Can johnson face down the hard brexiters, or is he their prisoner? | thearticle

To extend or not to extend? That’s the question that soon will have to be settled. The Coronavirus crisis goes on and on to its indefinite horizon. Soon however, in barely a month’s time,

Boris Johnson will have to take a big decision. Does he tell the business world, and the wider political community, that he is prepared to heap crisis upon crisis by pulling the plug on

negotiations with 27 governments in the rest of Europe, now that we have quit the EU? By 31 June, Britain must decide whether to ask for an extension for the Brexit talks to allow any hope

of a deal being agreed. So far there has been close to zero progress. The shutdown of face-to-face negotiating sessions has not helped. All previous UK deals with Europe to forge various

treaties had senior ministers and even the prime minister leading from the front. Boris Johnson has sub-contracted this to a competent diplomat, David Frost, a former head of the Scotch

Whisky Federation, whose highest diplomatic posting was Ambassador to Denmark. Many loyal Tory commentators like Harry Cole, Clare Foges and Iain Martin have urged caution. Ms Foges wrote in

the _Times_, 11 May: “Before the virus hit, a no-deal exit would have been deeply unwise. Today it would be unhinged. The WTO predicts that world trade could fall by up to 32 per cent this

year. Several countries have started blocking the export of goods considered vital in the fight against coronavirus, and as they seek to recover, this nationalist instinct may well persist.

“Global recovery will take years, during which time negotiating a free-trade deal with the UK will not be foremost on many agendas. A no-deal Brexit wouldn’t be stepping into the sunlit

uplands of a thriving global economy but something closer to a wasteland.” There is an alternative view that a Brexit crash-out would be lost in the totality of the Covid-19 economic damage.

But would it? 85 per cent of our fresh vegetables and fruit, and two thirds of our pork products — like bacon and sausages — arrive in lorries via Channel ports into Dover. To apply a 22

per cent WTO tariff on all food imports and to have the normal regulatory checks on each lorry would see queues going back to the Belgian border and empty food shelves in our supermarkets.

President Macron cannot betray French fishing communities from Boulogne to St Jean de Luz by agreeing to Brexit ideologues’ demands on fishing. French and British fishermen have fished in

the common waters of the Channel, North Sea, and Atlantic for centuries. 60 per cent of all fish landed in the UK is exported to Europe. So if Mr Frost refuses all compromise, as seems to be

the line today, the UK fishing industry will sign its own death warrant. Canada was recently cited by the BBC’s Martha Kearney on the Today programme as a model for a trade agreement. But

there are not 10,000 lorries arriving each day from Canada into Dover, nor do we we take 73 million flights a year to holiday in Canada as we do to Europe. No British financial firm can open

in Canada for business without permission and we do not have automatic extradition to and from Canada. Our universities do not depend on Canadian grants for core research. We are a one-man

led nation. Everything depends on what is in Johnson’s head. Professor Tim Bale, one of our most astute political analysts, has number-crunched MPs and thinks there is a majority for an

extension if Johnson were to ask for it. He has almost total authority over the 380 MPs who owe their seats and the Tory majority government to the prime minister. If he opts for an

extension which is what every business leader wants he will get it. Now the prime minister will have to show if he can face down the League of Brexit Loyalists or whether, in truth, he is

their prisoner.