Boris Johnson leads his weary people to the unpromised land

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/17/boris-johnson-leads-weary-people-unpromised-land-brexit-deal

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Northern Ireland was so last year. At the Democratic Unionist party’s conference in November 2018, Boris Johnson had said no British Conservative government could sign up to regulatory checks and customs controls down the Irish Sea. To do so would be to put the whole of the union at risk. But midway through the morning, Boris Johnson announced he had agreed a Brexit deal that did just that. The DUP could do one. The prime minister whose defining talent is an inability to tell the truth to anyone had lied again. He was nothing if not entirely dependable.

Lunch appeared to have been taken rather early for Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, as he steered an uneven path to the lectern for his brief joint statement with Johnson in Brussels. Supermarket trolleys with wonky wheels have made less hapless journeys.

Juncker mumbled a few vaguely coherent words about being both happy and sad and how the deal was a good deal, if by a good deal you meant a deal that was going to make everyone involved significantly worse off. Then his eyes rather glazed over. Too much time with Boris could do that to a man. He was sick of talking about Brexit. He had wasted too much of his life on this.

While the commission president had been wobbling unsteadily in front of the podium, Johnson had stood to one side, tucking and untucking his shirt. Try to look serious. Like a statesman. Don’t fidget or smirk, he told himself. Too late. A large smirk crossed the prime minister’s face and his arms flailed uncontrollably. He looked and sounded like a crumpled, guilty schoolboy trying to talk his way out of a situation in which he had been caught red-handed, rather than a leader delivering his people to a promised land. Probably because it was to a land that no one had been promised. Selling England by the Poundland.

“We leave whole and entire,” he declared. Apart from Northern Ireland. Ireland was dead to him. People would say he had thrown the DUP under a bus, but that wasn’t fair. He had thrown them under a train. Far more efficient. He had done away with the temporary backstop by turning it into a permanent full stop. Genius. This was a great deal, providing no one looked too closely at the small print. Especially around fishing rights.

Hopefully the European Research Group would also come on side with his promise to maintain regulatory alignment being shunted from the withdrawal agreement to the future political declaration. After all, they were notoriously dim, so by the time they realised they had been sold down the river and that EU regulations would be an essential part of any free trade agreement, it would be far too late for them to do anything about it. Classic Dom. The genius had all the bases covered. He was the MAN.

Johnson burbled something insincere about the UK’s decision to leave the EU being a high-water mark in international relations. The problem all along had been that the EU just hadn’t been European enough for the UK. The whole point of being a European wasn’t to get on with your neighbours, it was to ruck with them. Without the odd war, the past 70 years had just been too boring.

The press conference ended with both men refusing to take questions. “Jean-Claude is the boss,” Johnson said, happy to be let off the hook, as Juncker tottered away. Once out of sight of the cameras, Johnson pressed a case of vintage Château Margaux into the president’s hands.

“It would be helpful if you could say you wouldn’t grant a further extension. Just to frighten a few MPs back in Blighty,” Johnson said.

“But I don’t have any say one way or the other,” Juncker protested. Still, a case of Margaux was a case of Margaux, so there was no harm in being obliging. No one would take him seriously anyway.

Johnson then pushed his way into the European council and shook hands with each leader in turn. “Goodbye,” he said.

“Do you promise?” they all replied. Somehow they doubted it.

Shortly before 6pm, Johnson gave a further quick solo press conference. He needn’t have bothered. It was another failed music hall act in comparison with the one given by Juncker, Michel Barnier, Leo Varadkar and Donald Tusk moments earlier. The UK has a fundamentally unserious, unstable leader for serious times.

These days, Johnson is a joke without a punchline. He couldn’t explain why he hadn’t hung Northern Ireland out to dry. He couldn’t explain how he would heal the divisions Brexit had caused. Somehow, everything would miraculously be OK. Most of all, he had no answer to what would happen if parliament rejected his deal.

Maybe he’d get an election, maybe he wouldn’t. It was all just a game to him anyway. There was no defeat that could not be rewritten as victory. No lie that couldn’t be twisted into truth. He departed, stage right, smirking to the very end. Classic Boris.