JOHNSON RETURNS: NOTHING HAS CHANGED

Johnson's visit to Macron was not quite the disaster expected and the French leader was surprisingly conciliatory. However, while he was more diplomatic than he might have been, he did say the backstop was 'indispensable'. Most commentators thinks it was a choreographed soft-cop, soft-cop effort with Merkel in order to deflect any blame for the looming disaster. So, to borrow the phrase Theresa May made her own, nothing has changed.  Johnson's problems are at Westminster not in Paris or Berlin.

To try and explain what happened this week is near impossible when you read this article in The Telegraph which begins: 

"Boris Johnson returned to London Thursday evening and ordered ministers to draw up a new Irish border policy to ensure the UK leaves the European Union with a deal in 10 weeks’ time".

There may be a few members of various lost tribes in the smoke of the Amazon rain forests who didn't realise before today that the answer to the Irish backstop was to find an alternative, but most people on the planet have known it for months and months.  Not Boris Johnson though. He had to fly around Europe to meet Merkel and Macron so they could carefully explain the problem to him. He has now returned to ask his ministers to draw up a new policy.  The article continues:

"Stephen Barclay, the Brexit Secretary, and his officials will now be ordered to “turbocharge” work on how to find alternative arrangements to the Northern Ireland backstop.

Barclay apparently didn't know either. 

More than this, Johnson intends to use the 270 page report of the Alternative Arrangements Commission produced inter alia by Nicky Morgan and Greg Hands. This is the report comprehensively 'trashed' a few weeks ago by every trade body in Northern Ireland. The Telegraph itself reported it HERE. 

We are still trying to find a solution to the backstop conundrum first identified in 2017. With the red lines set by Theresa May and subsequently reinforced by Johnson and the ERG you can have any two of these three outcomes, but not all three together:

• Britain leaves the SM and the CU
• A hard border on the island of Ireland is avoided
• No border down the Irish sea

Tomorrow morning, next month and I suspect on 31st October, the conudrum will remain true. An article in The New Yorker is well worth reading on this topic. It accuses Johnson of 'double dishonesty' in pretending you can have frictionless trade and an open border while respecting the integrity of the single market, which we have expressly committed to do. We are back to the having cake and eat it territory.  Indeed, yesterday in Paris standing alongside President Macron he talked about protecting the integrity of the single market and frictionless trade.  These are mutually exclusive goals as long as we plan to leave the SM and the CU.

Let me point to another conundrum coming down the track for Johnson. He will very soon have to choose between any two of the following three:

• Leaving the EU
• Preventing the break-up of the UK
• Avoiding the re-ignition of the Irish troubles

His other problem is one familiar to Mrs May. The rampant Brexiteers are becoming suspicious. His commitment to the no deal Brexit cause is starting to look suspect.  At Briefings for Brexit they ask if Johnson’s letter to the EU on Monday was a 'misstep or masterstroke'.  They have serious reservations:

• The letter to them "suggests strongly that Johnson’s government might be willing to accept the withdrawal agreement shorn of the backstop – something many Brexit supporters would find totally unacceptable".
• There is no mention of the 'major problems' in the Political Declaration that accompanies the backstop. Most importantly, "the wording of the declaration again potentially locks the UK into a customs union with the EU as the final state".
• The letter contains a reference to a transition period – which they describe as "a period of complete rule-taking that would leave the UK wide open to regulatory attacks from the EU". They want a transition under GATT Article XXIV, something quite impossible.
• The letter speculates that ‘alternative arrangements’ might not all be in place by the end of the transition period and that additional "‘commitments’ might be needed". This looks to them like potentially replacing one backstop with another - which of course it is.

There is a pattern emerging here. When Mrs May became leader and especially after her first conference speech, she was lauded as the person to get Brexit done and make a success of it. For quite a while, in her no-deal-is-better-than-a-bad-deal phase, as she made hard line speeches at Lancaster House and Florence, they were behind her. But when it came to the crunch with the Joint report in December 2017 and the first appearance of the phrase 'regulatory alignment' they saw a sell-out coming. From them on any deal she negotiated was doomed.

Briefings for Brexit have the first rumblings of the storm that will destroy Johnson just as it did May.

It is quite impossible to satisfy the fanatics. As Johnson is finding, when you transfer from the ranks of the fanatics, as he has, you have to accept many hard truths. Bellowing trenchant criticism from the sidelines is easy - until you are the person in the chair making actual decisions and inevitably painful compromises.

Polling

A few new polls are out and show the voters are still split/confused about Brexit. This BMG survey (7th - 12th August fieldwork) shows the largest minority (32-34%) are happy to leave the EU without a deal when given a lot of options as the bar chart below makes clear.

However, when narrowed down to a simple choice of no deal or revoking Article 50 and remaining in the EU, Remain is the clear favourite at 44-45%.

A YouGov poll (fieldwork 13th-14th August) was also interesting and with similar results. They show 42% in favour of no deal while options for delaying (8%), holding a new referendum (14%) and canceling Brexit altogether (24%) totaled 46%.

For me the most surprising results though were on page 7 and 4. Respondents were asked:

Some people have suggested that Britain leaving the European Union without agreeing a deal could cause severe short term disruption, such as shortages of food and medicines. Which of the following best reflects your view?

• These warnings are realistic, and leaving without a deal would cause serious disruption (39%)
• The warnings are exaggerated or invented, and in reality leaving without a deal would not cause serious disruption (41%)
• Not sure (20%)

By a narrow majority  people do not believe the alarms being sounded, now from every quarter including the government itself, that a no deal Brexit would be disastrous. However, a couple of things: the 41% is down from 47% in March and the fieldwork was done before the Sunday Times story about Operation Yellowhammer.

On page 4 of the poll respondents were asked:

Which of the following do you think are the most important issues facing the country at this time? (Up to three ticks were allowed for each person)

Leaving the EU (68%)

Health (34%)

Crime (32%)

The economy (27%)

Immigration (23%)

The Environment (22%)

Housing (14%)

Welfare benefits (11%)

Defence & Security (11%)

Leaving the EU is seen as the 'most important'  issue facing the country yet health, crime, housing, welfare and defence have nothing to do with the EU while The economy and environment will both be made worse by leaving the EU.  Stunning.