No Prime Minister in our history has suffered such a string of humiliations and defeats in so short a time after taking office, making the Boris government the laughing stock of the much of the world. Unfortunately to many if not most of us who live under its erratic rule, it is no longer funny.
However in an era when the daily news contains more surprises than a Scandi thriller, one thing is now becoming clear. Boris is determined to survive as PM. Another thing is becoming clear to those who watch almost every line for nuance or hint. Boris is seriously rattled. Private polling reveals that the Tories could not win an election outright and it they fought one, would be back to square one at best. Still in power but as a minority government.
The massive adverse reaction to the proroguing of parliament is one serious miscalculation. The sudden unity of all the opposition parties sufficient to seize control of the parliamentary agenda, which included passing into law a bill restricting the PM’s freedom of action, came as a body blow. The ease with which the now united opposition spotted the elephant trap election plan and defeated it not once but twice, was unforeseen. The fact that the derided figure of fun, Corbyn, led the negotiations and ran rings round Downing Street, hurt.
But what has really caused a problem is the realisation that no deal is the direct opposite of a clean break. It is a costly entanglement in a thicket of trade negotiations and legal challenges which will last years and adversely affect, in a thousand different ways, every single person, business and institution in the UK. Governments who do that to their country for no valid reason other than an ideological fix, do not last.
So Boris is now desperate for a deal. The only way he can get one is to agree to a modified edition of the Irish backstop, currently known as the Ireland Only model. In other words both the Northern Ireland Protestants who back the DUP and the ERG are to be dumped. The polls show over 50% of all the people in NI would back a United Ireland over a No Deal and all parts of agriculture, business and social institutions back the Irish Backstop.
Boris’s plan is that he survives on the support for the new deal in a U.K. parliament in which the DUP and ERG gang up to knife him. He believes everybody else would go for his touched up Ireland Only Backstop. Dublin and Brussels would love it. But Labour will demand as its price for support a referendum to confirm acceptance of those terms, with Remain as an alternative on the ballot paper. And that will be the end of Brexit. It might also be the end of Boris. If his end does not come sooner.