Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

How do you solve a problem like Boris Johnson? By backing him for prime minister

The Tory leadership frontrunner's mission to deliver Brexit and bully Ireland into submission over the border issue will crash and burn, leaving no one to blame but himself. He may make it to No 10, but he’ll be gone by Christmas

Sean O'Grady
Friday 14 June 2019 13:18 BST
Comments
Boris Johnson suggests MPs can't block no-deal

He looks unstoppable doesn’t he? Boris Johnson, as has been remarked, can only be defeated by Johnson – meaning he’ll drop some appalling gaffe or yet another dreadful skeleton would have to tumble out of his overstuffed closet.

Even then, though, you have to factor in the fact that the Tory grassroots he is appealing to probably won’t care, or might even approve of his straight-talking refusal, as he puts it, to stick to “bureaucratic platitudes”.

In other words, he could write another one of those dreadful articles about the burka and pillar boxes, or Liverpudlians having a victim complex or the “watermelon smiles” of African children, and his vote among Tory activists would probably go up. “Dog whistle" politics they call it, and he is, after all, being advised by Lynton Crosby.

Cheer up, though, he might win. By that, I mean that this man who has made a career out of ridiculing and destroying other people’s careers will soon have no more alibis, no more excuses, no one else to blame, nowhere left to hide. He will be in Number 10 and the buck will stop with him.

On Planet Boris, the reason we are not already out of the European Union is because Theresa May wasn’t hard enough, she allowed herself to be run by her civil servants, and she fell helplessly under the spell of the evil masterminds of Brussels.

Well, if that is true, then Johnson must surely succeed where she failed. Won’t he?

Not necessarily. Cutting through as much of the undergrowth as one can, the key to the magic Brexit lies in Dublin. Johnson – who is not dim – has worked out that the biggest obstacle to getting Brexit through the House of Commons is the so-called Irish backstop. If the Irish can be persuaded to cave in on it, then Brussels will raise no further objections, and Brexit can start to go ahead, with the withdrawal agreement, as amended, passed by both houses of parliament, albeit with the usual struggles.

To do that, though, requires the most brutal treatment of the Irish. Hard Brexit would be bad for Britain, and bad for the EU, but most damaging of all to Ireland. Virtually everything Ireland exports either goes to the UK, or goes through the UK to mainland Europe. Britain’s a sort of bridge to Ireland's markets, and if the bridge is closed, via a forced hard Brexit on 31 October, then bang goes the Irish economy.

There would be hardship. The Irish government knows this, and, unless it is insane, must fear it greatly. It is also right to fear a return to the Troubles, or something like them, if hard Brexit happens "by accident” on the morning of 1 November 2019. There will have to be a hard border, because the European Union insists it is essential to protect the integrity of the single market.

So that threat to crucify the Irish economy and bring murder back to the border country is really the only weapon the British have in these negotiations, and a cruel and harsh one it is too. Theresa May took her responsibilities under the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement seriously, and was disinclined to treat our closest neighbour so badly.

Johnson will put his own interests and what he perceives to be the British interests first. He has, we know from leaks, dismissed the Irish backstop and the border issue as “the tail wagging the dog”. This, in detail, is what Johnson said last June at a Conservative Way Forward private event about the Irish border question:

“It’s so small and there are so few firms that actually use that border regularly, it’s just beyond belief that we’re allowing the tail to wag the dog in this way. We’re allowing the whole of our agenda to be dictated by this folly.”

He has not changed his mind, nor will he.

Of course, he could crash and burn on his mission to deliver Brexit, as he has so often in the past. If the House of Commons somehow manages to regain control of events and outlaws a no-deal Brexit, then Johnson’s strategy is in ruins.

Independent Minds Events: get involved in the news agenda

It might provide him with an excuse to do something else – but it would also prove that the political fundamentals did not change when May was forced out of Downing Street. It will be a moment when he realises that being a statesman is trickier than writing columns for a living.

If the Irish government and the European Commission also stand firm, call Johnson’s bluff and face him down, then he might well blink first – given the pain a hard Brexit will inflict on the British people, on the Conservative Party’s political prospects and his own chances of enjoying a long tenure in Downing Street.

If he calculates that he too will be chucked out of Number 10, he might think twice about pursuing the high-risk gamble of hard Brexit.

If not, then all his critics can sit back and say “we told you so”. David Cameron and Theresa May, who were both indirectly brought down by his activities, can claim vindication. The country will hate him. He will be gone by Christmas. And, at last, the whole country will understand the truth about Johnson and about Brexit.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in