Boris’s game plan: is optimism enough?
“For the last four weeks of the Tory leadership contest we’d all been stumbling about in the dark. Our eyes had become accustomed to it, our pupils dilated,” said Tom Peck in The Independent. And then last Friday, “Andrew Neil stormed in like an angry dad, ripped back the curtain,” and revealed the state we’re in. First up to be interviewed was Jeremy Hunt; for the past month, he had been boasting like a “deluded” Apprentice candidate about the teaching website he set up before going into politics. But Neil was having none of that. “You keep saying you’re an entrepreneur – you’re not exactly Steve
Jobs or Bill Gates are you?” he demanded.
To which Hunt could only say: “No, I’m not.” Then came Boris Johnson, still waffling on about Gatt Article 24 Paragraph 5b. “But what about Paragraph 5c,” asked Neil. “Do you know what’s in Paragraph 5c?” Johnson’s “protracted grasping for an answer was almost a work of art”, but finally he came up with it: “No.” Even on the most vital issue of his campaign, he had only bluster. How, then, is he going to persuade the EU to remove the backstop from the withdrawal agreement and give him a new deal that the Commons will pass? “There is now a new focus to the negotiations, a new optimism,” he said.
In short, he hasn’t a clue.
And yet, there’s really no doubt about it, said Adam Boulton in The Sunday Times. The man who set his sights on becoming “world king” as a young boy now seems sure to be our next PM. And some of his fiercest critics have adjusted their positions accordingly: the “self-styled progressive” Matt Hancock was among the first to jump on the Back Boris bandwagon; even Amber Rudd, that outspoken opponent of a no-deal Brexit, has signalled that she’d be willing to serve in his Cabinet after all. Maybe once he’s in No. 10, he’ll revert to “liberal Johnson”, who as London’s mayor championed immigration and the single market; and maybe he does have the elan to get a better deal – and sell it. So why not? He has, after all, assured us that the likelihood of Britain leaving with no deal is a “million-to-one”. That may be their thinking. Yet Johnson has transmitted a very different message to Brexiteers in his party; and they won’t leave him with much room for manoeuvre.
So what will happen, wondered the FT. Johnson’s team insist that by making it clear that they’re serious about no deal, they can persuade Brussels to incorporate an exit mechanism into the backstop (although it has repeatedly stated that it is not even prepared to re-open the withdrawal agreement). And they’re confident that enough Tory and Labour MPs are so exhausted by Brexit, and so fearful of losing their seats to either the Brexit Party or the Lib Dems, they will back a revamped deal. But what if the EU doesn’t, in fact, blink first? Chancellor Philip Hammond has warned that no deal could cost the Exchequer £90bn a year; a leaked memo prepared by Stephen Barclay, the Brexit Minister, notes that just to ensure that the pharmaceutical industry stockpiles enough medicines would take six to eight months (more time than is left); and though Barclay is bullish about the EU’s willingness to negotiate to avoid a no-deal exit that would damage both sides, he says crashing out on 31 October remains a very real possibility – and has conceded that many small businesses are not ready for it.
But here’s Johnson’s problem, said Andrew Grice in The Independent. He’ll struggle to get an acceptable new deal, and he’ll struggle to crash out too. No deal is bitterly opposed by many in his party, and members of this “Gaukward squad” – which includes David Gauke and Hammond – are determined to block it. This week, Dominic Grieve told The Guardian that some MPs might feel they have to vote to bring down the Johnson government to prevent a no-deal exit. This follows the warning from former PM John Major that if Johnson tried to prorogue Parliament to enable us to crash out, he’d seek a judicial review to try to halt it.
“In his first 100 days, he’ll have to go into combat over Brexit and contend
with a slowing global economy”
Johnson is a man fizzing with can-do optimism – which is just as well, said Allister Heath in The Daily Telegraph. With the establishment out to get him, there will be no honeymoon period in his premiership. In his first 100 days, if he even lasts that long, he’ll have to go into combat over Brexit while also contending with a slowing global economy. He’ll need nerves of steel and a crack team. It’s an irony, really, said Sonia Purnell in The Guardian. It was Johnson who, as a Brussels correspondent in the 1990s, did as much as anyone to fuel the Eurosceptic movement, by producing a string of outlandish stories about fishermen forced to wear hairnets, snails reclassified as fish and sinister continental “plots” to trap the unwary Brits. Now, he is to be entrusted with fixing the mess he helped create. Is this famously unreliable, unserious man capable of doing so? I am not holding my breath.