Hmmm
George Parker @GeorgeWParker
Big read - Number 10 gets into Brexit deal mode...no appetite at top of govt (RishiSunak / michaelgove) for more chaos BorisJohnson under pressure from Tory MPs to show he can deliver with *@pmdfoster and *@jimbrunsden
www.ft.com/content/16e84a65-3a95-468f-bcc1-5c8242cc3abc?sharetype=blocked
‘Every week is an ordeal’: Johnson under pressure over Brexit and lockdown
As EU trade talks resume, a no-deal scenario remains possible but the UK prime minister needs progress to dispel criticism of his leadership
There is a commonly held view — including in Brussels — that the Brexit hardliners advising Mr Johnson believe that amid all the other turmoil and economic damage inflicted by Covid-19, the disruption caused by a hard or “clean break” Brexit over the new year would barely be noticed. Some EU officials say that while a trade deal is do-able, Mr Johnson’s key advisers do not want one and aim to blame an “intransigent” EU when talks collapse.
and
“Johnson and his team persuaded themselves that the EU would be so panicked that they would give in eventually,” Ivan Rogers, former UK ambassador to Brussels, told the Irish Times. “And it didn’t happen. Boris didn’t, I believe, start off as a true no-dealer, but he seems now formally in the camp with Dominic Cummings [that says]: ‘to hell with it, we should walk away’.”
Even some Conservative MPs supportive of Mr Johnson fear he has been captured by Mr Cummings and the Vote Leave Brexit hardliners in Downing Street. “He’s like Aung San Suu Kyi, surrounded by the generals, occasionally wheeled out to smile and say everything will be OK,” says one former minister in a reference to the Myanmar leader.
However, the article says there seems to be a change of mood in the air...
Mr Johnson and Mr Gove insist — as does the recently ennobled Lord Frost — that they want a trade deal consistent with Britain’s status as an “independent country”. And there is a growing belief in Westminster and Brussels that the recent ratcheting up of rhetoric about no deal — and Mr Johnson’s provocative threat over the internal market bill — is part of the inevitable ritual before an agreement is finally signed.
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“There’s definitely going to be a deal,” says one senior MP close to Mr Sunak. “Boris has basically decided he’s going to accept a deal, but he has to go out and get a bloody face first. It was what he did in 2019 — he talked tough, then signed up to the Brexit deal that was on the table. Cummings and Boris have told Rishi to trust them; ‘it’s going to be OK’.”
In Brussels, there is already speculation on when — and with whom — Mr Johnson will have his “Varadkar moment”, a reference to the prime minister’s meeting with the former Irish premier Leo Varadkar at a hotel near Liverpool in 2019 that ultimately unlocked the Brexit withdrawal deal. Emmanuel Macron, French president, is often seen as the most likely intermediary in this scenario, dubbed by EU officials “the Boris folds and claims a great victory paradigm”.
and
If the broad outlines of a deal are on the table by the end of this week, one option being weighed in Brussels is for both sides to go into the so-called “negotiating tunnel” — a leak-free, sealed space where the final dealmaking takes place — before EU leaders meet in Brussels on October 15 and 16.
However, EU diplomats say that would require a big leap by both sides and Mr Johnson’s willingness to flout international law has only hardened Brussels’ determination to have a robust mechanism to deal with possible disputes over state aid or other potential violations of the deal. EU officials say “governance” has emerged as a problem area in the talks because the bill has further hardened the EU’s will to secure ironclad guarantees of good UK behaviour, backed by the means for rapid retaliation.
But the mood around the talks has become more positive in London in recent days. Downing Street said: “We are now in the final period of negotiations. There remains a lot of work to do and either outcome is possible.”
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Some ministers believe Mr Johnson has already made the political calculation he has to secure a deal, fearing that if he failed to deliver the EU trade deal he promised, it would only add to the mutinous mood among his MPs and fuel claims at Westminster that he was simply not capable of leading the country through such dark times.
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Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labour party, last week launched a stinging attack on Mr Johnson in remarks that wounded because they reflected what many Conservative MPs say privately — and what public opinion polls reflect too. “This government’s incompetence is holding Britain back,” he said.
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Mr Johnson is well aware of the discontent in his own party and he needs a victory soon. Mr Sunak, meanwhile, is increasingly seen by Tory MPs and the rightwing media as the heir apparent, the Daily Mail newspaper claiming on Friday that the chancellor had “upstaged” the “cautious, health-focused PM” with his coolly presented Covid-19 economic package, in which he urged the country to “live without fear”.
Now this might be stepping too far, but certainly there is a feeling that Johnson's inability to handle the Covid crisis is deeply interwoven with what happens now with a Brexit deal, and that Johnson feels he has no more political capital to burn and must accept a deal rather than go along with this idea that you can somehow just do no deal brexit in the midst of the pandemic and everyone will blame the pandemic.
The thing is with Johnson, is he will do whatever benefits Boris Johnson most.
Does a no deal brexit at this point, with the covid situation as it is and his growing internal party unrest which he has to manage and keep under control - and the Labour Party rising significantly in the polls suit Johnson.
Is Johnson, a poundland Trump in it for himself and him mate in terms of financial corruption and pure power, or is Johnson in love with the idea of being PM who has been hijacked by those who believe in Trumpian ideas - but ultimately more of a populist out of his depth and rather desparate for love and affection from the public and press?
The next couple of weeks may be revealing.
Whether this piece is overly optimistic or reading the runes accurately I don't know, but I don't think that Peter Foster would have contributed to an article like this in tone even a couple of weeks ago.
It does seem that Johnson is facing a personal crisis of leadership though.