Peter Foster is the Europe editor at The Telegraph which is a bit like a devout atheist being the editor of The Church Times. You often get the idea he is trying to get his own views across without upsetting the readership too much. He gets quite a bit of stick but soldiers on in his thankless task. Yesterday, following an 'event' where Telegraph readers were invited to put their questions to Boris, he wrote an article about Johnson's 'plan' for getting us out by October 31st (HERE no £).
He says BoJo set out in 'clear and methodical fashion' how he was going to do it.
Don't worry though, it was nothing of the sort. The 'plan' was a four point back-of-a-fag-packet wish list hurriedly written by him and his team to make it look like they have a plan. This is it:
- Guarantee citizen's rights unillaterally
- Suspend the £39 billion into a state of 'creative ambiguity'
- Kick the Irish backstop out of the Withdrawal Agreement and into phase 2.
- Prepare the country to leave with no deal
It's hardly revelatory since I think it's what Boris told Andrew Neil last week. Foster though considers what the EU might make of it - and it's fair to say he doesn't think it will be a lot. To English ears, Foster says, it 'will sound eminently reasonable' and this is probably what BoJo is aiming for and that the blame for the outcome will all be put on Brussels. Something the EU is well aware of.
On the first point, citizens rights, he says Theresa May has already promised it anyway and Brussels will simply see it as an act of common decency. So far so good.
"Second, the threat to parlay the Brexit ‘bill' into a future relationship recalls David Davis’s efforts to attach conditionality to the payments, promising the ‘row of the summer’ on the subject. As it happened, it lasted a single morning on the first day of talks in June 2017".
David Davis couldn't get it two years ago but Johnson thinks he can wind back the clock and start again. Next:
"Third Mr Johnson appears to want to ‘pay to play’ in the EU while he negotiates an FTA, but without submitting to any of the oversight that other EU players must accept in the form of the European Court of Justice, or the arbitration mechanisms agreed in the Withdrawal Agreement.
“Who wouldn’t want that?,” asks one EU diplomat. “If Britain was allowed to cherry-pick, why wouldn’t everyone? The EU doesn’t run on gentleman’s agreements and the Brits must know that by now.”
The unnamed EU diplomat is perhaps ascribing rather too much to the Brits and particularly Johnson's crew. The really don't understand how the EU works at all.
On the Irish border:
"proposing to fix the Irish border problem as part of trade talks is effectively re-stating a problem without offering a solution".
"proposing to fix the Irish border problem as part of trade talks is effectively re-stating a problem without offering a solution".
The backstop is there precisely because there is no solution and despite intensive efforts by all and sundry to find one, they haven't been able to. Hence the backstop. One gets the impression from all of this that after three years of detailed internal British talks and navel gazing we are now further away from having a plan than we were in July 2016.
As for no-deal planning, Business Insider (HERE) has some leaked papers which show we are not prepared to leave in October and business organisations fear that time is running out. For example, BI say:
"The logisticis industry is concerned that the government will leave it
too late to act, with the new prime minister not set to be in place
until the end of July. An industry figure who has been in talks with
government said it had been 'really dormant' over the last few weeks."
But back to Peter Foster for the final words of his article:
"When Mr Johnson gets into the lonely cockpit of the highest office in the land, they [the EU] bet he will blink too - and even if he doesn’t, the consequences of a ‘no deal’ will, sooner or later, force Mr Johnson to accept much that he now rejects.
"Even the free trade agreement that Mr Johnson seeks in the event of a ‘no deal’ will come with heavy strings attached - on competition, state aid and regulations - to ensure the ‘level playing field’. This will be doubly so for an economy the size and proximity of the UK.
"In short, the EU still sees a new British PM having limited room to move. A Northern Ireland civil service assessment paper released this week warned that a ‘no deal’ could cost 40,000 jobs in Northern Ireland, having a 'profound and long-lasting impact on NI’s economy and society'.
"In concrete terms, that means 1 in 5 jobs, up to £180m in lost exports to Northern Ireland and £120m in services trade; a sharp reduction in inward investment and all that before societal and political risks of reigniting a simmering sectarian conflict.
"Such independent research might be dismissed as ‘project fear’ in an election campaign but, many in the EU privately surmise, will weigh rather more heavily on any British prime minister in the lonely sanctity of their private office".
Johnson, Raab and the rest might appear as hard men now but come September they will be far more pliable.
And lastly an intriguing tweet from Jill Rutter at the Institute for Government with a comment by David Henig at the UK Trade Policy Observatory:
"Even the free trade agreement that Mr Johnson seeks in the event of a ‘no deal’ will come with heavy strings attached - on competition, state aid and regulations - to ensure the ‘level playing field’. This will be doubly so for an economy the size and proximity of the UK.
"In short, the EU still sees a new British PM having limited room to move. A Northern Ireland civil service assessment paper released this week warned that a ‘no deal’ could cost 40,000 jobs in Northern Ireland, having a 'profound and long-lasting impact on NI’s economy and society'.
"In concrete terms, that means 1 in 5 jobs, up to £180m in lost exports to Northern Ireland and £120m in services trade; a sharp reduction in inward investment and all that before societal and political risks of reigniting a simmering sectarian conflict.
"Such independent research might be dismissed as ‘project fear’ in an election campaign but, many in the EU privately surmise, will weigh rather more heavily on any British prime minister in the lonely sanctity of their private office".
Johnson, Raab and the rest might appear as hard men now but come September they will be far more pliable.
And lastly an intriguing tweet from Jill Rutter at the Institute for Government with a comment by David Henig at the UK Trade Policy Observatory:
The classic change the name approach? Not impossible, but after all the talk a little tricky I'd have thought https://t.co/9fzSQbTvt2— David Henig (@DavidHenigUK) July 15, 2019
Let's see what Steve Baker et al make of that.
