The next Monday, with Parliament conveniently dispatched on a summer holiday, Politico reported a government briefing: "Boris Johnson will not meet EU leaders until they agree to change their position on the Northern Irish backstop... while he wants to meet EU leaders and negotiate a Brexit deal, he does not want to be sat down and told that the EU cannot possibly reopen the Withdrawal Agreement and that is the message he has been giving to leaders when he has spoken to them on the telephone so far".Johnson had hardened his position, the report continued, [two] days after the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier urged European leaders [in a leaked letter] to "remain calm" and "stick to our principles and guidelines and show solidarity and unity" in response to Johnson's insistence that the backstop provision in the Withdrawal Agreement be axed.
The spokesperson said: "The Withdrawal Agreement was rejected by parliament a number of times now and clearly it is not going to pass in its current form. It needs to change if there is going to be a deal".
Later that day (still from Politico), in an interview with broadcast media, Johnson said: "I don't want the UK to be aloof or hanging back. I want us to engage, to hold out the hand and go the extra mile, the thousand miles. And what we wanted to do is to make it absolutely clear that the backstop is no good, it's dead, it's got to go, the Withdrawal Agreement is dead, it's got to go. But there is scope to do a new deal".
Which she didn't.
But he grabbed this "blistering deadline" with both hands, because it meant he could run the clock down almost half the way to Halloween with an excuse that he was looking at alternative arrangements. And he went straight back home and instructed his DExEU secretary to "turbocharge" work on alternatives, without ever having done more than recite the two phases he could remember from the Alternative Arrangements report a couple of times.
You'd think he'd have told his "friend and partner" that he had been working on a comprehensive alternative scheme which she would see within days. After all, time is short (but perhaps not short enough for him).
Interlude
It might come as a surprise to some, but it is not the job of the EU Commission negotiators, or the representatives of 27 member states, who tell the negotiators what to do, to give the UK a "good deal".I know we're sceptical, but you made us so
And while Johnson was in Biarritz... out came a "leak" which you have to suspect was intended to keep the pressure on MPs at home, but could certainly screw up Johnson's relations with his "friends and partners" at the G7 and later. "An email from senior government advisers to an adviser in No 10 – written within the last 10 days and seen by the Observer – makes clear that the prime minister has recently requested guidance on the legality of" shutting Parliament down "for five weeks from 9 September in what appears to be a concerted plan to stop MPs forcing a further extension to Brexit".
This move seemed to have faded away in recent days, but it might be that the cynical "coup" of executive over legislature is still a thing of propaganda (Sunday morning press statements naturally said it wasn't happening), if not a definite tactic. The idea that legislation might be required in those last few weeks to make No Deal "work" is forbidden in government circles.
And in interviews after the get together in the Basque sunshine Johnson talked of No Deal being touch and go (he has to start trying to get a deal yet) rather than a million to one against. It'll be some other formulation tomorrow. Similarly, he presented his talks with Trump about a big, nay, humongous, nay, the biggest US-UK deal you've ever seen (© the orange man-child, 2019) as likely to take not a bit less than one year (as Trump would like for electoral purposes) and not five years (which is beyond public thinking at the moment), but... what? He neglected to say. What a surprise.
He said a lot more, but it really isn't worth reporting because it will be forgotten tomorrow.
Alternative arrangements
In December 2017 the "Joint report from the negotiators of the European Union and the United Kingdom Government on progress during phase 1 of negotiations under Article 50 TEU on the United Kingdom's orderly withdrawal from the European Union" (these titles really trip off the tongue) introduced the Brexit backstop to the world.Article 49 stated: "The United Kingdom remains committed to protecting North-South cooperation and to its guarantee of avoiding a hard border. Any future arrangements must be compatible with these overarching requirements. The United Kingdom's intention is to achieve these objectives through the overall EU-UK relationship. Should this not be possible, the United Kingdom will propose specific solutions to address the unique circumstances of the island of Ireland. In the absence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement."
