Johnson is Optimist Prime – but has he really transformed Brexit?

London: The Conservatives have changed their lead singer, their lead guitarist, rhythm section and roadies. But they are playing a similar tune – albeit in a different key.

Boris Johnson came to UK Parliament on Thursday to set out his stall as Prime Minister.

Boris Johnson leaves from the rear of 10 Downing Street on Thursday, on his way to the House of Commons.Credit:PA

Jabbing his finger excitedly at the opposition – at one point so vigorously he was warned to calm down – he promised the “beginning of a new golden age”. He was Optimist Prime of a transformed, cheering party.

But on his most pressing task, undressed of its rousing rhetoric, this could almost have been a Theresa May speech from six months ago.

The Prime Minister will go back to Brussels and renegotiate the Brexit divorce deal. He will insist that the backstop clause, indefinitely tying the UK to EU rules to keep the Irish border open, is not necessary because “other arrangements” will solve the problem.

Johnson gesticulated so wildly in his first address to Parliament that he had to be told to calm down. Credit:PA

This is precisely what May did at the end of January. EU leaders sent her packing almost before she had arrived. French President Emmanuel Macron told her the deal done was the best that could be done. The “alternative arrangements” she was seeking were judged insufficient to allow the border to stay open, at least in the timeframe they’d be required to be put in place.

And there is a central contradiction that Johnson, like May, has to dance around. If such alternative arrangements were in fact sufficient, the backstop would never be activated. So why is it so important to get it out of the divorce deal?

There are no signs – at least not yet – that Johnson will get any different response from the EU. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said on Wednesday night a new deal was “not going to happen” and the idea one could be negotiated within weeks or months was “not in the real world”. The backstop was “an integral part” of the withdrawal deal, he said.

On Thursday, Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, wrote to EU member states saying the call for the backstop to go was “unacceptable”.

Johnson was sure they would come around: "Common sense dictates now is the moment for seriousness and compromise," he said.

To suggest the opposite was "redolent of the kind of defeatism and negativity of the last three years," he said. "Why begin by assuming our EU friends will not wish to compromise?"

Referring to two of Johnson’s notoriously unrealised vanity projects as London mayor, Labour’s Liz Kendall told him “if optimism was all it took then thousands of people would be spending this day walking across London’s Garden Bridge and jetting off on holiday from Boris Island”.

Or as Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn put it, “No-one is underestimating this country but the country is deeply worried the new Prime Minister overestimates himself”.

Johnson was regularly accused of “bluff and bluster”, but his key point of difference to May is that he insists he is not bluffing. He said the government would ostentatiously prepare for a “no-deal” alternative on October 31.

Johnson’s Brexit plan doesn’t look any different to the plans former prime minister Theresa May pursued unsuccessfully.Credit:Bloomberg

Of course, the country has already been preparing. Whitehall has been flat out, though there are different estimates of how ready it is. However there is only so much that can be done to mitigate the damaging effect of a no-deal Brexit.

For all the talk of optimism, Johnson’s tactic is to hold a gun to the head of the UK economy, and tell the EU that if he pulls the trigger it’s all their fault.

But the EU’s response, at least so far, is to regretfully turn to ramp up its own no-deal preparations.

Removalists enter 10 Downing Street on Thursday as Boris Johnson moves in.Credit:Bloomberg

“All sorts of sceptics and pessimists and Britosceptics think we can’t pull it off but actually we can,” he said. “The environment, green issues are now seen to be the agenda that we Conservatives lead on, and we will continue to.”

The Conservative benches were almost deserted of MPs deep in the second hour of Johnson’s star turn.

They had seen enough: reassured that, for now, Johnson was making them more electable.

It was time to go on holiday. The rest they could worry about later.

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