It was just after 11am on March 12 that hope died in Downing Street. Several hours earlier a relieved Theresa May had arrived back in Number 10 bleary-eyed, believing "clarifications" she had secured in Strasbourg from European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker would finally help her get her Brexit deal through
Why Boris Johnson looms large over the Brexit endgame
By George Parker
Financial Times·
11 mins to read
Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson. Photo / Getty Images
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It is a vortex that threatens to consume Mrs May and her party. Those working in the prime minister's Downing Street bunker can see no clear means of escape; a moment of reckoning with the voters lies around the corner; the prime minister's tenure in Number 10 is measured in months or even weeks; and a brutal leadership contest awaits amid expectations of an early general election.
And all the while, the man seen by some as the principal architect of this chaos — Boris Johnson — surveys the unfolding disaster, waiting for his moment to strike. The prospect of the former foreign secretary becoming prime minister now hangs over all discussions about what happens next to Brexit. At Westminster and in ministerial offices across Europe, people are holding their breath.
Mr Johnson, an outspoken Eurosceptic who in 2016 compared the drive for European unity to the visions of Napoleon and Hitler, is seen as beyond the pale by many European leaders. Donald Tusk, European Council president, said at the time his remarks had "crossed the boundaries of rational discourse".
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A surreal mood has descended on Westminster. After months of attritional political warfare on Brexit, the cycle of late-night votes has subsided, thanks to the EU27's decision to push the Brexit deadline back to October 31. Mrs May's Brexit deal is still technically alive, but only just. "Does the prime minister worry she might be leading a zombie government?" she was asked at a Westminster briefing this week.
French president Emmanuel Macron is not alone in losing patience with Mrs May's repeated failed attempts — three and counting — to ratify her Brexit deal. But since Mrs May won her Brexit extension at the EU summit in April, virtually nothing has happened.
That sense of paralysis is acute. Mrs May's best hope for resuscitating her exit deal, the cross-party talks with the opposition Labour party, has been limping along for weeks.
Both sides said on Wednesday that "progress" was being made and Mrs May's allies said she was prepared to compromise with Labour by softening her opposition to Britain staying in a customs union with the EU.
"We are in a pool of acid," said culture secretary Jeremy Wright at this week's cabinet, adding that the government had to take difficult decisions to end the "corrosive effects" Brexit was having on British politics.
But senior Tories still do not believe that Labour will want to help Mrs May deliver Brexit. "They are stringing us along," says one cabinet minister.
Mrs May wants to wrap up the talks — with or without an agreement — next week. Allies of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn say the party's overwhelmingly pro-European activists would never forgive him if he helped Mrs May take Britain out of the EU.
"The talks are a façade," says a member of Labour's shadow cabinet. "There is no way the party will help May out of this mess. It would destroy Jeremy's leadership."
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Even in the unlikely event that Mrs May and Mr Corbyn could strike a deal — for example, to guarantee to uphold EU standards on workers' rights and the environment — Labour negotiators fear that it might be ripped up by a new Eurosceptic prime minister.
Martin Vickers, a Conservative Eurosceptic MP, says: "Labour MPs have indicated to me that they fear Boris, or another Tory they regard as an extreme Brexiter, taking over and not honouring any pledges that the current leadership makes to them."
Neither Mr Johnson nor other Tory Eurosceptics would accept Labour's principal demand that Britain stays in a permanent customs union with the EU.
If Mrs May's Brexit deal is paralysed, so too is the rest of government. Little legislation is being passed, ministerial jobs go unfilled for weeks, secrets leak from national security meetings. "There's sometimes nothing at all in the grid at weekends," says one senior Tory staffer, referring to Number's 10 media schedule. "It's like they have given up."
Gavin Barwell, Mrs May's chief of staff, tells ministers of his plan for a summer of domestic policy action, but with no Commons majority one senior government figure says the idea is "a fiction".
As part of the bargaining to win support for her Brexit deal in March, Mrs May has said she will step down once it is agreed, further reducing her authority.
Last week, Downing Street floated the idea of bringing forward the legislation needed to ratify Mrs May's exit deal, only to shelve the plan because it faced certain defeat. A fallback move, should talks with Labour fail, is for a series of Commons votes to test support for different Brexit options, but such an exercise has failed to generate a majority for any scenario before.
On Thursday some voters will have their chance to cast their verdict on the Brexit shambles in a series of local elections in England and Northern Ireland. Mrs May's party is braced for the loss of up to 1,000 council seats, largely to the pro-Remain Liberal Democrats and to a lesser extent to Labour.
While those elections will be bad for Mrs May, much worse lies ahead if — as expected — Britain holds European Parliament elections on May 23. A YouGov poll puts the Conservatives on 13 per cent for those elections, putting the party on course for perhaps its worst result in living memory. Mrs May's nightmare is compounded by the return of Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader, whose new Brexit party is running at 28 per cent in the polls for that contest.
