To paraphrase…I don’t know Winston Churchill and Boris Johnson is no Winston Churchill…
Johnson fundamentally doesn’t want an EU deal. He wants a heroic departure. Why else would he leave it so late to concoct a proposed amended withdrawal deal which ensures border controls even if they are not ‘at or near’ the border of Ireland and Northern Ireland? Why would he threaten to flout the law by refusing to contemplate remaining in the EU post 31st October as parliament dictates? Why did he try for a lengthy prorogation of parliament? Why does he choose language such as ‘surrender’ and, yesterday, in his Party Conference speech, tangentially make reference to his tangles with the Supreme Court with the words ‘age of creative litigation’?
Regardless of whether Johnson strikes a Brexit deal with the EU and enough colleagues in Westminster, the next election will still be about ‘the People versus Parliament’ with all the dangerous precedents that sets. Referenda throughout history have been used by the majority (however narrow) to subjugate the minority and it is no different now. You trash representative democracy, pay lip service to our Supreme Court and mislead the Queen. You remain unrepentant because you are a warrior; a warrior against European domination and the fashionable elites. That is the Churchillian pose of this Prime Minister. If he is allowed to get away with it, the long-term consequences are shocking. Not least if this most un-Tory of leaders is followed by a Marxist Prime Minister, who uses such precedents to even greater effect.
Johnson has nowhere else to go. His strategy, crafted by Cummings, is set in stone. It is do or die.
So, will he get away with it? Quite possibly. Labour, under the hopeless Corbyn, provides Johnson with a huge window of opportunity. The Tories, after all, despite the Brexit Party, are 11% ahead in the opinion polls. An array of populist Tory spending pledges (what happened to Tory economic prudence?) may reinforce their lead as they seek to steal Labour seats in the North. The LibDems will do well but may not match expectations with their hard Remain stance in the Brexit South West undermining prospects there.
Then we would have a truly Churchillian victory. Gulp!
However, the Tories will lose seats in Scotland after Ruth Davidson’s departure and their DUP allies may lose ground in Northern Ireland, even handing victory to Sinn Fein. They will lose several heavily Remain seats in the South East and London. And the evidence in previous elections is that Tory spending pledges and Brexit are not quite enough to peel votes from Labour in its strongholds. Finally, Farage is not going anywhere and certainly if we have not left the EU by 31st October, the Brexit Party will be rejuvenated whatever Johnson’s bluster.
On balance, only that fundamentally unwanted EU deal, or God forbid, a pact with the Brexit Party, guarantees an election victory for Johnson otherwise a hung parliament and a second referendum beckons.
Not quite so Churchillian after all.
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Inside Right Politics 