No.81 – From Crescendo to Diminuendo – The Quiet before the Storm.

Dear James,

Boris is playing with us all. On Monday night he was in full crescendo, briefing that it was, ‘My deal or No deal’. ‘Take it or leave it. This is our last offer!’’ By Tuesday morning the mood music had changed to a soft diminuendo.  At his final rambling, leader’s speech at the Tory Party Conference, he was sounding almost emollient, saying at one point, ‘I’m pro-European’, ‘I love Europe’. (The stunned response from his audience showed how they thought about that!) The only anger he showed that morning was for parliament. That institution was a waste of space, interfering with his grand plan, blocking the ‘will of the people’. But Europe was now treated with sudden respect because Boris realises that he needs to be seen to be negotiating and the EU knows that it too must be seen in the same way. So we are in an ‘armistice’, a short period of mutual respect as both sides tip toe around the obvious. That is that Boris’s proposed Brexit deal breaks every promise made by the British government in the last three years. In order to remove the hard border in Ireland, he proposes to put up two new borders. The Good Friday Agreement would be broken at the hands of someone who knows little about the realities of the peace process and appears to care even less. But the biggest and newest Boris/Cummings roadblock concerned consensus. The new proposal would be subject to the decisions of the Stormont government every four years! Everyone knows there is no way that that will get the ok from the EU. It is all a sham James. We know it, you know it and the EU knows it. But for the moment the dance continues.

It is all, of course, the quiet before the Storm. How many times have we heard the old saw about the EU bending only at the eleventh hour? Mr Johnson, a minority government with no legitimacy, representing a small faction in his party,  is pretending to be tough. He is looking into the whites of their eyes and expecting them to blink. I am afraid that it is Mr Johnson who will blink and in the process lead our nation into the catastrophe of a no deal. 

Mr Johnson and his cohorts, of which you are one James, have an almost total misunderstanding of the European mindset. Europe will support their customs union and single market to the last even if that means that Mercedes and BMW lose a large part of their British market share. Their calculation is that it is better to lose this than lose the massive benefits of the single market and customs union. All this ‘bully boy’ posturing of Mr Johnson is so transparent that no one in Europe will take it seriously.  They feel sorry for us. They know that Boris is trapped in the logic of the ERG’s fantasies and it is better that he is allowed to self-explode now rather than later.  

So we are approaching the moment of truth James. The nation is depressed, many are despondent. To think that your party could have brought us all to this crazy impasse is almost beyond comprehension. I saw you in parliament yesterday nodding quietly as one of your party was speaking in support of the great Boris game plan. You are clearly now part of the Great Lie. Such a pity. 

Michel Barnier has at last received the ‘firm’ proposals that are needed for a revised deal to have any chance of being agreed by leaders at an EU summit on the 17th of October. Everyone knows that this cannot not happen, will not happen. But then, this was the Boris/Cummings Plan all along. Propose the impossible and when it fails, blame the EU. Unfortunately, unless Boris intends to break the law, you are trapped by parliament’s Benn law into asking for an extension of article 50 when the no deal happens. 

I know it is a waste of breath James, but I would now ask you most respectfully - in the most diminuendo of tones to match the current but temporary mood music - to vote for an extension to Article 50 when Boris fails to get his ‘deal’. 

Because, very soon the crescendo will return. And when history is written, you will be on the wrong side of it! 

Kind regards, 

BH - Your Concerned Constituent.