Cripes! Boris’s Brexit script left in pub by drunk official
FOR decades, Boris Johnson has been a politician known for a tendency to ad-lib and not stick to a script, but now he’s Prime Minister, aides are going to extraordinary lengths to keep him on message.
And thanks to a boozy civil servant leaving a stash of Brexit papers in a Westminster pub, The Mail on Sunday can reveal the full extent of Mr Johnson’s rigid new regime.
An eight-page document entitled ‘Core Brexit Brief’ and prepared specifically for Mr Johnson by Whitehall spin doctors and policy advisers was found abandoned in The Feathers public house, in the heart of Westminster.
A shocked bystander in the watering hole popular with civil servants said: ‘A group of them were drinking heavily all of Monday evening and they just left the documents on a table at the end of the night.’
So now The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Mr Johnson is primed and ready for a host of awkward Brexit-related questions.
Going line by line through all aspects of the issue, the script is split into sections including ‘EU processes’ and ‘Citizens’ rights’.
It gives a stock answer to everything an interviewer might ask, such as: ‘What happens if we stay in the EU beyond October 31?’ Answer: ‘That’s not going to happen.’
However, the civil servants don’t appear to have reined in Mr Johnson completely. completely Asked for details of how he will fix the Irish border conundrum, he is told to reply in typical style: ‘There are few tasks so complex that humanity cannot solve if we have the real sense of mission to pull them off; what we need now is the will and the drive.’
And if a pesky journalist should ask again, you can expect a follow-up of: ‘We are not intending to cling on in the EU. We are leaving and we are not coming back.’
Clearly expecting an interrogation about his predecessor Theresa May’s legacy, apparently Mr Johnson ‘has been clear that we are incredibly grateful to the Rt Hon Member for Maidenhead for her service’. And despite storming out of it, Mr Johnson is told to say ‘it was a privilege to serve in her Cabinet’, but would make clear he did not consider her ‘position to be tenable’.
If questions get really tough, Mr Johnson is urged to declare: ‘With the kind of national effort our people have made before – and will make again – we believe [Brexit] is possible.’
But if pushed for detail on what MPs may be allowed to vote on, things become rather opaque with a simple, ‘I think you’re getting ahead of yourself.’
Entertaining though it might be, the document will make grim reading for the Democratic Unionist MPs who prop up Mr Johnson’s government.
Central to their concerns about Brexit is that Northern Ireland’s future relationship with Brussels should not be any different to the rest of the United Kingdom.
However, should the subject be raised in an interview, Mr Johnson’s prepared answer is far from definitive, suggesting the matter is ‘best dealt with’ at a later stage. Not particularly reassuring for the MPs who keep you in power...