Guess what. Both of those are to the fore in a Gran piece on EC likely reactions to a Johnson premiership:
we really need to know [what he wants] [said 'a senior EU source] . The only thing we have seen are his public statements.” EU negotiators have had no contact with the teams of Boris Johnson – the widely presumed winner – or his rival, Jeremy Hunt.... three EU sources said [demand to remove the backstop] was a rehash of debates from the negotiation period, rather than fresh ideas. “It’s all quite ancient” and “not something that we are considering at all”, an official said....Another favourite Tory idea, a time limit on the backstop, also appears to be based on bar-room conversations that took place more than a year ago rather than new proposals.
Officials believe they could work on similar guarantees [not to use the backstop unless it was necessary] , but are not convinced this will help Johnson win a majority. “People say that he is better at selling things than Madame May,” said the senior source. “It’s not a huge hope.” ... the EU is trying to figure out whether Johnson is serious about his “do or die” rhetoric, or will attempt the political backflip of selling a rebranded version of May’s deal. “The next British prime minister has to choose whether they want to ruin their career on Brexit or move on,” an EU diplomat said....Some are still trying to figure our his true views on the EU.[well fair enough -- we all are]
The assumption is that the withdrawal agreement is inevitable, the only reasonable proposal, that objections to it are in vain, and that the problem is to 'sell it'. UK spokespersons describe our institutions in the same way, to make abolition or reform unthinkable.
S Jenkins makes a similar point, likening Johnson's demands to remove the backstop to Trump's attempts to build a wall with Mexico:
There is no majority anywhere, except in Johnson’s scrambled brain [usual abuse] , for a no-deal Brexit. As Whitehall officials – if not men in white coats – gather round him in the coming weeks, they will tell him a brutal truth, political as much as administrative. He needs a deal badly, and the only route to that deal is through Dublin.
A bureaucratic mountain of technology may withdraw the border some miles back, but somewhere there must be tariffs, payments, forms, regulation and inspection. A 40% tariff on a shipment of lamb is a barrier, wherever it gets levied. A chlorinated chicken inspection is a wall, wherever it is done.... [Project Fear examples] ...No deal will mean anarchy, or state-sponsored banditry [well --which? Will the anarchists take on the state bandits?] Johnson continues to claim he can avoid a “hard Irish border”. But he still wants a hard border with the EU [does he?] , so where is it to be? It can only be down the Irish Sea. Bang goes whatever is left of Johnson’s commons majority.
Trade is not about control but about power. The UK has little power against its bigger neighbour. If it wanted power it should have stayed in the EU [!], or at the very least in Thatcher’s single market [was that on offer?]. Johnson sacrificed such power to outflank his rivals for the leadership. He must now pay the price for that chicanery. An awful awakening beckons. If Johnson cannot get a Northern Ireland deal he faces parliamentary armageddon.
Well, a few things there. The Irish also seem desperate for a deal and have approached Johnson, according to the Times,together with several other European leaders.The game of bluff and confrontation (which the Grau and its writers have never understood) might not be exhausted, with the Times today reporting the offer of a multibillion Euro rescue package for the Irish economy should it all get nasty -- that should be popular with the Italians who have been told not to develop Sate spending on their economy. Politically, the forces that used to fight over the border are exhausted now anyway? Would a 'bureaucratic mountain' attract the same passion? Finally, if we were offered a Thatcher-type common market,that would be quite popular with the UK -- but not the EU? In many ways, a new Johnson-type FTA would be rather like an old common market?
I forgot the bit about journo indulgence. The headline reveals all in a piece by M d'Ancona.It's one of those 'in a very real sense, we are all to blame' liberal pieces that accepts criticism while claiming some superior moral virtue all at the same time. D'Ancona wants to explain away his earlier supportive pieces on Johnson
Boris Johnson, the prime minister? I’m sorry to say that I’m partly to blame
I’d love to exempt myself from this audit of blame, but I can’t – at least not entirely. Though I was never a member of Team Boris in the press corps – those who believed, once he became an MP, that he should rise to the very top – the two of us maintained a civil acquaintance as fellow members of the media-industrial complex for two decades....When I succeeded him at the Spectator in 2006, he was impeccably helpful and supportive. I commissioned articles from him and ran them on the cover. Did this skew my judgment of him as a political creature? That’s for others to judge. Certainly, he can’t stand what I’m writing about him these days. But I can’t rule out the possibility that, in the past, I pulled my punches from time to time.
There is a useful insight. D'Ancona refers to
the colonisation of politics by the entertainment industry.... by show business and its tropes....While the rest of Westminster operated within the structures of 20th-century political discourse, Johnson worked on his material like a standup...All of which converged neatly with the plummeting trust in institutions that has marked the first quarter of this century
Odd that a Graun journalist had never noticed the same trends with his own colleagues, right under his nose, though
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