Badly warmed-up left-overs are toxic

Less than a month away from the planned date of Brexit, and over three years and three months since the Brexit referendum, Boris Johnson has finally presented in writing what purport to be new plans for a solution to the Irish border problem that has so far prevented a Brexit deal from being reached. But the plans are hardly new at all. The difference is that both the fanatically pro-Brexit European Research Group (ERG) and Northern Ireland’s obstructionist Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) have supposedly been ‘persuaded’ by Johnson’s ‘innovative’ ideas to vote in favour of them in the Westminster parliament. Not that this would give him a majority, since he no longer has one – but it would only need a few MPs from other parties (including pro-Brexit Labour members) to back the new plans for London to finally be able to tell Brussels that the UK does know what it wants, and not just what it doesn’t want.

This would put the EU on the defensive. By clinging to the eminently diplomatic position that it still very much wants a deal on Brexit, it risks falling into a Tory trap – which is precisely what its clear-sighted chief negotiator Michel Barnier has called the plans today after details of them became known. Although Brussels has made clear that the proposals fail to meet the requirements for a secure external border to the single market, it is desperately trying to avoid shutting the door in Britain’s face and so looking like the ‘bad guy’ – which is precisely what Johnson and his newly ‘persuaded’ cronies are betting on. By presenting plans which superficially differ from those already on offer, they can appear to be ‘compromising’. But since the plans are quite evidently unacceptable to Brussels, they can now present the EU as ‘intransigent’ and ‘unreasonable’ – in other words, the ‘bad guy’.

This is manifestly a put-up job. The no less clear-sighted Scottish PM Nicola Sturgeon and London mayor Sadiq Khan have commented that Johnson’s ‘new’ proposals are carefully crafted to fail – an offer the Union not only can, but must, refuse. Even if they did make it through the Westminster parliament, the European Parliament’s spokesman Guy Verhofstadt has already stated that they won’t be acceptable there – but then, once again, the EU will look like the ‘bad guy’.

When, as now seems inevitable, this ‘final’ UK proposal is rejected as inadequate and a no-deal Brexit results, Johnson can push for new elections in which he will present himself as the well-meaning negotiator whose European partners never intended to negotiate – which is a complete and utter reversal of the truth. And, once again, Britain’s long-term interests and those of its neighbours will be subordinated to those of a Tory party that is determined to avoid being overtaken on the right by an even more fiercely pro-Brexit one, and is now led by a man whose personal ambition knows no bounds and who has stuffed his cabinet with like-minded toadies.

What Brussels must now make clear is that it has long been well aware of London’s bad faith, that it is no longer willing to be pushed around – and if that means being seen as the ‘bad guy’, so be it. The other 27 member states, which have maintained an admirable degree of unity, must not abandon it at this late stage – for there is nothing to be gained by doing so. Commission president Juncker has today reassured Ireland of the EU’s support in what will undoubtedly be difficult economic times for the country after Britain crashes out. And as for any future trade agreement between the UK and the EU, it remains to be seen how much trust the EU-27 are prepared to place in a country that has shown itself to be both untrustworthy and arrogantly aggressive.

Badly warmed-up left-overs are toxic, and not just in the kitchen.