A botched Brexit will Boris Johnson’s political death on deadline day – Bernard Ingham

Don’t hold your breath. In my experience the EU is incapable of meeting one. It is a past master at stopping the clock to get its wicked way.

Only three questions matter as we approach the denouement:

Will our PM walk away, as threatened, if there is no deal?

Will the EU at last recognise its responsibility to around 500m people or remain bent on building a federal Europe even as the edifice threatens to crumble?

How shall we fare outside the EU with an economy ravaged, like the rest of the European nations, by coronavirus?

These are serious and portentous issues on which so many people’s future security and welfare depend.

First, Boris. His trustworthiness has always been suspect. He may have Micawberish tendencies – finessing things while waiting for something to turn up. But politically he has little room for manoeuvre this week.

Either he gets a deal on lines the EU has negotiated with other sovereign nations or he walks. He cannot leave any doubt about our independence from the European Court or control over our fisheries.

If, like Ted Heath, he tries to pull the wool over our eyes, he is lost. He cannot rely on the solidly Eurosceptic Red Wall to stay Blue, especially with the Covid-induced economic problems to come and mayors in revolt over lockdowns.

The Remoaners will take savage delight in bringing him down just as readily as confirmed Eurosceptics will turn against him.

Perhaps most important for politics in need of inspiring leadership in its current febrile state, he needs to demonstrate he is a man of principle whose word is his bond.

In short, it is do or die, Boris, and no messing.

The same goes for the EU if it has any sense, which I doubt. If it had, it would have got rid of us quickly and quietly.

Instead, the Franco-German axis running the show, outraged that the pesky Brits have had the temerity to secede from their empire, have exhibited all their inferiority complex about us by trying to tie us to their apron strings.

They have persisted even though coronavirus has shown how tenuous European unity is. It was every man for himself when the pestilence struck – and blow the Schengen open borders agreement. Voters elect their own national governments to look after them – not Brussels.

I doubt whether we can expect much of them now, even though we buy vastly more goods from them than they do from us.

I would also be surprised if they showed any t.l.c for the Irish minnows whose economy is so closely aligned to ours.

After all, the Franco-German axis holds all the cards – Angela Merkel, now on her way out, and the German Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen; the ludicrous French president Emanuelle Macron and the preposterous chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, not to mention Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank.

If I am wrong I shall be the first to recognise their statesmanship. They really owe us some responsibility with the Kremlin casting covetous eyes on Eastern Europe and the Chinese trying to buy up the world.

If not – and Boris keeps his word – he will face a monumental task: finding our sovereign way
in a world weakened by coronavirus and leaving us with little room to move, given the size of our debts and the extent to which we are living beyond our means.

He really does face Winston Churchill’s “toil, tears and sweat”, if not, thank goodness, the blood. He has to summon up the national spirit, especially as I cannot rule out notably the French playing disruptively awkward over trade next year.

I also doubt whether Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer can be of much help. He is most certainly a vast improvement on Jeremy Corbyn – who wouldn’t be? – but Len McCluskey’s 10 per cent cut in Unite’s funding of the Labour Party is a class war shot across his bows.

On the other hand, the new trade agreement with Japan
and the prospect of one with the USA whether or not, I trust, Donald Trump is re-elected, offers hope.

But that cannot be at the expense of our farmers by admitting foods that do not conform to our high standards.

This is the week that Boris Johnson really must show his mettle. Will he stand and deliver or scuttle like Ted Heath? Opportunity knocks. Political death awaits.

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James Mitchinson