Boris Johnson sets Brexit red lines, Ruth Davidson savages him for not being serious, Theresa May is trapped like a rabbit in headlights. Welcome to the Tory party conference.
If they weren’t playing with our future, we could laugh. But this psychodrama is a tragedy.
Johnson has found a way to have his cake and eat it. He can stay as foreign secretary but not stick to government policy because the prime minister is too weak to sack him.
Johnson got away with writing a Telegraph column that challenged May’s Brexit policy two weeks ago. He followed that up by hosting the launch of a new think-tank that wants to turn Britain into a Singapore-style tax haven – cutting across the prime minister’s promise in her recent Florence speech not to do that.
Now the foreign secretary has set four more red lines in an interview with The Sun: the transition period when we quit the EU mustn’t last a second more than two years; we mustn’t follow any new EU rules during that period; nor must we pay for access to the EU’s market or shadow its rules after the transition.
None of these positions quite contradicts government policy. May has talked of a transition lasting “around” two years and refused to say if we’d follow new EU rules during that period. But if she adopts Johnson’s red lines, the EU won’t agree to a transitional deal or give us much access to its market. That will tip the economy over a cliff.
It’s hard to see what will stop Johnson cocking a snook. He is favourite to succeed the prime minister, according to a poll of party members. If she fired him, she would be mortally wounded.
Davidson, the second most popular choice to replace May, doesn’t like what she sees. In an interview with The Times, the Scottish Tory leader implied Johnson wasn’t serious and wasn’t facing up to realities.
Meanwhile, May is looking more and more like a cardboard cut-out prime minister. It’s not just Johnson who isn’t treating her seriously. Our EU partners aren’t either. Her promise to be a “strong and stable” leader is a joke.
The only thing preventing all-out war in the Tory Party is panic that this would let Jeremy Corbyn storm into Downing Street. But continuing with a charisma-free prime minister won’t stop that either.
It now looks increasingly possible that Britain will go through the full cycle of populism: first, the populism of the right, which is giving us a hard Brexit based on a pack of lies; then the populism of the left, which is based on Corbyn’s endless string of false, uncosted promises.
Once the populist demon is unleashed, it’s hard to stop. Thanks, Brexiters.