Small solace
That the UK has been reduced to this by the ambitions of one inadequate man is shameful. Make no mistake this government knows full well it is breaking international law. It is lying and lying again and again, with the Prime Minister even claiming “this is no big deal”.
Let’s be frank, this is beyond Partygate or the PPE scandal or the PM lying about growth prospects or how many hospitals are being built.
This is a deliberate, cool headed and utterly cynical attempt to start a fight with the EU, to get the ERG onside and to keep the PM in No. 10.
The EU doesn’t want a trade war but then it doesn’t need to start one. It can take legal action which the UK will lose, it can then take retaliatory action, demand compensation and make life bloody difficult for the UK in a thousand different ways.
The UK can forget joining the Horizon programme, it has been allowed to break its word and delay checks at its borders by a very patient EU, that can end anytime the EU wants. Member states can get very fussy about carnets and work visas, business trips and paperwork; all quite legally.
But this is what the PM wants, heat and smoke to hide his failures, his unpopularity, and his lies. Whip up the populists and the brexiteers for another round of Hate Week.
He is, of course, using them as much as he is using Northern Ireland, he is willing to throw anything and anybody under the bus to keep in power.
Brexit is turning into Suez, a national humiliation.
But even Anthony Eden could honestly claim that he thought he was acting in the national interest. Boris Johnson can’t.
This PM will go down in history as worse and less principled than Anthony Eden, a small solace but the only one around at the moment.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.