The full extent of the mess the Conservative party and Johnson are in will be revealed over the next few days in parliament. He is trying to force a policy that he doesn't understand and won't implement anyway through a parliament that won't let him. The internal party argument that has raged among the Tories for thirty years is reaching its terrible denouement. An historic split is in sight - and not a moment too soon.
The rebels seem confident they have the votes to pass legislation to make it law that the PM asks for another extension, of three months this time, to the Article 50 period. The PM, in a bizarre performance outside Downing Street last night, says he will never do it - implying he would rather go to the country. Later, on Newsnight, Mary Creagh and Tony Lloyd for the Labour party claimed Labour will not support a GE unless no-deal Brexit is taken off the table. Without two third of MPs supporting him Johnson will be unable to call an election. He may be in very deep trouble by tomorrow night and looking like the prime minister with the shortest occupancy of No 10 on record.
Today in parliament the blue touch paper will be lit. Over to you John Bercow.
In The Telegraph Peter Foster (HERE) writes that the whole 'negotiating' strategy of Johnson is a "sham". There never was any intention of trying to reach an agreement. Foster explains the detail behind what we can all see - nothing is being negotiated. Johnson (or more likely Cummings) is gaslighting the nation again. This is Foster:
"According to highly-placed sources, the meeting on July 29 discussed the diplomatic and tactical approach to getting rid of the backstop, something Mr Johnson said was the minimum requirement for a Brexit deal in his first statement to the Commons on July 25.
"The plan, set out in a presentation entitled 'Approach to engagement with the EU on renegotiation', backed by David Frost, Mr Johnson’s Europe adviser, was to 'run down the clock' with the EU closer and closer to the no deal cliff edge. Senior sources say the strategy was adopted as formal policy, raising the question in Whitehall and Brussels of whether or not the Government was actually serious about reaching a new deal.
"Mr Johnson spoke publicly about the 'abundant' technical fixes for the Irish border and said 'no deal' was a 'million-to-one', but in private he received very different messages.
"At a follow-up meeting on Aug 1 to discuss what the strategy would mean in practice, Mr Johnson insisted again the entire backstop must go, but he was confronted by Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General, who argued for potential compromises on the backstop that might be negotiable with the EU, – such as a time-limit or a unilateral exit clause – but the options were ruled out by the Prime Minister. Sources say Mr Cox told Mr Johnson it was a 'complete fantasy' to think the EU would drop the backstop, before quickly professing his loyalty – and issuing a clear warning. 'I will stand with you but you should know this is the path to no deal,' he told him."
"The plan, set out in a presentation entitled 'Approach to engagement with the EU on renegotiation', backed by David Frost, Mr Johnson’s Europe adviser, was to 'run down the clock' with the EU closer and closer to the no deal cliff edge. Senior sources say the strategy was adopted as formal policy, raising the question in Whitehall and Brussels of whether or not the Government was actually serious about reaching a new deal.
"Mr Johnson spoke publicly about the 'abundant' technical fixes for the Irish border and said 'no deal' was a 'million-to-one', but in private he received very different messages.
"At a follow-up meeting on Aug 1 to discuss what the strategy would mean in practice, Mr Johnson insisted again the entire backstop must go, but he was confronted by Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General, who argued for potential compromises on the backstop that might be negotiable with the EU, – such as a time-limit or a unilateral exit clause – but the options were ruled out by the Prime Minister. Sources say Mr Cox told Mr Johnson it was a 'complete fantasy' to think the EU would drop the backstop, before quickly professing his loyalty – and issuing a clear warning. 'I will stand with you but you should know this is the path to no deal,' he told him."
What we don't know is what Johnson would have done in late October. Would he really have taken us out without a deal? I don't think so. Would he have asked for an extension anyway? Probably. Would he have revoked Article 50? Less likely but not impossible. We may never know.
In The Spectator (HERE) Sir Ivan Rogers has made another highly readable intervention which I thoroughly recommend. It is less about the immediate impact but more on what happens after October 31st (or January 31st) if we leave without a deal and also about the fundamental issue of Brexit:
"The idea, peddled by ministers, that businesses would have the ‘clarity’ and ‘certainty’ they need about the UK’s ultimate destination after a ‘no deal’ exit in eight weeks time, is laughable. They would not even know whether there would be ANY sort of preferential trading arrangement (in other words, one going substantially beyond WTO commitments, but going substantially less deep than Single Market and Customs Union membership, and hence delivering lower volumes of trade with the Continent than we have now) with our largest trading partner, let alone what sort and when."
Sir Ivan thinks this would trigger an exodus of businesses to the EU which is probably what would happen. But he raises another much more basic question about Brexit which comes from the work of someone called Dani Rodrick:
"Dani Rodrik, writing both of the gold standard era and our own, coined the term ‘impossibility theorem’: that democracy, national sovereignty and global economic integration are mutually incompatible; and that we can combine any two of the three, but never have all three, simultaneously and in full. That is, in my view, profoundly right. And it is the trilemma at the core – or rather, it should be at the core – of our Brexit debate.
"The essential Brexiteer view is that deep regional economic integration, including the Single Market and Customs Union, is undermining national politics, by aiming to align the scope of democratic politics with a supranational market."
"The essential Brexiteer view is that deep regional economic integration, including the Single Market and Customs Union, is undermining national politics, by aiming to align the scope of democratic politics with a supranational market."
This is not irrational and Sir Ivan thinks Brexit can be a rational course for a nation, the problem is that the cost has not been fully explained. To obtain full sovereignty there will be trade offs that a credulous public have not been informed about:
"We used, across party lines, to be in favour of all that because we thought – and a massive extension of qualified majority voted to deliver it, supported by Margaret Thatcher – it a price worth paying for building a much larger and more open ‘home market’. The British were notorious, from Thatcher on, as the biggest enthusiasts for the Single Market.
"But countries can, and must be able to, change their minds. It is a perfectly legitimate view to suggest that globalisation and Europeanisation have run ahead of democratic governance and that people are rightly uneasy about the hyper-globalisation of recent decades. This position reasonably asserts that Brexit is not ‘just the economy, stupid’, but also a governance, indeed a constitutional, issue."
"But countries can, and must be able to, change their minds. It is a perfectly legitimate view to suggest that globalisation and Europeanisation have run ahead of democratic governance and that people are rightly uneasy about the hyper-globalisation of recent decades. This position reasonably asserts that Brexit is not ‘just the economy, stupid’, but also a governance, indeed a constitutional, issue."
But if Brexit really is the choice of a majority of people in Britain then:
"If we downgrade our ambitions about how much deep economic integration we want – or can stomach, given the implications for national sovereignty – we must also accept that there will be substantial barriers and transactions costs from trade ‘de-integration’ with partners who have made a different choice. We may deplore others’ national choices, but, if we are to be consistent, that is surely no more our business than our domestic choice is theirs."
I think this is at the heart of Brexit but it has never been fully explored or explained. We can have Brexit and be poorer or we can lose a little sovereignty and have more money for infrastructure, health, social care and so on. Brexiteers are guilty - if they are guilty of anything - of claiming we can reclaim national sovereignty, not just without any cost, but be substantially better off in the process.
This is the great lie at the heart of Brexit.
