Saturday 13 November 2021

Johnson's Brexit ignorance and is sleaze cutting through at the polls?

Dominic Cummings has confirmed something many have suspected and some of us have known for a very long time. Namely, that Boris Johnson has never had the faintest idea what he was doing on Brexit - or anything else for that matter. He apparently only realised the consequences of leaving the customs Union at the end of September last year, a few months before Britain left the transition period. Cummings made the claim on his new blog (£10 per month access but this one is free) although plenty of people posted the relevant bit on Twitter, including Jim Pickard at the FT.

Mr Pickard describes it as an eye opener.

But is it a surprise? I don’t think it is. For me it’s been clear for five years or more that he hadn’t the foggiest. Michel Barnier commented in his secret diary on the prime minister’s lack of knowledge on many important and fundamental issues of Brexit.

I think we know Johnson didn’t understand what he was agreeing to in the NI protocol in 2019 since he first claimed there would be no border at all and then spent the last few months trying to wriggle out of checks at the border he said wouldn’t exist!

Johnson greeted the details about the trade deal he was negotiating with "appalled disbelief and shook his head" by which I assume the penny had dropped about the damage that would be done (the damage that we can see now) to the British economy. But he did nothing. He couldn't admit he had made a terrible misjudgement (see below on this) and Brexit was a mistake because he would look stupid. We are all going to pay a heavy price for Johnson's 'face' - up to a £trillion or two. Think about that.

I think I’ve read hundreds of thousands of words on Brexit but I wouldn’t claim to understand the detail at all. But I do understand the basics. I know you cannot exit the customs Union and the single market and avoid a border. Johnson still thinks you can.

Cummings claimed in response to someone on Twitter that he tried to explain it to Johnson  “millions of times”  - it's like a playground argument isn't it? - but if you can’t explain something like the basics of Brexit to another sentient human being then you probably don’t understand it yourself. I suspect Cummings was just as ignorant as Johnson.

The former senior adviser is totally dismissive of Michel Barnier, a man who understands the SM and the CU and who regularly faced an audience of pressmen and answered technical questions with ease. He was in a different league to Johnson but Cummings claims Barnier's aide Stephanie Riso did all the real work:

"Remember, in December 2020 Frost/Lewis suddenly had to make concessions (including fish) because the PM collapsed at the final moment after all his tough talk. The tough, formidable Steph Riso was 100x more able than Barnier. Because the political media focuses on arrogant blowhard men instead of tough women, Westminster has a skewed impression of the key players. She realised his weaknesses and said to our negotiating team at the crunch point: I know you are not bluffing but we all know your Prime Minister is weak, he is bluffing, he will collapse, you should take this deal."

Of course Johnson collapsed. He might be stupid but not stupid enough not to realise his name would be written all over the no-deal disaster not Frost's or Lewis'.

They deserve each other. Cummings’ blog reads like the dredging from the waste paper bin of a paranoid schizophrenic just before men in white coats burst in. Read this:

 "We [Vote Leave] were never aggressive for its own sake. That’s counter-productive. We were more interested in finding ways to connect ourselves to sources of power and disconnect opponents, to find ways to expand our support, to win without fighting. We didn’t say ‘love Brexit’, we said ‘get Brexit done’. We connected ourselves to the NHS, a source of moral power. Contra the media story we worked well with much of the deep state as we had a joint interest in achieving certain goals, like fixing the rotten nuclear enterprise neglected by both parties for decades, and limiting trolley vandalism. We tried very hard to see the world as it is and avoid fooling ourselves."

I’m not sure what the ‘deep state’ is and as for 'connecting themselves to sources of power' I don't know what to think.

Polling

At some point in the future, I won’t forecast when, Brexit will bring about the very thing that Brexiters did not want and that is Britain back in the EU, in the euro, in Schengen and with a significant role in an EU defence force. More than that, the lies they used before will prove to be useless a second time around. People will have experienced life outside the EU and will know the truth.

A poll published yesterday by Savanta ComRes show that every age group bar the 55+ are in favour of rejoining, with those 18-24 massively in favour by 77 - 23%:

What it shows also is that people who voted to leave in 2016 are MORE likely to stick with Brexit. This is slightly at odds with YouGov polling which usually shows remainers more likely to stand by their 2016 opinion, but the difference is small anyway.

I think perhaps a lot of leave voters don’t read the press and still don’t realise the damage that Brexit is causing and will continue to cause, until we rejoin. Even then, it will take years to recover.

But note even more importantly the people who did not vote in 2016, would vote to rejoin by a massive 82 - 18, almost as much as 2016 remainers!!  And not only that, a clear majority would like to see a new referendum.  The tide is turning quickly now.

On GE voting intentions the poll shows an even more dramatic change. Labour have shot into a 6 point lead in a week!!

The sleaze is starting to cut through.

Petronella Wyatt, who had an affair with Johnson when they worked together at The Spectator, which ended with her pregnant and having a termination, has written a flighty piece for The Sun about how she always thought sleaze rather than sex would get him in the end.  She writes (my emphasis):

"The best argument his [Johnson's] supporters can dredge up (and it is one I have used myself) is to the general effect that his misjudgments should be excused by his earnestness — that underneath his clowning, is the zeal of a steadfast soul.

"The Boris of yore, though he often bemoaned to me the constraints of democracy, appeared to accept that we no longer inhabited a country of robber barons, of which he intended to be chief, merrily creating his personal fiefdom.

"The trouble is not that Boris has changed so unutterably, but that there is no one inside No10 or his inner circle to constrain his excesses.

"No Prime Minister can survive repeated attacks of the dreaded sleaze, the mystery disease which can cause the premature death of entire governments. Boris’s personal approval rating has dropped to minus 20, and his condition remains grave."

Bemoaning the 'constraints of democracy' - roll that one around your head for a few minutes.  As for his 'misjudgements' being excused by his earnestness God help us all.

Finally, a tweet from David Henig in case you missed it, widening out the ignorance about Brexit at the top of government which stems from Johnson himself. Cabinet ministers might have suspected Brexit would be bad. Sunak, Truss and Javid all campaigned against it but for the sake of personal advancement they humoured the prime minister and now we are on a slippery slope to disaster:



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