Arlene’s last laugh?
How knife-edge day of tortuous talks see-sawed between hope and despair...
‘The EU haven’t helped with endless babbling’
ADDRESSING the Cabinet yesterday, Boris Johnson reached for a vivid cinematic reference to describe the state of the Brexit negotiations.
‘It’s a bit like The Shawshank Redemption. We’re in the tunnel,’ he said – using the EU’s term for the final, intense phase of the talks.
In the 1994 film, a prisoner crawls through a rancid mile-long sewage tunnel before finally tasting freedom.
Later, before the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs, he compared the talks to climbing Everest, saying: ‘We are not quite at the summit, we are at the Hillary Step. The summit is not far but at the moment it is still shrouded in cloud.’
It was typical Boris - both summarising his predicament and raising a laugh, even when the chips are down.
But however easy he found it to make light of the situation, yesterday was a difficult day for the Prime Minister, and the first time he has tasted the intransigence of the DUP.
Infamously, Theresa May had to pull out of December 2017 talks with Jean- Claude Juncker to take an hour-long call from a furious Arlene Foster, the DUP leader.
May could be forgiven for a wry smile at his predicament. One MP joked that she was probably ‘doing cartwheels down the corridor’ watching him suffer.
For yesterday, it was her successor whose hopes of doing a deal were scuppered by the Northern Irish party saying ‘No, No, No’.
Late on Tuesday night, in the Berlaymont, the European Commission’s 13-storey Brussels headquarters, there was still optimism a deal could be done. On the fifth floor, the lights were still on as EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier’s midnight deadline to agree a deal came and went.
After refuelling on sandwiches and pasta salad late in the evening, the negotiating teams, split between multiple rooms to cover more ground, persevered until 1.30am before calling it quits.
At one point a junior UK official was sent out to buy a bag load of white shirts for diplomats on the UK side who were running out of fresh clothes.
Mr Johnson’s chief negotiator David Frost, who leads a team of 25 officials, retired to the British ambassador’s opulent residence on Rue Ducale, but was back in the building at 9am, in one of the fresh shirts.
The negotiations resumed, Frost shuttling between the Commission and the UK Embassy, but to the dismay of the UK side – and despite the Commission briefing to the contrary – there was no Eureka! moment.
By mid-morning, it was clear why. Foster and her deputy Nigel Dodds entered No 10 for talks with the PM by the back door, via the Cabinet office on Whitehall. They weren’t saying much, but a few hundred yards away in the House of Commons, the DUP’s Sammy Wilson spelled out the party’s demands when he erupted at Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay at a committee hearing.
The deal as it stands would mean Northern Ireland staying in parts of the single market and – in effect – accepting a customs border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. This represents a huge compromise for the unionist party.
What they want, Wilson barked, was ‘crosscommunity consent’ for the proposal, something he said was required under the Good Friday Agreement. What this means is a vote, or multiple votes, in Stormont, to approve the deal.
The Cabinet meeting was called in the hope Johnson would be able to brief ministers on a deal, but none was available.
While staying upbeat, and delivering his Shawshank Redemption line, he told them: ‘ There’s a chance of securing a good deal but we are not there yet.’
Back in Brussels, the EU had other ideas. The anonymous ‘ EU sources’ who have enraged No 10 for the past three years, were ‘ at it again’, one senior source told me. They briefed friendly journalists that a deal was done. A ‘technical agreement’ had been reached, and the DUP were onside. This was seen in No 10 as a blatant attempt to bounce Mr Johnson into accepting the agreement as it stood. And only hardened the DUP’s resolve.
The source said: ‘The EU haven’t helped with endless babbling about a deal having been done. That briefing was phenomenally unhelpful. People read that stuff and it makes it harder to get this thing over the line.’ Barnier’s deadline slipped and slipped. Due to brief member states at 2pm on the deal, that was pushed back to 5pm and then 7pm. At 4.30pm, Johnson did a five-minute turn at the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, with nothing to announce.
But the Shawshank line went down well. ‘He’s saying he’s up to his eyeballs in s*** but not to give up’, said one MP. Tory MP Mark Francois, deputy chairman of the European Research Group of Brexiteers, said: ‘It was vintage Boris Johnson. It was enthusiastic. It was uplifting. It was positive.’
Some Cabinet ministers are also upbeat about the deal. Attorney General Geoffrey Cox told Cabinet: ‘Last time we were in the seventh circle of hell; this time I’m in an airy villa with a lovely view.’
Yet last night in No 10, the mood was downcast. Johnson’s proposal for a vote in the Northern Ireland Assembly to approve the deal, and one every four years thereafter, hasn’t survived contact with Brussels. It’s far from clear what he can extract from the EU that the DUP will accept. And the grim truth is that without their support, he can’t get his deal through, and there’s little point even turning up to today’s EU Council summit.
In the absence of a deal, the loom. ORIGINAL COPY . ORIGINAL COPY . ORIGINAL COPY . ORIGINAL COPY ORIGINAL COPY
ing deadline set by the Benn act will force him, on Saturday, to ditch his ‘come what may, do or die’ pledge and delay Brexit. he’s riding high in the polls, but after an extension? Will Leave voters blame the MPs who agreed the ‘Surrender act’ or will they blame him?
Privately, Mr Johnson’s most senior advisers haven’t given up hope. Perhaps they’re right to, and he will emerge odorous but victorious.
Or perhaps they should be reading another line from Shawshank, delivered by hard-bitten lag red, played by Morgan Freeman: ‘Let me tell you something, my friend. hope is a dangerous thing. hope can drive a man insane.’