What a laugh we had this morning! Michael Gove is reported in The Telegraph (HERE) with his worries that the EU's Irish border "backstop" could be used as a "Trojan Horse" during negotiations in the 21-month transition period after Brexit to keep Britain in the Customs Union indefinitely. A source said he is concerned that if Britain accepts the backstop option "we won't have all the negotiating cards that we would want..."
Poor old Gove. He has obviously dropped the pack and lost a few cards which the EU must have found and picked up, because he told us (HERE) in April 2016 that, "the day after we vote to leave we hold all the cards and we can choose the path we want."
In July 2016 arch Brexiteer John Redwood said, "Getting out of the EU can be quick and easy – the UK holds most of the cards in any negotiation".
The EU are not using the Irish border as a Trojan Horse. They are simply holding us to the commitment we made in December last year and indeed the commitments made by Brexiteers like BoJo who told us in February 2016 that Brexit would leave arrangements on the Irish border "absolutely unchanged" (HERE).
This is the problem of government by professional journalists like Gove and Johnson, they are used to making things up on the hoof (Johnson is a master at it) as a way of bolstering a weak argument about leaving the EU, without anyone calling them to account later. If you are given free rein to deploy whatever spurious fact or empty promise you want to win an argument, then you can easily win it. Unfortunately for them, they are for perhaps the first time in their adult lives having to answer for the things they said - and increasingly failing.
They are not going to admit they were wrong but will try to shift the blame onto others. The fact that the EU actually hold "all the cards" and are demonstrating a willingness to use them is, according to Gove, providing Brussels with a Trojan Horse. Well what a surprise! Who saw that coming?
