Johnson’s cynical statecraft plan of failure

3rd October 2019 / United Kingdom

TruePublica Editor: The question on your mind this morning is will the Boris Johnson offer to the EU win the day. The answer is – No.

Leaving aside all the backstop and border issues, and the fact that Johnson has endlessly said there will be no borders checks, whilst his plan of statecraft has two, there’s a simple reason why this plan will fail.

The EU would be clinically insane to accept it. So would the Irish.

This deal does nothing and serves no-one except one thing – it politically, and one has to say, cynically, shifts the blame onto the EU for rejecting it.

The Johnson plan is utter nonsense. It makes no sense.

Let’s say Brussels accepted the plan, the island of Ireland would be, metaphorically speaking, cannon fodder. Ireland is a member of the EU27 and if treated in such a way they would have to ask, what’s the point of being a member of the EU. The whole point of being a member state is to take advantage that membership offers – one of those conditions is security. Security of its economy, its food, medical, health and other things but also of its borders.

If the EU accepted this deal it would betray all 27 members and the club would fall apart overnight. This is cynical statecraft by Johnson’s team – its design has failure built-in.

If the EU accepted this deal – they would be seen the world over as a pushover by a populist with Trump like traits just as they enter a trade war with the USA – announced this morning.

So the answer from the EU is already set in stone – no.

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Johnson now has to prepare for asking for that extension – or break the law. The former is for the EU to decide, the latter for the courts. Either way, Boris Johnson has offered nothing and got nothing. He could now resign and open up the gameplan to an election.

Johnson does have one thing going for him though. Jeremy Corbyn’s team are building a manifesto that has already failed at the polls before even being published. That is the one gift Johnson has in this world. Jeremy Corbyn and Momentum have their voters on the left but they won’t make the difference just as the blue-rinse brigade who put Johnson in on the right won’t either. And the ones that will make a difference this time – don’t like what they hear. That is where the battleground is and it won’t be pretty.