If Johnson is the answer, what is the question?

It seems such a long time ago but it is in fact only three years since Theresa May entered Downing Street, giving a speech which raised hopes that many of the social injustices which had characterised the recent past were about to be rectified. We were sadly disappointed. Now her race is run, and we await the confirmation of Boris Johnson as the 55^th person to hold the position of UK Prime Minister. The political temperature is even hotter than the weather, as we bask in the hottest day of the year so far, but the outlook is far less clear than it was on that sunny July day in 2016 when Theresa May took the reins.

My views on the suitability of Johnson for the highest office have been well documented on this blog over the past three years. That said, I have underestimated him. After he quit his role as Foreign Secretary in July 2018, having turned out to be one of the most disastrous incumbents of that office, I thought he was due a long spell on the backbenches.  I never quite believed his political career was over but his inability to deal with the detail required of a front-line national politician, let alone maintain high level relationships with other governments, demonstrated his unsuitability for the top job. It is a sad indictment of the other candidates that the Tories voted 2:1 in favour of handing the party leadership to Johnson just 12 months after he walked out, claiming that he could not sign up to the type of Brexit proposed by the May government. It is true that the likes of Jeremy Hunt are pretty colourless characters but sometimes you need adults guarding the liquor cabinet. Johnson is akin to the alcoholic who has just been given the keys to a brewery and I fear it will not end well. 

He is an antidote to the caution of the May era and whilst this is welcome in many ways, he does not seem to understand the constraints under which she operated. In the course of his victory speech today, Johnson promised “we are going to get Brexit done on 31 October, we are going to take advantage of all the opportunities that it will bring in a new spirit of can-do. And we are once again going to believe in ourselves and what we can do and like some slumbering giant we are going to rise and ping off the guy ropes of self-doubt and negativity.” You cannot fault the optimism but in many ways these few sentences illustrate all we need to know. It is all about what he didn't say: He didn't explain how “we are going to get Brexit done” nor what are “the opportunities that it will bring.” And if you want to extend his boxing metaphor, Muhammad Ali was an expert at coming back off the ropes but look what happened to him within a few short years. 

As for delivering Brexit on 31 October, it can be done. The question is, at what cost? A no-deal Brexit would fulfil the mandate, but there are sufficient concerns regarding the economic impact that MPs are likely to do all they can to prevent it. Last week’s Fiscal Risks Report from the OBR provided a timely reminder of the potential costs of a no-deal Brexit. Based on the IMF’s relatively benign growth scenario, which reckons on a 4% loss of output relative to baseline over a three year horizon, this “adds around £30 billion a year to borrowing from 2020-21 onwards and around 12 per cent of GDP to net debt by 2023-24.” This may prove to be overly pessimistic, of course, but why would any responsible politician want to take the risk?

As for “all the opportunities that it will bring” we have been through this so many times that it has become boring, but I am professionally bound to ask “what opportunities?”  What exactly is it that the EU prevents the UK from doing today that would make it better off? And don’t say negotiate better trade deals with third countries. Just don’t go there! The UK is already one of the most deregulated economies in the EU and as I pointed out in 2016: “Not in the single currency nor party to the Schengen Agreement, it broadly worked for us.”

In many ways the fact-free nature of the Brexit debate has intensified over the past three years making it even more difficult for the next government to deliver. As a minister who was capable of extreme disingenuousness towards the previous prime minister even as he sat in her government, Johnson cannot rely on the loyalty of those Tory MPs who oppose his vision of Brexit. At some point, fantasy and reality are going to collide. It is one thing to convince your electorate but the Tory debate has been conducted in plain sight and the rest of the world has been looking on in amazement as the Tories attempted to outdo each other’s hard Brexit credentials. Moreover, Brexit is not just about the UK – the EU also has a big say. And why should the EU reopen negotiations with the UK when it has already made the least-worst offer that will satisfy the conflicting requirements of both sides? Nor should we be under any illusions about how widely reviled Johnson is in the rest of the EU. He is the last person to whom Emmanuel Macron will be prepared to offer any concessions.

It is profoundly depressing to think that a country that prides itself on its pragmatism has now elected a person who is more remembered for their appearances on a light-hearted topical news quiz (here or here for example, but there is lots more) than for their tenure as Mayor of London. There again, Johnson is not the only comedian who has achieved high political office recently: Beppe Grillo in Italy and Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine spring immediately to mind. And Donald Trump’s previous gig was as host of the TV series The Apprentice.

There is, of course, a deeper issue here: It is all about how the message is delivered, not the content of the message itself, and what better way to do this than employ an engaging frontman (or woman)? Johnson is not a dyed-in-the-wool Brexiteer but he has been well paid for delivering this message by people that are. Nor does Trump have any strong political views but he is a great frontman for those with a message to peddle.

To finish on a lighter note in these dark times, a few days ago, a colleague sent me a copy of The Ladybird Book of Brexit which takes a sideways look at the issue. I was particularly taken with the satirical paragraph which pointed out that ”Montmorency De Douchelord Ponsonby-Fring and his friend Sir William Du Flournay were glad the public voted Leave. Like so many land-owners, newspaper barons, hedge fund managers, firebrand back-bench MPs, ex-pat billionaires and Russian oligarchs, they thought it was high time the ordinary people of Britain got a chance to send a message to an out-of-touch-elite.” And what better person to represent the ordinary people than defender-of-the-common man Boris Johnson?