The Johnson Deception

Today the Alternative Arrangements Commission published its interim report on border measures for Northern Ireland. As you might expect there is plenty wrong with it. That's ok though. It doesn't need to pass muster with anyone serious. What matters is there is a report in the public domain, leaden with institutional prestige, which will then be reported by Guido and BrexitCentral (their PR stooges) and will be believed by the Brexit devotees, and seemingly Boris Johnson.

Nobody outside a small claque of wonks will actually read the report and hacks won't dig further than the press release. The more adventurous ones will read the executive summary but won't have the knowledge to adequately interrogate it. You can try to debunk it but as we have seen with other strands of ERG mythology, these zombie arguments do not die.

The report itself is essentially repackaged tract from Shanker "snakeoil" Singham, which has been debunked elsewhere but if you can put some distance between the author and heap on the prestige, it will remain a political artefact. It doesn't matter that it will crash and burn at first contact with reality just so long as it provides a smokescreen for Johnson and the ERG.

Typically, the Twitter trade wonks have piled in to offer us their "takedowns" after attending the launch, but fail to realise they have been used as part of the deception. The more energy they spend on technical refutation the more they lend to the idea that this report is a serious offering. It ought to be viewed in its proper context as a political device, produced by a charlatan who will make the report say whatever the ERG want it to say. 

As ever, I am told play the ball, not the man, but politics is as much about the games in play and the participants. Here we have a man with no discernible customs or regulatory expertise producing recycled pap, re-badged yet again and made to look like it's the product of a team of experts. In any field other than politics this would be regarded as misselling and fraud with a view to deceiving.

When we get down to it, as Eureferendum notes, the report is a mere stage prop. Boris Johnson has set about selling us on the idea that he will renegotiate our terms of exit - and so long as enough people buy it, his fanboys will have the ammunition they need, and when it fails, they will blame the "intransigent EU" rather than the inadequacy of the British position. 

Somehow Johnson believes that even though we've run MaxFac up the flagpole during negotiations and finding no salutes, the threat of no deal will be enough for the EU to suddenly abandon a position it has held throughout. The EU is not going to abandon the backstop in favour of half baked ERG/IEA nostrums that couldn't be delivered this side of 2030 even if they were remotely viable. In respect of that, it wouldn't matter if the Alternative Arrangements Commission report weren't a steaming turd. As the basis for a new approach with Brussels it simply will not work.

It ought to be the case that trade wonks realised the deception in play and blew the whistle on this charade, but to do so would see all the invites to the prestigious shindigs dry up. ie the ones that make them feel important. Similarly, the media should also have realised the deception in play and should by now be screaming from the rooftops that Johnson's scheme can only result in no deal. That they haven't is just another failure in a long line of failure from the people who sought to own the debate. Britain's downfall will be as much their fault as that of Boris Johnson.