Is a Brexit deal impossible and what happens now?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/08/is-a-brexit-deal-impossible-and-what-happens-now

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After weeks of phoney war, Tuesday felt like a possible shift in the Brexit impasse – but one based largely on recriminations and anger and containing several mixed messages.

What has changed?

In brief: a wave of anonymous briefings from inside Downing Street effectively exploded a small bomb under the Brexit process. Overnight, a long memo sent to the Spectator predicted the ongoing talks with the EU would fail and threatened the withdrawal of some security cooperation in response. Hours later another mystery briefing, given to select broadcast journalists, said a phone call between Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel had effectively torpedoed the talks, as Merkel had insisted on a solution for the Irish border that left Northern Ireland in permanent alignment with the EU.

Does this mean Johnson’s Brexit plan is officially over?

No. Downing Street’s public line is that a deal is still possible. Johnson’s spokesman described the call with Merkel as “frank” – diplomatic code for extremely frosty – but insisted talks were continuing, although they would now have to “move at pace” to achieve anything. Answering questions in the Commons later, Michael Gove insisted the government still had a “strong desire to leave with a deal”.

Why are different parts of Downing Street saying different things?

This is becoming something of a pattern for the Johnson administration: advisers anonymously briefing favourite journalists about their sometimes incendiary thinking while the PM’s spokesman, a civil servant, says something else without publicly disavowing the briefings. Some of this is minor turf wars between Johnson staffers, but it mainly seems to be an attempt to exercise deniable control over the pre-election agenda, to get in place a narrative for voters that the collapse of talks is entirely the fault of a perfidious EU.

Who is doing all this briefing?

The long memo sent to the Spectator has been widely ascribed to Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief adviser, a man with a history of penning lengthy diatribes blaming misfortunes on the inability of other parties to keep pace with his own genius. With other briefings it is less clear, but they are likely to have come from a handful of political appointees inside No 10 who work on communications and strategy. Downing Street has yet to disown any of the recent messages, so they can be presumed to be genuine.

What has been the non-UK reaction?

The German government has refused to comment beyond confirming that Merkel and Johnson spoke on Tuesday morning, but other reaction has been more pointed. Donald Tusk, the European council president, tweeted: “What’s at stake is not winning some stupid blame game. At stake is the future of Europe and the UK as well as the security and interests of our people.”

Could the UK cut security cooperation with the EU?

This seems extremely unlikely, not to mention counterproductive. In the Commons, Gove declined repeated invitations from MPs to condemn the anonymous briefings but assured them the UK would cooperate fully on such matters post-Brexit.

Is a deal impossible?

It would seem so, and this had always appeared the most likely case under Johnson, whatever his protestations. The government’s new plan, involving an uncertain future regime of border checks in Ireland (even if not at the border), always seemed likely be rejected by both Dublin and Brussels. There has always been a fundamental contradiction between the EU’s insistence that its single market cannot be compromised, the UK’s long-established red lines of no single market or customs union membership or a regulatory border in the Irish Sea, and the obligations under the Good Friday peace deal to avoid a hard Irish border. This contradiction has now, perhaps, finally met reality.

So what happens now?

That is the big question, or rather series of questions. Downing Street still maintains its legally contradictory position that it will abide by legislation mandating a Brexit extension if no deal is reached by an EU summit next week, but also that the UK will leave on 31 October. There are countless theories as to how that will pan out. In the slightly longer term, an election seems inevitable – one in which Boris Johnson will cast himself as a Brexit martyr who was foiled by the EU and a rebellious Commons. It is likely to be a brutal and cynical campaign.