You wait for two years to see a plan and then four come along at once. We've had Chequers (unworkable), the ERG (unpublishable) then the IEA (impossible) and now BoJo has set out his plan for Brexit - in his weekly newspaper column for The Telegraph (HERE). This is laughable and closer to a comedy script. At least the IEA set out Shanker Singham's ideas in a 150 page paper even if it was pathetically full of holes. BoJo insults our intelligence by calling a 4500 word column a "plan" and The Telegraph rubs it in by endorsing it in the editorial (HERE) thus giving it a seriousness it simply doesn't have.
The column has the title: Boris Johnson, my plan for a better Brexit. Actually it's a plan for a no deal Brexit. If you're interested you can see the whole thing HERE.
Others might also describe it as a rather lengthy suicide note left by someone with the intention of absolving themselves of any blame for the national fiasco they more than any other person except perhaps Nigel Farage are responsible for. It's a trust-me-it-would-have-been-alright-if-they-had-done-it-my-way sort of note.
He says we should go back to the EU and scrap the Irish backstop before going on to negotiate a Canada ++ trade deal. He seems oblivious to the EU's position that the backstop has to be settled and agreed before they will discuss the trade deal. There will be no agreement of any kind without a backstop. It is an absolute pre-requisite.
He says this is what the people want:
What they want are practical ways sorting out what are – after all – basically banal questions of bureaucratic procedure about which most people have been in ignorance until they were turned into seemingly insuperable and existential challenges to the safety of the nation. Britain seems to trade very smoothly and effectively with countries not in the EU; we used to trade smoothly with France and Germany before we joined the EU. We can easily do so now.
These banal "bureaucratic procedures" are what make the single market work without cross-border delays and problems. It is basically the acquis communitaire that took 40 years to work out. He wants to scrap it and start again to achieve virtually same thing but in a looser way. All dismissed with a few words. How easy it all is.
He calls the EU a "superstate" (it isn't even a state) and talks about the EU institutions being a "colossal and extravagant waste of taxpayers money" although the entire budget of the EU is 1% of GDP and later he wants us to "negotiate membership of the EU’s aviation area and to accept appropriate obligations", so it's obviously not all wasted then?
This is all carefully timed to be awkward for Theresa May at next week's party conference and is probably not even intended to be a serious attempt at a plan.
Of course many successful politicians don't do detail but Johnson is the first not even able to do the broad brush stuff either.
