It’s the final reckoning: Back Boris now – or Brexit dies in a ditch
I’D RATHER be dead in a ditch than ask for a Brexit delay,’ Boris Johnson warned last month. And so this morning he finds himself staring into that ditch, hands tied behind his back, as Arlene Foster, Steve Baker and a small group of Labour and Tory MPs weigh up whether to despatch him beneath its cold, muddy waters. Brexit has had its share of door-die moments. But we really have now reached the reckoning point. Time is up. Either a deal is agreed this week, or the chances of securing one evaporate for good. There can be no more open-ended extensions. No frantic letterwriting to the chairman of the 1922 Committee. Those who want Britain to leave the European Union are out of options. They back the prime minister and his pact with Leo Varadkar, or Brexit dies.
For the allies of Boris, there is no sugarcoating the nature of the choice they now have to make.
The full details of Thursday’s agreement remain shrouded in mystery, but one thing is clear. It was Britain, not Ireland or the EU, that made the most significant concessions. Boris may not have blinked completely, but he was compelled to flutter his eyelashes at Varadkar.
Which leaves Arlene Foster and her DUP colleagues facing the toughest decision of all. They have already moved further than anyone thought possible by accepting the partition of Britain and Northern Ireland along the Irish Sea. But now they will have to move again, and relinquish the veto that would have made that painful separation a temporary one.
THE Spartans of the European Research Group will also have to swallow their pride, and sound the retreat. They will not have the No Deal Brexit they crave. Ugly, messy compromise, rather than a glorious charge, is now the only route out of the EU.
It’s about to get ugly for Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit rebels as well. Last week 19 of them sent a letter to Jean-Claude Juncker urging him ‘to work night and day, if required, to agree a deal so the UK parliament can make a clear decision to close this chapter in the coming weeks’. He is complying with their request.
So a swarm of feral Corbynites and kamikaze Remainers is set to descend on these ‘Red Tories’ preparing to vote through a Conservative Brexit.
This also represents the final chance for the Conservative Party’s own 21 prisoners of conscience. They have consistently said their goal is to stop a No Deal Brexit, not derail Brexit entirely. So they too face their moment of truth. ‘It seems this is quite a hard Brexit they’re pushing,’ one Tory rebel told me on Friday. Perhaps it is. But they either support Boris now, or turn their backs on their party forever. For all those MPs who genuinely seek to deliver on the instruction given them in the referendum by the British people – as opposed to those who cynically trot out the mantra ‘I respect the result but…’ – there is no longer anywhere left to hide. The past week has seen to that. Downing Street has no ‘secret plan’ to be activated if the talks break down. The moment a senior No 10 aide began briefing that Boris would defy the Queen and lecture her on how she was powerless to sack him in the event of a lost vote of no confidence, it became clear talk of legal challenges and multiple letter ruses to circumvent the Benn Act was simply braggadocio and bluster. There are also signs the fall-back strategy of channelling anger at parliament’s intransigence into a bulldozing No Deal majority is failing to work.
A ComRes poll published on Friday revealed if the prime minister doesn’t deliver on his pledge to leave by the 31st it would result in a hung parliament.
The Brexiteers have to realise there is no better Brexit waiting just over the horizon.
They either seize the day, or night envelopes them. Yes, there is some muttering about being let down. That Boris’s deal is merely a pig sporting Theresa May’s lipstick. But Johnson deserves more credit than that. The accusation he was negotiating in bad faith has been disproved. Yes, he has given ground. But so have the Irish and the EU. Leo Varadkar vowed never to engage bilaterally with the UK. In the garden of Thornton House, much to the surprise of Mr Johnson’s own team – he did.
But the opportunity this presents will not remain open for long. Brexit’s opponents had the chance to sabotage the entire process, and blew it. When the Supreme Court vetoed the prorogation, and dragged Boris back to the Commons, the Remainers had him at their mercy. They could have moved in for the kill with a noconfidence motion. They could have accelerated the timetable for an extension.
They could even have started laying the groundwork for a second referendum. But they squandered their opportunity in a self-indulgent squabble over who would lead the nation when Boris and Brexit fell.
They will not squander it again. You can sense their fear. ‘If Boris Johnson gets a deal, it won’t have a mandate without a people’s vote,’ David Lammy tweeted, as he and his colleagues began a desperate reverse ferret on their mantra that parliament holds primacy over any ‘advisory’ referenda.
If Boris’s deal is passed this week – first by Brussels, then by MPs in their historic Saturday session – it is over. In that instant Britain’s Brexit purgatory ends. And any party that tries to fight the subsequent election on a platform of reopening this hellish Pandora’s Box, and returning the UK to the chaos and paralysis of the past three years, will find themselves run out of town.