Jonathan Lis has a nice, well argued piece for Prospect Magazine, in which he concludes Johnson's no deal Brexit strategy is just a bluff. I agree with him. When you dismiss all the other theories, as you must, this is what you are left with. All the other possible explanations are just not plausible because of the damage to the nation, to democracy itself or most importantly to the oaf himself. Lis also concludes that it's a miscalculation and will fail, something else I agree with.
If you're sceptical that it is a bluff, read this article which Johnson wrote for The Telegraph in 2013 as Cameron started to talk about renegotiation of our membership. In it Johnson concedes our problems have nothing to do with "Bwussels" at all, which seems ironic given that all his government's efforts are now bent to achieving a separation from "Bwussels". He knew at the time that a referendum was coming up at some point and this is what he said six years ago:
“This renegotiation can only work if we understand clearly what we want
to achieve: a pared down relationship based on free trade and
cooperation. And our partners will only take us seriously if they think
we will invoke Article 50, and pull out, if we fail to get what we
want. If we are going to have any chance of success in the negotiations, we need to show that the UK is willing to walk away.”
Of course we now know we held that referendum, voted to leave and we did invoke Article 50. Did this force the EU to give us 'what we want'? No. That threat can't be used any more, so he has gone to the next level. We'll leave with no deal, unless we 'get what we want'. And note, at the end he does not say we must be willing to walk away, he says we need to show it - a big difference. This is what he is now doing - but he never intends to go through with it.
The whole strategy is a deception designed to make the EU seriously think we will pull out without a deal. We won't.
Incidentally, a report in The Telegraph, written to support his 2013 article, has this section which might have you spluttering this morning:
"He [Johnson] says that he has asked his economic adviser to 'blow away the froth
and give people the facts' on the pros and cons of membership".
This is the man, an acknowledged liar, fundamentally and congenitally dishonest, later admonished by the head of UK Statistics authority in 2016 for the wildly misleading £350 million a week claim.
Survation published a poll yesterday on current voting intentions (the Tories have a 4% lead which should cause a bit of introspection in the Corbyn household, but probably won't). The poll also has some important Brexit related stuff as well. In contrast to ComRes for The Telegraph the other day, Survation find support for a no deal Brexit at just 19%! Not quite the 54% majority as The Telegraph headline suggested.
The really interesting figure is on voting intentions in a second referendum, 55% now favour remaining in the EU and 45% want to leave. This is almost certainly the reason why The Telegraph's pollsters didn't ask the question or didn't publish the answer if they did.
It's interesting also because it came out on the day that an academic analysis for John Danzig by professor Adrian Low at Staffordshire University appeared. Professor Low looked at nearly 200 polls since the 2017 election of which 98% show a majority in favour of remaining in the EU. The analysis predicts the current position is.....55% remain and 45% leave, exactly as the Survation poll finds.
What does all this say? Johnson is pursuing a version of Brexit that just one in five voters support and only 45% support Brexit in any form at all. This is why Brexit must ultimately fail.
Robert Peston has an unlikely headline on his blog claiming that both Phillip Hammond and Boris Johnson are agreed on one thing, that the UK/EU Brexit talks are dead. Peston says:
"The point is that Macron, Merkel, Varadkar, Johnson, Cummings and
Hammond are all in perfect agreement - that it will be a no-deal Brexit
on October 31, unless there is an external or exogenous shock. Where they differ is that Hammond is desperate to be the midwife of
that shock, Macron, Merkel and Varadkar would probably respond
sympathetically to it, and Johnson/Cummings would do all they could to
repel it."
I do not think Johnson/Cummings will do all they can to repel the external shock that will stop a no deal Brexit. They will probably welcome it - eventually - as the only way to save face. Otherwise they will be forced to abandon their own strategy themselves and this would cost them both dearly. But make no mistake, one way or another the bluff will be called.
The most committed Brexiteers can hardly have failed to notice that we are very far from taking back control when even a free trade deal with the USA is the subject of internal political wrangling between parties in Washington. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, has hit back at John Bolton, the National Security advisor and said there will be no FTA if the Good Friday Agreement is put at risk by a no deal Brexit. We don't seem to be in control of anything.
Martin Kettle in The Guardian muses on the survival of the Tory party, not just on the central visceral Brexit question but on domestic policy where he sees Johnson as a free spending liberal wet while Raab, Patel and others in the cabinet are the usual parsimonious, dry as tinder Conservatives. It doesn't help when the PM calls senior members of his own party 'collaborators'. They usually get tarred and feathered don't they - or worse?
In the UK we tend to forget how the Brexit saga is being portrayed globally. The Japan Times covers the Pelosi intervention HERE. The world was pretty baffled by Brexit in 2016 but I suppose most people accept that even perfectly moderate democracies occasionally have a sudden rush of blood to the head.
What they must find inexplicable is that after three years of deadlock, difficulties and division we are still continuing with the madness.