Ministers speak of an impending "tsunami", but the question is whether it will sweep Mrs May out of power and pave the way for a "true Brexiter" to arrive in Number 10 to lead Britain out of the EU, with or without a deal.
Mr Johnson — who did not have enough support in 2016 to contest the leadership with Mrs May — is the 3-1 bookies' favourite for the Tory succession and the activists' choice according to surveys.
Even those close to Mrs May do not know if she would call it quits at that point. "Her silo of advisers is so small that on the really big decisions it's just her and Philip," says one longtime ally, referring to the prime minister's husband. Others say she will dig in. "She is resigned to the fact she is going, but really wants to deliver the withdrawal agreement," says one close colleague. "That's what she was put in to do."
Cabinet moderates do not expect a mass walkout by ministers, arguing that a European election meltdown is already priced in.
But if Mrs May tries to stay in power, there will be an immediate showdown with Tory Eurosceptics, who believe that her deal is dead and a new prime minister needs to go to Brussels to rewrite the terms of any exit agreement, including removing the Irish "backstop" that commits the UK and EU to an open-ended "temporary" customs union.
"For this party and country to move on," says Grant Shapps, former Tory chairman, "we need a new direction and that urgently requires fresh leadership."
Although many cabinet ministers accept that Mrs May will be gone before the end of the year, the timing of her departure will be crucial in determining Britain's future.
Eurosceptics want their candidate — former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab is vying with Mr Johnson for that mantle — to be installed soon after the European elections with a mandate to take Britain out of the EU without a deal if no better terms can be negotiated.
Tory MPs speculate that Brussels will say "no" — the EU insists it will not reopen the withdrawal treaty — and parliament will refuse to endorse a no-deal exit, forcing the new prime minister to hold an election.
Moderate candidates including Jeremy Hunt, foreign secretary, and Sajid Javid, home secretary, want to keep Mrs May in office, clinging to the hope that her last political act will somehow be to take Britain out of the EU with a deal — clearing the way for a less confrontational leadership contest in which the focus would be on building a new long-term relationship with the EU. One cabinet opponent of Mr Johnson concedes: "If the leadership contest happens with Brexit unresolved, then Boris has the advantage."
A no-deal exit holds no fears for Mr Johnson. "In spite of — or perhaps because of — everything they have been told, it is this future that is by some margin preferred by the British public," Mr Johnson wrote in a Daily Telegraph column in January. The paper was ordered to print a correction because no polling existed to support the claim.
But Mr Johnson's breezy assertions and bullish confidence would have an undeniable appeal to many Tories — and perhaps to some voters beyond the ruling party — at the end of a Brexit saga which has left Britain and its politicians looking crushed and powerless.
The prospect of Mr Johnson in Downing Street has already raised concerns in Brussels.
One EU diplomat suggested before last month's European Council meeting that the terms of the Brexit extension needed to be "BoJo-proof" to allow the bloc to cut short UK membership "if anyone irresponsible is prime minister one day and threatens to wreak havoc within the EU".
For now Mr Johnson is being restrained by his advisers — including the Australian strategist Lynton Crosby — rather than causing trouble in an election period. His critics say his popularity has risen in recent weeks precisely because he has been less visible: "While he's doing nothing, he's an attractive proposition," says one. "He can't run anything."
Instead he is working behind the scenes to woo Tory MPs. A recent visitor to Mr Johnson's office spotted a white board in the corner, saying the candidate was holding a series of meetings with 20-minute slots allocated to each MP. "It's unusual to find Boris criticised for being too organised," jokes one ally.
His pitch will be hard on Brexit but soft on public spending and social policy, a mix intended to build a wide Tory coalition. "He's a 'one nation' Tory," says one adviser. His critics scoff, arguing that Mr Johnson's recent populist positions on race and immigration — not to mention his championing of a hard Brexit — have made him an unlikely unifier. Polls show he is both the most popular and most disliked leadership contender among the public.
When Donald Trump comes to Britain in early June, the US president is expected to have a private dinner with his "friend" Mr Johnson, whom he has declared would be "a great prime minister".
It will be a moment of maximum tension between Mrs May, and the man who wants to succeed her. "I think she should go on and on and on," says Alan Duncan, a Foreign Office minister, who says Mr Johnson and his supporters are "wreckers". He adds: "She should not give an inch to these people."
Rory Stewart, prisons minister, fears the consequences of a hard Brexit prime minister leading the Tories into an election: "If the Conservative party campaigned actively for no deal, we would be saying goodbye to . . . the centre ground of British politics."
May allies admit she is frustrated and that a sense of gloom has enveloped her dying premiership. "She goes out knocking on doors in her constituency almost every weekend — she knows people are frustrated," says one ally.
"Back in March you felt we might just be able to get it though. But it's quite hard to see a way through now."
- Additional reporting by Laura Hughes, Sebastian Payne and Jim Pickard.
Written by: George Parker
© Financial Times
