Thornton’s fabulous fudge?

Boris Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings is famously a big fan of German chancellor Otto von Bismarck. In his free jazz-style blogs, Cummings often praised the founder of modern Germany, a militarist noted for his decisive nature and his disdain of pesky “parliamentaryism”. 

What’s not often noted is that it was Bismarck who also came up with that aphorism cited by pragmatists down the ages: “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best.” And that’s not a line Cummings has ever knowingly cited.

However, after Johnson and Leo Varadkar’s meeting in Thornton Manor near Merseyside today, is the seeming impossible now possible on Brexit? Is the next best, or fourth best, solution the one we are heading for?

Well, both men signed a joint statement that they had “agreed that they could see a pathway to a possible deal”. Varadkar himself then added “it is possible” for the two nations to come to a treaty agreement “by the end of October”. Of course, it’s probability not possibility that matters most on Brexit, but a jump in the pound on the money markets showed that some felt the odds were shifting.

The Irish were certainly upbeat and many pounced on the Irish Times suggestion that there had been “very significant movement from the British side on the customs issue”. Is the Northern Ireland-only backstop suddenly alive again? Has the PM floated a customs border in the Irish sea? Did the Irish give ground on Johnson’s plan for seeking the ‘consent’ of Northern Ireland? 

No.10 has been notably tight-lipped, and the lack of a Johnson press conference was conspicuous. Still, the two leaders spent more than two hours one-on-one, without any advisers in the room, and there’s obviously room for progress. Note too that both sides said there had been a ‘detailed’ discussion, not mere broad brush bromides.

This is all a far cry from the PM’s bullish statement to the Commons back in July, when he set down clear red lines on the abolition of the ‘backstop’ and on customs. Back then, Johnson had no concrete plan for a Brexit deal, but lots of rhetoric about no-deal. It felt like he had been so focused on winning the Tory leadership that he simply hadn’t delegated to anyone the heavy lifting needed on Brexit policy. 

That in itself was an echo of his early days as Mayor of London, when his head-down determination to beat Ken Livingstone meant he simply hadn’t planned for what he would actually do in office. His first few months at City Hall were indeed chaotic, though that has since been obscured by his ‘Boris Bikes’, ‘Boris Buses’ and more.

The real difficulty for Johnson tonight is that if a deal is tantalisingly closer, his main enemy is time. By leaving it so late, has the PM wrecked his own Halloween exit? Varadkar hinted recently that the sheer detail of the new plans is so fundamental that it cannot be hammered out in barely two weeks (don’t forget the UK plan was presented eight days ago and the EU summit is only a week away).

For all his ‘do-or-die’ rhetoric about October 31, many expect the PM will be forced into an extension, even if it is just for a couple more weeks. Still, he may not be too fussed about a short delay if he can finally bag the big prize of getting the UK out of the EU.

Jeremy Corbyn may be heaving a big sigh of relief if (and it’s still a huge ‘if’) a deal is actually done. He can then focus purely on an anti-austerity general election campaign, with the Brexit Party no longer eating the backside out of his heartland vote in Leave areas. But equally Johnson could unite his own party and use his sunny optimism to get the majority he so craves.

Cummings recently said that being in government was a “walk in the park” compared to running the Leave campaign during the EU referendum. Johnson and Varadkar took a walk in the gardens of Thornton Manor today to cement their new-found compatibility, while officials got to work on the textual healing. 

The optics were pretty good for the Irish premier as it looked like he had walked the extra mile for compromise, literally coming onto the UK’s turf to talk. Yet it’s a quirk of geography that in fact it was Johnson who travelled further than his counterpart (it’s 226 miles from London to the Wirral, but just 160 miles from Dublin). 

That’s an ominous metaphor for a nervous DUP and hardline Tory Brexiteers, let alone Cummings’ no-deal election strategy. They will be hoping their man hasn’t gone too far in bringing home the fabulous fudge.

 

Thursday Cheat Sheet

Jeremy Corbyn said he will not back a second Brexit referendum before the next general election. His stance contrasts with many Labour MPs who are ready to vote down such a plan.

Japanese carmaker Nissan warned that a no-deal Brexit could make its European business model unsustainable. It said if a 10% export tariff was introduced after the UK left the EU it would put its operations “in jeopardy”.

MP Chris Williamson has lost his High Court bid to be reinstated to the Labour Party after he was suspended over allegations of anti-Semitism.

Security minister Brandon Lewis appears to have threatened EU citizens with deportation should they fail to apply for settled status post-Brexit.

Helene Reardon Bond, a former Whitehall equalities chief who helped draft the UK’s pioneering gender pay gap policy, is set to become director of Jeremy Corbyn’s office. She effectively replaces Karie Murphy, who left this week to take up an elections role.

Labour’s vote share has declined in every single council by-election since shortly after Boris Johnson took office, election analyst and Tory peer Lord Hayward has found.