BORIS IN BUST UP - HOURS AFTER REACHING FINAL PART OF TORY LEADERSHIP RACE!

Police were called in the early hours of Friday morning to the home of  the man who is said to be the only man that can stop Boris Johnson becoming prime minister, after calls from a neighbour about an altercation involving a woman. The man was of course Boris himself. When I said yesterday that his leadership bid could survive him being arrested for murder I had no idea that police had already been called to the flat where he's been living with his girlfriend Carrie Symonds (HERE).  This is now headline news in Britain and around the world.

Bear in mind that the incident happened less than six hours after he had topped the poll which sent him as the clear favourite into the final series of hustings for the election of our next prime minister. That's all it took!  I assume his minders thought he was safely inside his own home and couldn't possibly get into trouble.  But Boris could get in trouble anywhere at anytime.

The Guardian got the story first (HERE) presumably from the neighbour, along with a recording of the shouting match, so it's very hard to deny it. Also, the police at first denied there had been any incident at all. It was only when the Guardian reporter gave the official reference number and details of the vehicles attending that they issued a statement confirming it all:

"When contacted by the Guardian on Friday, police initially said they had no record of a domestic incident at the address. But when given the case number and reference number, as well as identification markings of the vehicles that were called out, police issued a statement saying: “At 00:24hrs on Friday, 21 June, police responded to a call from a local resident in [south London]. The caller was concerned for the welfare of a female neighbour".

This could only happen to high ranking politicians couldn't it?

On Newsnight they had Richard Barnes, Deputy Mayor of London under Johnson defending him and saying it's the sort of thing ordinary people do.  I was brought up on a council estate in Nottingham and I can assure Mr Barnes we never had stand-up shouting matches ever and certainly nothing that the neighbours could hear. My mother would have been utterly mortified.  No, you have to go to Eton to behave like that.

Yesterday (HERE) I said that he had to "defuse the ticking Brexit time bomb that he set going" but he has blown himself up even before starting work.

But don't worry, his injuries will not be fatal He'll recover and the 54% of Conservative members who would rather see the party destroyed than give up Brexit will probably be heartened by it all and more likely than before to support Johnson.  Nobody is more reckless than Johnson.  However, the 160 MPs who voted for him, on the basis that he could 'save' the party may not be so certain this morning as they read the headlines. I bet Michael Gove was laughing.

Nigel Adams has been clinging on to Johnson's coat tails for years in the hope he would be carried to high office. Now it looks like his hopes could be dashed. Every cloud has a silver lining, eh?

Now, I want to look back a few days to Mark Carney dismissing Boris' suggestion that trade with the EU27 in goods at least could continue tariff free under a WTO rule known as GATT Article XXIV. This is palpable nonsense since it requires both parties to agree and the EU is unlikely to give up their main card - access to the single market - if we refuse to sign up to the Withdrawal Agreement.  Carney says tariffs will apply automatically in those circumstances - and he's right.

But this hasn't stopped Iain Duncan Smith and David Campbell Bannerman writing an article for Brexit Central maintaining he is wrong and setting out the 'facts'.

Unfortunately, the 'facts' support Carney not them. This is a couple of extracts from their piece

"GATT Article 24 is there to allow two countries or blocs to move towards a free trade area or a customs union". 

And:

"So if the UK and EU go to the WTO jointly and say that we have agreed to move to a full and comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (what we term ‘SuperCanada’ – that is better than the EU-Canada FTA) – that keeps tariffs at zero with no real change to other members, the WTO is happy to allow us a period of time to keep tariffs and quotas at preferential rates".

In other words the EU, having spent two years negotiating a withdrawal agreement and having it thrown back in their faces, will suddenly agree to go with us to the WTO and agree a FTA! This is fantasy - one which they refuse to see. They need us more than we need them see?

Why would the EU agree? This is what they say:

"Well, the UK is the fifth largest economy in the world and the EU’s largest single market – bigger than the USA, China and India. The EU has a £96 billion goods deficit with us (we have a £13bn services surplus). Over a million German jobs alone rely on British consumers buying German goods like BMWs. Without a basic GATT 24 deal, the EU would have £13bn tariffs slapped on its goods – 10% on VWs; 12% on wine, 40% on cheese. They would suffer far more than the UK simply because they sell more to us than we do to them. The EU – particularly Germany, which accounts for nearly a quarter of all EU trade to the UK – does not like the idea of this. Better for everyone surely to keep on an even keel?"

GATT XXIV doesn't prevent two countries who are moving towards a FTA agreeing zero tariffs, but it doesn't force them to do it either. And the EU are not going to suddenly drop the greatest negotiating strength they have by giving us what IDS and DCB describe as 'Super Canada' in return for well, nothing really. It is never, ever going to happen.

Every time a fantasy looks like dying someone on the leave side rushes in with a first aid kit.