The political world has surely turned into a gloomy underworld, when you give a little gasp of disappointment at the news that a man who probably worked as an MI6 spy and who declares himself a devoted unionist is knocked out of the Tory leadership race.
But that’s what happened yesterday – Rory Stewart was eliminated, with Channel Four news suggesting strongly that the ‘false pregnancy’ of Stewart was all part of a plot to eliminate Dominic Raab, who, incredibly, was seen as being to the right of Johnson.
But we are, to coin a phrase, where we are, and we’re left with Johnson, Gove, Sajid Javid and Jeremy Dunt, I mean Hunt. I could go into statements all four have made and decisions all four have made that would show they’re clearly unfitted to lead a five-year-old for a lollipop, let alone the Conservative party. But let’s concentrate on what all four claim they will do: the impossible.
That’s all – the impossible. They will reopen Theresa May’s agreement, take out its beating heart, the backstop, and throw it away. Or, in Boris’s case, you’ll deal with it further up the line when the UK and the EU start trade negotiations.
What will it take to convince these people that Michel Barnier and his EU colleagues mean it when they say there will be no renegotiations of what has been agreed? Given this, will Britain’s new prime minister take us all to October 31 and send the UK economy spinning into a black, bottomless hole? Yes and No.
What may happen will be that the EU and Boris (presumably) will pretend to have negotiations. Eventually, May’s withdrawal agreement will be reproduced, but this time packaged in colorful ribbons of Tory blue, decorated with images of Churchill and Boris. Then Boris will face the British people, hold it aloft and shout “We won!” The EU will know that nothing has changed except the ribbon and packaging, but it’ll allow Boris to claim that he banged some EU heads together, and look at what a change the withdrawal agreement has undergone, sure it’s hardly recognizable.
That’s the most optimistic view we can take of what lies ahead. But as one interviewee for my Border + Brexit book put it: “There is no soft or hard Brexit. There’s just Brexit, and no matter what way you look at it, it’s a total disaster.”
And adding to that disaster will probably be Boris as PM. I never thought I’d say these words, but I find them tumbling from my shaking lips: “I’d rather have Gove.”
Comments are closed.