HAS HE FOUND THE ART OF THE DEAL?

JUDGING from Boris Johnson’s change in Brexit tactics, you could be forgiven for thinking he had been reading Donald Trump’s book The Art Of The Deal. In it, Trump – as a businessman before entering politics – explained his approach to winning multi-billion-dollar deals. One observer summed it up as ‘threaten the outrageous, ratchet up the tension, amplify it with tweets and taunts and then compromise on fairly conventional middle ground.’

Johnson is more likely to quote Cicero or Churchill but considering that he’s been pinned into a corner and forced to review his strategy, he may have to follow Trump’s negotiating method.

Boris’s version of ‘threatening the outrageous’ was his vow to ‘ die in a ditch’ if Britain doesn’t leave the EU on October 31. He has since ‘ratcheted up the tension’ with repeated threats about leaving without a deal and had dumped 21 anti-No Deal Tory MPs while has gone about ‘amplifying’ his intransigence. And with just 49 days to go until his deadline, there are signs he is moving Trump-like towards the ‘fairly conventional middle ground.’

Principally, that means viciously rebutting Nigel Farage’s offer of a general election pact, with No 10 branding the Brexit Party leader unfit to govern.

This was part of a charm offensive to the Tory 21, who loathe Farage and are keen to get back into the fold rather than risk losing their jobs as independents. Of course, the torpedo launched at Farage could backfire if Johnson ever needs his help in an election in northern, Leave-voting seats.

Another step into the middle ground is Johnson’s apparent willingness to compromise on the Northern Irish backstop.

A similar proposal was put forward by Brussels two years ago but rejected by Theresa May, mainly because Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) said it was tantamount to letting Brussels ‘annexe’ Ulster.

So why has Johnson revived the idea? Ever the optimist, he saw his Monday meeting with the Irish PM as a chance to show he could back out of the corner he has found himself after losing control of the Brexit process to MPs, having had no Commons majority and having failed to get the election he wanted.

HE

stated that a No Deal Brexit would be ‘a failure of statecraft’ and said there had to be ‘ a way out’ while giving Ireland the assurances it needs.

More details of Johnson’s new ‘backstop 2.0’ – as one diplomat called it – have since emerged. The key difference is that it would only cover Northern Ireland, leaving the rest of the UK free to arrange trade deals with countries around the world.

In place of Mrs May’s backstop would be an ‘all-Ireland zone’ for livestock and agricultural goods – which form the bulk of crossborder trade – avoiding the need for most checks. Northern Ireland – but not the British mainland – would stay aligned to EU regulations so as to smooth its working. The EU’s newly appointed Trade Commissioner, Irishman Phil Hogan said the penny was ‘finally dropping’ in London that the only hope of a Brexit breakthrough was a Northern Ireland-only backstop.

Despite this glint of light at the end of the tunnel, Johnson realised he had to convince the DUP and Tory hardliners that he was not ratting on his pledge to ‘bin the backstop’.

Johnson has been helped in his task by changes in parliamentary arithmetic since Mrs May failed three times to get her EU exit deal approved.

First, the DUP has lost much of its bargaining power. Having expelled 21 anti-No Deal Tory MPs, it would now take far more than the DUP’s ten MPs to restore the Conservatives’ Commons majority.

So far, the DUP has not rejected Johnson’s new backstop plan out of hand. In fact, Northern Ireland’s politicians have been offered the carrot of having a say in EU regulations covering the proposed ‘all-Ireland zone’.

And Johnson has thrown into the mix the prospect – however far-fetched – of a road bridge joining Scotland and Northern Ireland as a concrete symbol of all four parts of the United Kingdom being linked.

As well as Farage-bashing, he is building other bridges with the 21 Tory MPs he expelled from the party. He’s counting on them to back him, because, he says, ‘the spears in my back won’t be from you, they’ll come from the Spartans’. This is a reference to hardline anti-EU Tory MPs who brought down Mrs May and who liken themselves to the Ancient Greek warriors from Sparta.

Some of these die-hards won’t surrender even if the backstop is ditched in its entirety but there are others in this caucus of about 50 MPs who could be won over.

MEANwHILE,

he’s busy wooing Tory Remainers, mischievously calling himself a ‘Brexity Hezza’ – after Europhile Tory peer Lord Heseltine – and signalling his social conservative credentials by saying foreign students will be allowed to work in the UK for longer after they graduate.

But even if the dumped Tory MPs, the Brussels-baiting and the DUP come round to supporting a new backstop plan and EU negotiators approve it, too – a lot of ‘ifs’, admittedly – Johnson will still need some Labour support to get it through the Commons.

The truth is that Jeremy Corbyn prefers to block Johnson rather than accept any sensible compromise deal.

That said, it is estimated that up to 50 Labour MPs in Leavevoting constituencies could back such an agreement. If so, Boris Johnson might need just one more tactic to stagger over the October 31 line. How about another piece of advice – from Trump’s Art Of The Deal: ‘ Be flexible and consider multiple solutions to every impasse.’