Johnson and Davis go but themess remains

IN Monty Python, ‘The Ministry of Silly Walks’ was a celebrated sketch featuring John Cleese as a bowlerhatted civil servant in a fictitious British government ministry responsible for developing silly walks. Little did the Pythons realise the farcical notion would four decades later have more credibility than the British government’s handling of the Brexit negotiations.

High on their own bravado, the Brexiteers have been great to talk the talk, but not so good when it has come to walking the walk.

Two years after voting to leave the European Union, the British have yet to bring forward any coherent plan setting out how this would be implemented.

In an effort to break this deadlock, Prime Minister Theresa May sought to bring forward proposals through the Chequers Plan.

The soft Brexit deal would see the British government signing up to a pact that would keep the UK tied to EU rules and regulations indefinitely.

A “free trade area for goods” would be established with the EU, allowing for frictionless trade and avoiding the need for a hard Border between the Republic and Northern Ireland. And a new customs arrangement would treat the UK and EU “as if [they are] a combined customs territory” and Britain would adopt a “common rulebook” with the EU on industrial goods and agricultural products.

However, the Chequers Plan has also been branded a “bodybag summit” and the casualties are already mounting. May’s attempt to strong-arm her cabinet into backing a softer Brexit went well initially, but has now prompted the resignation of two heavy-hitting ministers.

Former Brexit secretary David Davis says he’s not willing to be a “reluctant conscript” to May’s deal.

Ex-foreign secretary Boris Johnson has bemoaned May’s soft Brexit would result in Britain “taking on the status of a colony”.

Civil war has now broken out in the Conservative Party, with senior ministers resigning over the prime minister’s soft Brexit policy and Brexiteer rebels are plotting her downfall. The prime minister will face a heave if 48 MPs sign letters demanding a vote of no confidence and 151 then support such a vote.

Brexit has already toppled one prime minister and a second is now under siege. Further resignations can be expected as Brexiteers will be under pressure to revolt.

E UROPEAN Council President Donald Tusk said Brexit is the “biggest problem in the history of EUUK relations”. He also pointed out the mess isn’t cleared up by Davis’s departure. The same can be said of Johnson. Theresa May has recognised the reality of her situation. Her now former ministers did not.

Their departures will not be lamented by anyone outside of their own immediate support base and certainly not in Brussels or Dublin.

Davis had only spent four hours in total in one-to-one negotiations with EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. He saw the plan as a way to suck Britain further into the EU’s hands and wouldn’t stand over any more concessions in the negotiations.

Johnson, the cheerleader-in-chief for Brexit, is already being branded as one of the worst foreign secretaries in the long history of British diplomacy. His resignation letter had plenty of colourful language but little in the way of solutions to the mess to which Tusk referred.

After talking the talk, Johnson and Davis haven’t walked the walk. They have walked away. And the chaos of Brexit remains in their wake.