Boris Johnson’s Brexit will end in disaster. Let’s hope the disaster is his, not the country’s

Boris Johnson’s first day in Downing Street has confirmed everything we knew and feared about him: a man consumed by his own legend, over-confident in his power, reckless in his ambition and unconcerned by his impact on anyone else. More importantly, it tells us everything we need to know about Brexit under his stewardship. Namely, that it will end in disaster unless parliament—or perhaps the electorate—coalesces to stop him.

Johnson’s speech frequently runs counter to his actions, in Brexit as with everything else. He describes the Irish backstop as “anti-democratic” and declares that no democratic government could approve it, even though he was Foreign Secretary in the government which negotiated the instrument and remained in office for seven months after it was agreed. He condemns Theresa May’s withdrawal deal as “vassalage,” but ultimately voted for it after she tied it to her resignation. But so far as PM, Johnson has paired his rhetoric with decision-making: chiefly in the make-up of his government.

Wednesday’s “night of the long knives” was not only the most brutal Cabinet reshuffle in decades, but probably the most important. Gone was anyone who had crossed Johnson in the past, such as Jeremy Hunt. Nobody survived who might have resisted a catastrophic no-deal crash-out, such as Greg Clark.

Johnson dispatched not only moderates, but true-blooded Leavers. It is extraordinary that Penny Mordaunt, the only prominent female Brexiter left in May’s Cabinet, and one of Johnson’s key Vote Leave colleagues, was deemed insufficiently valuable to remain in office—particularly when she had shown herself to be a capable minister. Johnson is not just unafraid of making powerful enemies; he relishes it. Once again, his swagger suggests a majority of 200, not two, as though his charisma could somehow make up the additional 198.

Johnson has backed up his self-confidence with an incoming cabinet of sychophants. It became clear during the leadership election that this was not to be a prime ministerial cabinet so much as a royal court. His appointments have placed patronage over ability. He has rewarded the wilfully incompetent Priti Patel with a great office of state, while the famously surly and undiplomatic Dominic Raab now becomes the country’s chief representative abroad.

More important than loyalty is zealotry. This is not a Brexit cabinet but a no-deal one. The Conservative Party has been taken over by radicals. For this new government, Brexit is no longer a matter of sovereignty or trade so much as a broader (and frequently contradictory) project of libertarian nationalism. The Remainers who survived the purge must now subscribe to the new doctrine. We will leave on 31st October, “do or die,” and possibly both.

The Cabinet is hard-right and ideological, and the Downing Street back-room operation is a reunion of the Vote Leave campaign, but Brexit will be determined in Brussels and parliament. Johnson’s first speech as PM illuminated the contempt he held for both.

He railed against the opponents of Brexit as “doomsters” and “gloomsters”, people who had “bet against Britain” and were now going to “lose their shirts”. It is hard to conceive of a more divisive or aggressive start to a premiership—particularly one advertised as bringing the country together. This was the creed not of optimism but dictatorship. The boy who once yearned to be world king was now emulating Louis XIV, the French king who famously declared “l’état, c’est moi”. Johnson was Brexit and Brexit was Britain. Opponents were no longer standing up against one individual or his political fantasy, but against the country itself.

He also clarified his plan to pin the blame for no-deal squarely on Brussels. “It is vital,” he said, “that we prepare for the remote possibility that Brussels refuses any further to negotiate”. This was predictably grim, but no less fascinating for what it revealed of his character. Because Johnson wanted something, foreigners would have to give it to him. If they refused—because, say, it fatally compromised their most basic political, economic and security interests—then it must be a sign of their bullying intransigence. Johnson wishes Britain to function simultaneously as an all-powerful world leader and as a hapless victim. Sadly, the ruse is as transparent as it is doomed. If he condemns the British people to the economic misery of no-deal, they will not take out their anger on the EU.

The prime minister did not stop there. In case the EU was not sufficiently irritated with its new negotiating partner, he explicitly threatened to withhold the £39bn we have agreed to pay if we leave without a deal. The EU would of course consider that an act of economic warfare and refuse to enter any further negotiations. The rest of the world, meanwhile, would see it as a debt default, and decline our overtures in case we similarly attempted to screw them. Geoffrey Cox, who remains as Attorney-General, has also pointed out that such a move would probably go against international law.

But Johnson’s bombast was most shameful when it came to Britain’s history. Here, too, we can see where Brexit is headed. The PM declared that “no-one in the last few centuries has succeeded in betting against the pluck and nerve and ambition of this country”. That was not only factually incorrect, as Britain’s colonial wars and collapse will attest, but inconceivably offensive. Hundreds of thousands of Irish people in the “last few centuries” found out exactly what happened when they challenged Britain’s “ambition”. Their descendants will likely not appreciate a new threat today if they dare to defy Britain’s putative supremacy. As always, Johnson roots everything in an imagined past which, for reasons unexplained, will enable us to do whatever we like in the present. This is the fundamental basis of Brexit and the main reason for believing in it.

His address to parliament today offered more of the same. He declared that he wanted a deal, but offered no concrete means of achieving one. He insisted that alternative arrangements could replace the backstop, even though the backstop was explicitly designed to be temporary until these arrangements could be implemented. Logically, if Johnson was so sure of such arrangements, there was no reason at all to reject the backstop—but this was a day for optimism, not logic. Johnson told MPs that Britain would throw itself into negotiations that the EU had already ruled out, and when Labour MP Hilary Benn read out the Irish Taoiseach’s comment that a new deal was “not in the real world”, Johnson simply accused him of defeatism. It was not just that Johnson couldn’t understand the EU’s position; it was that he couldn’t understand that the EU might hold any position different from his own.

The PM's first day in office has confirmed that he doesn’t care who he upsets. Indeed, it is central to his appeal. The more he offends, the more power he can demonstrate. But this power comes from his imagination alone. On Wednesday, he condemned Britain’s “unfounded self-doubt,” but Johnson's problem has always been unfounded self-confidence. In his world, all you need is vision and theatrics. Other people will do the work and, if it fails, pay the price. Brexit, like the PM, will fail, because his optimism is less powerful than the EU’s interests. At that moment Johnson will discover the real meaning of defeatism. Britain must hope that the defeat will be his and not ours.