Monday 7 September 2020

Johnson goes for the 'nuclear option'

The explosive report by Peter Foster at the FT (HERE) alleging the UK government is about to trash key parts of the Withdrawal Agreement is causing a real storm this morning. Legislation to be published this week on the UK's internal market is said to cut across some explicit articles and redefines what the NI protocol, part of an international treaty agreed by Boris Johnson last year, means in practice on state aid and the filing of customs paperwork.

It will go down very badly indeed in Brussels. Only last week Barnier was saying the EU were looking for the protocol to be implemented precisely in full.

Foster added a bit more in a long Twitter thread:
A UK government spokesman has apparently said:

 “As a responsible government, we are considering fallback options in the event this is not achieved to ensure the communities of Northern Ireland are protected.”

I think therefore it is clearly intended to apply pressure to the EU. But Fiona O'Leary who is a lawyer, says no internal law can override an international treaty. The EU has not yet agreed an adequacy decision on data flows or on equivalence for the financial sector, or even on aviation and road transport and there are so many areas where the EU could hit us with sanctions they are spoilt for choice.

It may ultimately have the effect of showing just how weak our position is and prove to be a gift to Michel Barnier.

David Gauke, the former Justice minister pointed out that Tory MPs will be voting against their own manifesto pledge to support Johnson's deal:
Hilary Benn tweeted:

The EU Commission and Barnier will probably wait until all the details are published before commenting publicly but the government so far has not denied the reports. If it is all true, it will confirm everything they worried about when dealing with someone as serially untrustworthy as Johnson.

Last November, the former MP Nick Boles writing in The Standard, said of Johnson that he is:

"... a compulsive liar who has betrayed every single person he has ever had any dealings with: every woman who has ever loved him, every member of his family, every friend, every colleague, every employee, every constituent.

As a senior member of his Cabinet once put it to me: “You can always rely on Boris...to let you down.” His bumbling braggadocio disguises an all-consuming ego utterly without conscience, empathy or restraint."

He has also betrayed the Queen, an entire electorate who believed he had an "oven-ready" deal last December, every Tory MP who supported the manifesto  and now an entire continent who thought they had agreed a deal with him.  He only has the world to go now.

How can you deal with him?

In Whitehall there must be serious concern that Johnson is doing enormous damage to Britain's reputation abroad.  According to Foster, officials said the plans risk poisoning the prospects of an eleventh-hour deal and that David (Lord) Frost had "personally driven the decision to take the 'nuclear option' of overwriting the withdrawal agreement, despite progress being made in talks on implementing the Irish protocol."

It will play well with the ERG and the Brexiteers but other parts of the Conservative party, the moderates, will be appalled by the action. Cummings may have gone too far for them.  It could split the party.

Lord Adonis pointed out that since this explicitly goes against the Conservative manifesto from 2019, the upper House would be perfectly entitled to block the legislation which would trigger a constitutional crisis.  

To coincide with the FT report, Johnson also published a statement in The Telegraph - reported by Tony Connelly of RTE on Twitter, where the PM casually says:

If we can’t agree by then (October 15) , then I do not see that there will be a free trade agreement between us, and we should both accept that and move on.

We will then have a trading arrangement with the EU like Australia’s.  I want to be absolutely clear that, as we have said right from the start, that would be a good outcome for the UK.  As a Government we are preparing, at our borders and at our ports, to be ready for it.

He is starting to look ridiculous and the EU may well now think is the time to up the ante again and take him at his word. The 15 October deadline by the way started earlier on in the year as the end of June, then July, then September and now October. This tells its own story I think.

In any case October 15 is the first day of the EU leaders' summit and a full legal text needs to be in place by then, all checked and translated into umpteen languages so the real deadline is later this month.

Yesterday showed a sharp rise in covid-19 cases which will not help the government's drive to get people back to work. Johnson has refused to extend the furlough scheme after the end of October when unemployment is set to rocket.  The Freight industry is beginning to sound the alarm about the lack of readiness and all in all we are heading for a serious winter of discontent. The PM's performances against Starmer get worse by the week which does not help Tory morale.

And it was all supposed to be so easy.

Make no mistake though, Dominic Cummings is behind all of it.  They have cornered themselves and are now flailing in all directions.

Finally, I give the last word to Antoinette Sandbach, another moderate former Tory MP :



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