JOHNSON STILL PURSUING A FAILED STRATEGY

After the G7 summit in Biarritz, EU leaders are now said to be taking Johnson seriously according to Katya Adler, the BBC's European correspondent. Even if this is true, and I'm not sure it is, it does not mean they are any more likely to make concessions. It is their public position and it may have some advantages for them.  Nevertheless, the problem is exactly the same as it was before the summit.

Johnson suggests the negotiation will go down to the last minute before a deal is struck.  I do not believe it will. As the day looms the howls of anguish from business will get louder and louder and I doubt it will get anywhere near the last minute.

Thom Brooks, Dean of Durham Law School and professor of Law and Government at Durham University still thinks Brexit is unlikely to happen. He writes that he was the only commentator in 2016 who predicted - against all contemporary opinion - that Theresa May would fail to deliver Brexit. And he believes Johnson will also fail, and for the same reason:

"As I said in August 2016, the biggest problem for delivering Brexit is very simple: Its complexity. There are far too many laws and regulations to account for or change in too short a time to make Brexit genuinely possible in two years or less. After three years, the UK can't yet agree on the terms of withdrawal – this is a bad omen for how long agreeing what Brexit will look like might take. It is no wonder that trade deals can often take five or more years on average no matter how closely aligned those countries might be".

Negotiating a controlled, smooth and orderly departure was always going to be a Herculean effort even if we were united and determined. We are now on our third prime minister with a parliamentary majority of one and with polls consistently suggesting most people want to remain. The professor continues:

"The No Deal is the worst of all outcomes. The UK will go from having membership in a 40+ year economic and legal arrangement to becoming an outsider. There are thousands of regulations and their accompanying regulatory bodies that the UK is a member of. By midnight on 31 October, it must establish its own shadow organizations to do this work. It does not appear one person has been hired to do this work or mass recruitment campaigns begun. It's one thing to want to take back control, but who will then be doing this work? As pro-Brexit MPs remain divided over what they might do, they have not even begun to consider who might do it."

We are in a weak position. There is no prospect at all of Britain getting a better deal than the one we have now. We are simply negotiating just how much worse things will be. Threatening to walk away will not succeed.

Duncan Weldon, a former BBC correspondent, likens Dominic Cummings to Yanis Varoufakis and thinks he will suffer the same fate.  Varoufakis was Greek minister of finance, appointed by prime minister Tsipras during the Greek euro crisis in 2015. He was intended to be a disruptor, to take a hard line with Brussels, threaten to take Greece out of the euro and precipitate the end of the single currency. Both men are single minded, determined and almost fanatical.  Weldon covered the Greek crisis and watched as Brussels stood firm.

"When push came to shove, The Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, was not prepared to back his high-profile consigliere. He had been happy to allow him to front up the high-risk strategy until the last moment, but when it became clear that threatening the Greek equivalent of a no-deal Brexit had not won concessions Varoufakis was dropped like a stone."

So it will be with Cummings.

The problem for Johnson and his personal Svengali is that they have made a poor strategy worse. Mrs May's no-deal-is-better-than-a-bad-deal mantra played well with Brexiteers and leavers alike. So much so that almost half the nation is convinced we can leave on October 31st with very little, if any, disruption. Johnson has made matter worse by talking of do-or-die stuff and now claiming we can "easily cope with a no deal Brexit".  The fact is we can't.

Taking us out without a deal into a world of chaos, shortages and civil unrest will reveal for all the world what an incompetent fool and liar he is.

If he had been honest from the beginning about the sacrifices needed he may now just be able to go through with it - but true to form, he wasn't.

Not only that we would be putting ourselves into years and years of protracted negotiation with our EU 'friends' with Britain in the weakest possible position struggling to right the ship of state and bring some order back to things.

I began by saying I don't believe it will go to the wire and my reasoning for this is that only Brussels can allow it to go to the wire. They hold the cards. As Johnson keeps reminding us, it all depends on our EU 'friends'. They can step in at the last minute and offer to scrap the backstop if they wanted to (don't worry they won't). We will crack well before.

I have a small £10 bet with a member of Selby District Council's Executive committee that Britain will still be in the EU on November 1st. He seems utterly convinced Johnson will get a deal and we will be out.  Of all the scenarios this is the most impossible. If Johnson does get a 'deal' against the odds, he will need a very long extension in order to get the legislation through the House - and he will run into precisely the same problems with that as we saw earlier this year.

No, the only way of coming out on October 31st is via a no-deal Brexit and Johnson certainly won't do it because the political cost would be huge.  I am looking forward to earning an easy £10 on November 1st.

Corbyn begins talks later today with other party leaders on working up a strategy to stop a no deal Brexit. It will be interesting but personally, I would wait for Johnson to do it himself.