More details are coming out about Johnson's light bulb moment in Luxembourg on Monday. The FT reported that at one point during the meeting with Juncker and Barnier, "a befuddled Mr Johnson turned to David Frost, his chief negotiator, and Stephen Barclay, Brexit secretary, and said: 'So you’re telling me the SPS plan doesn’t solve the [Irish border] customs problem?'" What we don't know is if Barclay and Frost didn't understand it either or if they simply hadn't been able to explain simply enough for Johnson to understand.
He might be ruing the fact that he didn't go earlier or that he ever started writing nonsense about Brussels and the EU in the first place.
According to the FT, Juncker later told commissioners it was the first time "Boris Johnson understood the meaning of the single market". Imagine all that expensive education, all that time spent in Brussels as a child and as a reporter. All that he has written and said about the EU - and he did not understand it. This is truly shocking but I suspect every word is true.
No wonder the FT headline is: EU fears Brexit reality has dawned too late for Boris Johnson.
The EU Commission released the words of Barnier's speech to the EU parliament yesterday (HERE in French and English) and we should all take note of this passage - assuming we ever reach an agreement on the terms of the withdrawal - where the huge obstacles in the way of a future free trade agreement are set out in three short consecutive paragraphs:
"The current British government is rowing back on the commitments made by Theresa May when it comes to level playing field guarantees.
"An ambitious economic partnership with a big, important and close country like the United Kingdom, which carries out half of its trade with us, requires a common set of rules.
"The level of ambition of a future free trade agreement – which we will have to negotiate and conclude with the United Kingdom in any event – will clearly depend on the social, environment, competition and state aid guarantees that we put down together on paper."
"An ambitious economic partnership with a big, important and close country like the United Kingdom, which carries out half of its trade with us, requires a common set of rules.
"The level of ambition of a future free trade agreement – which we will have to negotiate and conclude with the United Kingdom in any event – will clearly depend on the social, environment, competition and state aid guarantees that we put down together on paper."
Any idea that the EU will ever tolerate serious divergence from their employment, consumer and environmental protection rules is for the birds - perhaps a yellowhammer? It is as if the fog is clearing to reveal the mountain we have yet to climb.
If Johnson and Cummings were thinking of trying to 'bounce' the EU into agreeing something produced like a rabbit out of the hat during the EU summit on 17th October, the Finnish president of the European Council, Antti Rinne, after a meeting with Macron told Johnson he had 12 days (now 11) to come up with a detailed plan.
Rinne said: “We both agreed that it is now time for Boris Johnson to produce his own proposals in writing – if they exist. If no proposals are received by the end of September, then it’s over.”
Quite apart from all this, Johnson continues to stagger from one PR disaster/crisis to another. At the Supreme Court things are not going well. One of the eleven judges raised the fact that no one in government was prepared to sign an affidavit to swear all the evidence supplied by the government side was actually true. I suppose nobody - including him - wanted to put their career or liberty on the line to confirm anything that Johnson has ever said was true.
His by now world-renowned mendacity got a spectacular public airing at Whips Cross Hospital when confronted by an angry parent (later described as a Labour activist - I don't know if this was true or not) about coming to the hospital in an NHS that 'has been destroyed' simply for a 'press opportunity'.
Johnson looks decidedly uncomfortable and tells the man the press are not there while the whole thing is being filmed for TV!! To tell a lie is one thing but to tell one to a man's face when the truth is in plain sight no more than three meters away is quite another. I see in some reports he claimed to have come to see how the hospital can be refurbished as if he was measuring up, pencil behind his ear, to prepare a quote for a bit of building work.
Afterwards he shot off to do some surveying for the HS2 project before dropping in to surprised couple in Stoke-on-Trent to clear a blocked toilet. He always carries a set of drain rods with him wherever he goes.
The job of PM is a lot more difficult than I thought I can tell you - no wonder he hasn't had time to learn what the single market is.
Johnson looks decidedly uncomfortable and tells the man the press are not there while the whole thing is being filmed for TV!! To tell a lie is one thing but to tell one to a man's face when the truth is in plain sight no more than three meters away is quite another. I see in some reports he claimed to have come to see how the hospital can be refurbished as if he was measuring up, pencil behind his ear, to prepare a quote for a bit of building work.
Afterwards he shot off to do some surveying for the HS2 project before dropping in to surprised couple in Stoke-on-Trent to clear a blocked toilet. He always carries a set of drain rods with him wherever he goes.
The job of PM is a lot more difficult than I thought I can tell you - no wonder he hasn't had time to learn what the single market is.
