MATTHEW PARRIS
History will soon judge this fraught time
Johnson will have noted that the media
support he has received for this high-risk
strategy has been conditional upon its work-
ing, and he has offered us an upbeat hope
that it will. Many have hesitantly backed him
on the basis of the promise that he can bring
home the bacon. ‘Don’t undermine me,’ he
has asked; and ‘Don’t undermine him’ has
been the media echo. That’s only sensible
advice if one has judged that he has a good
chance of succeeding. So the wisdom of this
media judgment, too, is shortly to be tested.
If Brussels doesn’t blink and we leave
without a deal, Johnson has misled us. If he
then caves in at the last minute and asks the
EU for further negotiations and extra time,
then he will have doubly misled us. He couldnot blame EU intransigence on Remainer
MPs (though he would try), because he has
always known that parliament would try to
avoid no deal. Rebel Remainer MPs are not
a new factor that his original strategy reck-
oned without.
Charged with misleading the country
with claims about Europe’s secret willing-
ness to compromise, Mr Johnson could best
defend his judgment — if not his character
— by confessing that he always knew no deal
was a likely outcome, but realised the voters
wouldn’t wear it; and so placed us on that path
without being honest about where it would
lead. ‘I knew it wouldn’t work but I had to lie’
would be an odd way of defending himself,
and might have to await his autobiography.But by 1 November our Prime Minister
must surely be revealed as having (a) taken
a bold but brilliant negotiating risk (if Brus-
sels blinks, that is); (b) blundered (if it’s Boris
who blinks, or if we crash out); (c) tricked
the country into no deal as he always intend-
ed; or (d) tricked the European Research
Group hardliners into a postponement he
always wanted. He’s either a high-wire hero,
a bungler or a trickster. I don’t see any other
possibilities.
If we do crash out, most mainstream
Remainers face similar judgments over the
threat that has been their principal weapon.
They’ve been loud in their warnings that no
deal will fast prove a catastrophe. It may take
a month or two before we can pronounce,
but the immediate chaos Remainers have
predicted has been so much part of their nar-
rative (no food, no medicine, transport hell,
recession, etc) that we’ll fairly quickly be able
to mark their examination papers.
I don’t think they are pretending. Some of
them may suspect they’re over-egging it a bit,
but most have been persuaded or persuaded
themselves that disaster really does stare us
in the face. So if disaster does not come to
pass then Remain will look even more fool-
ish than it did when the result of the 2016
referendum failed to trigger the economic
emergency some of them predicted.
By the end of November Remainers will
(a) be lamenting gleefully that they told us
so (if the sky has fallen in); (b) (if the sky
hasn’t) be exposed as having grossly miscal-
culated the economic risk and cried wolf; or
(c) (if we’ve left with a deal, or postponed
again) be congratulating themselves on
steering Britain off the rocks.
There appears a decent chance, then, that
history may be able to judge rather sooner
than history generally can. And my own
guess? That a no-deal Brexit is now a real
possibility and would prove the beginning of
several fraught years in which we negotiate
a Mrs May-style post-Brexit vassalage deal
with the EU, the latter being prepared to
agree, without prejudice, temporary stand-
stills in our present trading relationships.
No blowout in the fast lane, then: just
the long, faint and dispiriting hiss of a slow
puncture. History’s good at charting these,
but only years, often decades, later.G
ood stories have a dénouement. The
Act III moment when all is revealed
and the narrative comes in to land is
critical to most plays and novels. And so we
want it to be with Brexit. Who will turn out
to have been right, and who wrong? Whose
bluff will have been called, and to whom will
go the secret pleasures of ‘I told you so’?
Real life usually disappoints, however.
No single event settles matters, and both
sides of a dispute tend to find ways of main-
taining that they were right all along, and
if outcomes confound them then this was
somebody else’s fault. Thus, in case it should
be needed, Brexiteers are already building
their narrative of betrayal: ‘Brussels never
believed British threats because traitorous
Remainers persuaded Europe that parlia-
ment would pull the rug from under the
prime minister’s feet.’ And if we do end up
with no deal and the sky does not fall in,
Remainers, likewise, are readying them-
selves to explain that it’s apocalypse post-
poned, not avoided.
Next week I’m off to Pakistan for a short
walk in the Hindu Kush, and not back on
these pages until late September, when much
water will have flowed under the bridge. One
is not thanked for being wise after the event,
so before events play out (or don’t), I’d like
here to examine the possibilities, and ask
what the chances are that some key players
will be judged to have been right or wrong.
There does exist a chance that leading
politicians and commentators will be vul-
nerable to adjudication. In particular there
are two verdicts it may be possible to reach.
One bids fair to vindicate or condemn Boris
Johnson’s assessments of the possible; and
the other could vindicate or condemn lead-
ing Remainers’ powers of prophecy.
The imminent test for Mr Johnson is
whether Brussels blinks. He has plainly
believed (or pretended to believe) that unlike
Theresa May he can call what he thinks is
Europe’s bluff. The Leaver argument for
threatening no deal, which Remainers have
always struggled to rebut, has been that, to
negotiate effectively, one’s threats have to
be both scary and credible to the other side.
Johnson has promised he means it and sug-
gested the Europeans do not. Both beliefs
may shortly be tested.
Boris Johnson will be seen to be a
high-wire hero, a bungler or a trickster.
I don’t see any other possibilities