Blind Panic

It's been a funny few days for the seasoned Brexit watcher. The whole soap opera had become a bit moribund over the last few months, as the gripping Coronavirus plotline continued to preoccupy the writers. But now that everyone's pretending that everything's fine, even those who are aware that it isn't are finding their levels of background terror subsiding enough to start to worry about other things.

Top of the list, of course, is that the deadline for extending talks slipped by just yesterday. True to their word, the Government haven't asked to extend. Not only that, but they've decided that they can probably do without their chief negotiator, shunted back to Whitehall to fill the brogues of the recently defenestrated Sir Mark Sedwill. It's not as if we have to get a deal done before the end of the year or anything.

As to the purpose of this half-arsing of the negotiations, that's anybody's guess. The wilder shores of internet opinion are convinced that it's all a plot orchestrated by various dark money types who have Cummings and Johnson in their pocket, and for whom nothing less than the most brutal No Deal will do. Which is possible. Certainly a few already very rich people stand to get substantially richer if we do that, and the chances of this worst of all possible worlds have just  increased substantially.

I have another theory. MY theory is that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson genuinely believes he can treat the EU negotiations the same way he's treated everything else in his life. A few notes written on the cuff of his shirt, the right word at the right time, a little bit of brinkmanship and Johnny Foreigner caves, back to Blighty in time to shag whichever intern he's got holed up at Chequers while Carrie looks after the sprog. I mean, it's worked for him so far, he's made it all the way to PM, why shouldn't it work again? 

The problem with this, of course, is that Michel Barnier has so far proved fairly impervious to BJ's dubious charms. And is likely to be in even less forgiving mood after the letter sent to him last week by the ERGs very own Corporal Pike tribute act, Mark Francois.

You may have seen this epistle. In which case you will be aware that it is as a rich a piece of bathos as anything Alan Bennett ever wrote. It starts off announcing itself as "a missive from a free country", as if this weren't fist gnawingly embarrassing enough Francois, a Walter Mittyish sort of a chap who seems to think that being in the TA for a bit puts him on a par with Alexander the Great, presents his bona fides as the head of the ERG, adding....

Oh God, I almost can't bring myself to type it

"you may have heard of us"

I'm sure he thought it was the height of suavity when written, and his lack of awareness that this is prose too hackneyed for the script of a B-Movie is almost endearing, if it weren't for the fact that the stupid bastard has driven us all to the edge of oblivion.

Anyhow, the letter goes on to exhort Johnny Foreigner to try a little harder in the negotiations, noting that we're running out of time etc etc. Now, I'm aware that the current crop of Tories are not exactly noted for their self-awareness, but this seems staggeringly pig-headed even by the standards of the ERG, as big a bunch of nostalgists as you'll find outside of a Sealed Knot re-enactment. Yes Mark, time is running short, your lot opted not to ask for any more.

Could it be that they really are that stupid? Did they really think that the Europeans don't like it up 'em? That a good dose of British pluck would see the EU roll over? It would appear to be the case. And now that it's not happening, they're starting to get a bit twitchy.

Because, as we all know, a hard Brexit would be very bad news indeed, and on a day when thousands of job losses were announced, with the absolute certainty of many more to come, you don't need to be John Maynard Keynes to know that the economy won't take a second shock in the space of a few months. This is going to be bad. And even the swivel-eyed zealots of the ERG know it. And they know who'll take the blame. Panic is starting to set in.

You could see it in Johnson's speech in Dudley yesterday, as incoherent and fantastic a pile of bluster as has ever been belched by a serial liar. It made no sense at all, from blaming the lack of new houses on "newt-counting" (and hailing the speed that the French, who, and I'm going all-caps for this, sorry ARE SUBJECT TO EXACTLY THE SAME HOUSING REGS AS US build houses) to greeting a dual carriageway as the saviour of the economy. Even he knows: when he uttered the immortal line "doubling down on levelling up" the mask slipped, just for a second, as if even he couldn't believe the words that had just left his mouth "if you know what that means" he muttered, and carried on.

They know. They all know. Even Johnson knows. The country has elected a serial failure for one of the most important jobs in its history, He's placed himself in hock to China and the US at the precise moment that the behaviour of those countries draws international condemnation.  Maybe the plan was No Deal, but he knows no-one will wear it now, maybe he meant it when he talked about his "oven-ready" deal, but the EU clearly aren't having any of it. Any US trade deal is going to be bitterly divisive, all his bold building plans will put him at war with his own party membership. He's driven away the Scots, a united Ireland is a distinct possibility, even the Welsh nats are starting to feel a bit more confident. This is before we even begin to think about the deadly indifference with which he handled Covid.

In case you'd forgotten, he went on holiday.

Rarely, in the history of Prime Ministerial fuck-ups, can anyone have fucked-up quite so much, in quite so short a space of time. He knows it. His party knows. Increasingly, the electorate is catching on, buckle up, there's a few more plot twists in the soap opera to come yet.