We are in a tunnel ... and on Everest, says Johnson
Prime Minister mixes his metaphors as he attempts to rally support at home for his Brexit agreement before Saturday’s crucial vote in the Commons
HAVING all but secured a deal with the European Union, Boris Johnson yesterday turned his focus to winning over his critics at home as he attempted to rally support for his deal before Saturday’s crucial vote.
The Prime Minister employed his skill with words to sell his idea for taking the UK out of the EU.
First he held meetings with the Democratic Unionist Party, then his Cabinet and finally his own backbenchers yesterday.
But it was at a gathering of backbench MPS that the Prime Minister employed a series of metaphors to emphasise to his party just how close he is to completing the arduous Brexit journey.
Brexit, he said, was like the 1994 prison break movie The Shawshank Redemption.
If the EU was the tough Shawshank Prison, Mr Johnson was Andy Dufresne, the innocent lawyer who had
spent 19 years using a tiny hammer to tunnel his way out of an institution in which he was wrongly incarcerated.
“We are in the tunnel,” he told his MPS. “It’s just like the tunnel in Shawshank Redemption.”
At the end of the tunnel, Dufresne memorably has to crawl through “500 yards of sewage” to secure his freedom. Mr Johnson also has a short but potentially painful distance to deliver Brexit and secure his place in political history.
The PM then went on to discuss the infamous Hillary Step on Mount Everest: “If you’ll excuse the mountaineering metaphor, we are at the Hillary Step of the summit: you can see, but it’s shrouded in cloud.”
Perhaps Mr Johnson was unconsciously thinking of Michel Barnier, the EU Brexit negotiator who last week told reporters: “Brexit is like climbing a mountain. We need vigilance, determination and patience.”
Mr Johnson left after less than 10 minutes without taking questions – perhaps mindful that, like the summit of the world’s tallest peak, Brexit is
littered with political corpses – saying that he had “things to do”.
The PM knew that the UK and EU teams were close to agreeing terms. Earlier yesterday, the plan had been to get the deal done by 11am so that Mr Barnier could brief EU27 ambassadors and get the bloc’s heads of state and government behind the deal.
Yet this deadline, like so many others, slipped as talks continued. The sticking point issue remained – as it had since the Brexit talks started – how to deal with Northern Ireland after the UK leaves the EU.
The problems were twofold. Mr Johnson wants Northern Ireland to remain in the UK’S customs territory but with a bespoke arrangement to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.
The Government’s minority partner the Democratic Unionist Party’s 10 MPS were concerned about how the Northern Irish would give consent to the province’s new dual status.
The EU, meanwhile, had concerns that Brexit Britain should not be allowed to undercut EU standards to get a competitive advantage over the bloc.
Oliver Dowden, a Tory Cabinet Office minister, was wheeled out to calm nerves, amid growing speculation that Brussels was insisting on a technical extension to provide time to iron out the details of a new deal.
Mr Dowden told the BBC: “The Prime Minister is absolutely clear on this: we are leaving at the end of this month. We promised to deliver by the end of March. We failed to do so. We will deliver by the end of October.”
All eyes were on the DUP. David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, who indicated he would back any withdrawal agreement struck, said the likelihood of it being approved rests with Arlene Foster, the DUP leader.
“A lot of Tory MPS will take their line from what the DUP do,” he said.
“Let’s see, when she sees the detail of the deal, whether she thinks this is a blood-red line or an acceptable compromise.”
The DUP reacted angrily to reports that the party’s MPS were asking for a significant cash injection for Northern Ireland in a bid to secure its support for a deal, saying they were “categorically untrue and utter nonsense”.
At around 11.30am, Mrs Foster and Nigel Dodds, her deputy, held 90 minutes of talks with the Prime Minister. It soon became clear that the issue at stake was how to give people in Northern Ireland a say over any deal.
Irish premier Leo Varadkar has said he believes the Good Friday Agreement, also known as the Belfast Agreement, should be reformed to change the controversial petition of concern. He told the Irish parliament that the mechanism had been used in a way that was not anticipated when the accord was signed.
Eamon Ryan, leader of the Green Party, told the Dáil the arrangement and institutions in Stormont were “not fit for purpose”.
“We need to be thinking in advance of whatever (Brexit) deal is done to how we contribute to the evolution of the Good Friday Agreement and the multiple consents that’s needed,” he added.
One idea to resolve the impasse is to change the consent rules in the Belfast Agreement so that any change in Northern Ireland’s status could be agreed by a simple majority in the Northern Irish Assembly every four years.
In Brussels, Donald Tusk, the European Council president, tried to up the pressure, saying that “everything should be clear” by around 11pm last night. “Yesterday evening I was ready to bet that it’s all set and agreed, today there are certain doubts on the British side,” he said, before adding: “The basic foundations of an agreement are ready and theoretically tomorrow we could accept this deal with Great Britain.”
But in London, with little obvious progress on signing off the deal, Mr Johnson brought forward his Cabinet meeting – which had been intended to sign off the deal – from 4.30pm to 2.30pm. He told members that while “there was a chance of securing a good deal, we are not there yet and there remain outstanding issues”, his spokesman said.
The Cabinet offered him its “full support”, the spokesman said.
Observers said arch-brexiteers like Priti Patel, Dominic Raab and Geoffrey Cox gave Mr Johnson their backing, saying: “Let’s get this over the line.” In Brussels, a planned meeting to brief EU ambassadors was delayed and delayed again to the early evening.
UK embassy staff were dispatched into Brussels to buy fresh shirts for the exhausted teams.
In France, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron were holding a joint press conference just before the ambassadors finally sat down together with Mr Barnier at 7pm in Brussels.
Steve Baker, the chairman of the European Research Group of Tory MPS, left Number 10 last night, saying: “We have made great progress. We wish Boris Johnson every success.”
Speculation was rife that Mr Johnson himself was on the point of jumping on a plane to get the deal over the line. Number 10 insisted that no foreign travel was planned. The prospect of a deal seemed tantalisingly close.
‘We are in the tunnel. It’s just like the tunnel in Shawshank ... we are at the Hillary Step of the summit: you can see, but it’s shrouded in cloud’