Once again, there seems to have been no progress in the trade talks, or none that we have been privy to anyway. We are stuck at 95 per cent complete and can't get beyond fish, the LPF and governance, the latter two being keystones to any agreement as far as the EU are concerned. Hence the announcement after an hour and a half conversation yesterday afternoon between Von der Leyen and Johnson, that he is to go to Brussels for face-to-face talks "in the coming days." We don't yet know when but it won't be today.
The EU summit is on Thursday and if a deal is to be struck it needs to be approved by the EU Council this week, so I assume he will go on Wednesday. They must be heartily sick of the fat fraud and just want rid of him but there is so little goodwill and so much mistrust of a man whose word is valueless that I really can't see them offering any major concessions.
Fish is solvable but on LPF and governance, key issues for them in retaining the integrity of the single market, I don't see any sign of movement. The UKIM Bill had the international law breaking clauses re-inserted last night after the Lords took them out and the so-called game of parliamentary ping pong will continue this week. If the EU make concessions it will look as if they're susceptible to a bit of blackmail and this is surely impossible to contemplate.
All Johnson's red lines and intransigence have achieved is to make the task of reaching an agreement that much more difficult. He switches between talking about "our friends and partners" one minute and then the EU administering "punishment beatings" as if they are malign prison guards. There is no empathy, sincerity or honesty inside him and he will struggle.
I think Ursula VdL wants to meet him partly to be sure he understands what a big hole he's in because I don't think they believe he is being honest with himself or the British people about the damage he is about to wreak upon us.
The ERG must be getting nervous because the next few days have the hall marks of a choreographed sequence with the PM pulling a rabbit out of the hat and returning in triumph with a bad deal which is then rammed through parliament at top speed with no time for scrutiny. They have assembled a gang of Brexit supporting legal half-wits (Lawyers for Brexit) to go through any agreement and you can be sure unless it contains the unconditional surrender of the EU, they will denounce it as treachery and he will soon be out.
We are looking at the fate of the nation, the Tory party and Johnson himself being played out and we should be worried that he will sacrifice the first two without batting an eyelid.
Over the last few days there has been a bit of a row on Twitter about Johnson's slogan last year to have his "oven-ready" deal all prepared for the micro-wave. The Tories now claim this was the Withdrawal Agreement and not the trade deal and I suppose that technically that may be correct. But Johnson blurred the two things either accidentally or deliberately, to make it appear it was both and that if people voted for him it would get Brexit done - if you remember the phrase, and how could you not.
Now a video has emerged of Boris Johnson and Gisela Stuart at a warehouse in Sunderland on 9 December last year during the election campaign. This is the home of Ferguson's Transport and Logistics I think.
In the clip (below) you can see and hear the PM saying, "It's vital we protect supply chains and we protect Nissan Motors and we make sure people continue to invest in our country - and they will" he tells the assembled workers.
"The thing about the deal we've got ready to go is, as I say, it does protect the supply chains, it does keep them intact, it makes sure that we have complete equivalence when it comes to our standards our industrial requirements and all the rest of it, so as we come out it's all protected," he added.
This is clearly a reference to matters of trade, supply chains, industrial requirements (whatever they are!) and complete equivalence - things that are not even mentioned in the WA so I think he was either telling a blatant lie or he didn't understand the deal he had 'negotiated' or both. His visit was reported by Autonews HERE.
I wonder what those workers think now? Some may well have voted for him on the basis of what he said that day and may be getting a bit anxious as he heads to Brussels with the threat of no-deal hanging in the air and with it their own jobs and the whole future of Sunderland.
Can he afford to come back without a deal? Possibly. Would the Tory party win any red-wall seats to the next general election if he did? No.
He will be under huge pressure with no good options left. His handling of the negotiations has been nothing less than disastrous for Britain and the man who was said by his colleague Nick Boles to be:
"A compulsive liar who has betrayed every single person he has ever had dealings with: every woman who has ever loved him, every member of his family, every friend, every colleague, every employee, every constituent."
He is about to betray either the nation or the Tory party. We will know which by the weekend.