As some of the media reported at the time, that meant that the eventual aim of this Brexit thing was to agree an "overall EU-UK relationship" which would protect the Good Friday Agreement's implementation. If that couldn't be achieved by the end of the withdrawal agreement's transition period (as everybody expected), the UK would propose "specific solutions" to achieve the same objectives, and while we were all waiting for one of those two solutions ("in the absence of agreed solutions"), the backstop would apply ("the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment..." with more in Article 50).
Specific solutions became alternative arrangements, and much work has been done since then. Many Brexiters have told us it would be easy, because the EU Parliament had published a document which did it all. It didn't of course, and it was immediately obvious that most people who referred to it hadn't read it. I took a look at it in March 2018.
There have been quite a few proposals since then, culminating in the work of the Alternative Arrangements Commission, whose report Johnson quotes to back up his assertions that there are "abundant solutions" to this problem (again, without convincingly demonstrating that he's read it). Setting aside the questions and problems which have been raised (of which there are many), let's just turn to the recommendations on page 11 of the full report.
Number 1 is "Working Alternative Arrangements should be fully up and running within three years", which is certainly less time than a full set of agreements on a future UK-EU relationship would be likely to take. But if it's No Deal, what happens during those three years? There would be no alternative arrangements on the border, indeed no arrangements at all.
And we keep hearing reports from the Police Service of Northern Ireland such as this, from ITV. Chief Constable Simon Byrne tells us the border can't be policed electronically.
Incidentally, a backstop, and a Northern Ireland-only backstop at that, not the whole-UK idea that May dragged out of the EU negotiators, seems to be pretty popular among the people actually concerned.
#Brexit - Poll suggests 58.4% of voters in Northern Ireland support the backstop - with 39.5% against it. pic.twitter.com/8wwlQo1Alr— Darran Marshall (@DarranMarshall) August 18, 2019
A bit more from an Irish-informed viewpoint
One of Johnson's earnest throwaway lines is to claim that his "friends and partners" in the EU27 are "beginning to realise" what the UK's problem with the backstop is. Of course they've known it for two years or more. Kevin O’Rourke, professor of economic history at Oxford, took a step back in the Observer."The only region of the world where you will find sovereign states coexisting without border checks on the trade between them is the EU. There is nothing accidental about this, since eliminating borders was the great project of the EU. It did so by eliminating the reasons why modern states find it necessary to inspect goods crossing international frontiers: in particular, different tariffs on imports from the rest of the world, implying an incentive for criminals to smuggle goods from countries where tariffs are low to countries where they are high; and different rules on what can be legally bought and sold, implying an incentive for criminals to smuggle goods from countries where they can be legally sold to countries where they are prohibited.
The first reason for border controls was eliminated by the simple expedient of setting up a customs union, which dates back to the foundation of the old EEC and involves all member states having a common trade policy vis-a-vis third countries. And the second was eliminated by ensuring that the rules governing what can be legally bought and sold are the same across the EU: this is the single market, which as you will recall was a largely British invention. When it came into effect in 1993, border controls on trade vanished across Europe."
"However, that will not stop many in the UK claiming that the backstop, which de facto keeps Northern Ireland in the customs union and single market for goods, is not required to avoid a hard border in Ireland; that in a no-deal scenario you wouldn’t need one anyway; that if there are checks on UK goods at Calais this will constitute “punishment” by the EU; and so forth. While many making such claims are just being dishonest, there are probably others who are genuinely confused. And one reason for that is that they’ve so internalised the EU’s greatest success that they assume it is the natural state of affairs.
Which is wrong and also a bit ironic."
Who is this Boris Johnson?
He tells us, wrongly, "we will send you back... if you come illegally, you are an illegal migrant and the law will treat you as such".
Is he unable to see it as anything but a game? Being able to introduce a lighter moment to illustrate a point can be a good device for public engagement. Being unable not to borders on the sociopathic.
