Boris Johnson’s posturing, as he entered Downing Street, has inspired some of his critics with indignation. It seems more reasonable to accept it as a touching if inappropriate display of adolescent dreaming.
Johnson says he is determined to take the UK out of the EU on October 31, “whatever the circumstances”. Theresa May failed: it must have been her fault. “After three years of unfounded self-doubt, it is time to change the record”. All it requires is bit more shove, more determination from a real leader, ready and able, gimlet-like, to whip out his trusty Webley revolver to show who’s master.
There are two problems with Johnson’s objective. The first is not that it cannot be done. This is not to say that he cannot, in one sense, take the UK out of the EU on October 31. Given the parliamentary arithmetic, it looks at the moment unlikely. But you never know: perhaps he could round up his posse, and on a Brexit manifesto win a new general election – or crash out later after winning a referendum.
But the second problem is that the Brexiters seem unable to tell us what they say they want, without describing what sounds uncannily like an adolescent fantasy-dream. Naturally, everyone wants “freedom”. But what, exactly, is the “freedom” the Brexiters are offering us? They cannot say.
They hate the “backstop” part of May’s Withdrawal Agreement. But in Parliament, Johnson was unable to spell out how he would persuade the 27 EU governments to change their minds on that – or what he would put in its place. His only recourse was to tell MPs that he had instructed Michael Gove to prepare for a no-deal crash-out. OK; but what then?
What, exactly, is the destination after this crash-out? Leaving the EU is not an end-state: it is an extravagant blast-off into an unknown orbit. Even then, the idea that we can, with one bound, escape the gravity-pull of the EU is simply delusional.
If we are left guessing what is the Brexiters’ destination, or how they would reconfigure our inescapable relationship with our much larger neighbour, it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that they do not know. It may even be because there is no “there” there.
What is alarming about Johnson’s arrival in Downing Street, is not his comportment, but that his ever-facile declaratory positions cannot be construed into a discernible policy.