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I can't quite believe I'm doing this, but here goes. Some of the many problems with Boris Johnson's open letter to Jeremy Hunt... 1/
Johnson is right to say that we have failed to deliver Brexit. He should ask himself why. The vote to leave was not a simple 'big instruction' from the British people. The challenge for the Govt (and Parliament) was to find a way to make sense of the (narrow) vote to leave. 2/
The leaders of the leave campaign (like Johnson himself) made all manner of promises, many of them contradictory. They had no concrete plan for leaving the EU. When a deal was reached with the EU in November 2018, it was derided by Brexiters. 3/
The challenge is only in small part about when the UK will leave the EU. It is much more about *how* the UK should leave the EU. 4/
Johnson, like Hunt, provides few details about how leave can occur. He is ready to leave on Oct 31 with no deal, in order, he says, to convince the EU that we are 'serious', and to get an (unspecified) 'better deal'. 5/
What will he do if he goes to the EU with his plan (whatever it might turn out to be) and (notwithstanding the 'threat' of no deal) they reject it as unworkable? 6/
He urges Hunt to answer a hypothetical question about what he would do if the EU were to attach conditions on the grant of an extension; yet does not himself explain what sort of deal he is seeking, and how he will get the EU to agree to it. 7/
Furthermore, he does not explain how he intends to ensure that no deal (an outcome he regards as very much sub-optimal) will not be blocked by the large majority of MPs who are set against it. 8/
This is a very strange way to campaign, and the letter is embarrassingly thin. It doesn't answer any of the most relevant questions. His calculation is presumably that the 'tough talk' will play well with Tory members. In that, he may be right. 9/
But they, the media, and indeed all of us, should be expecting a lot more from the likely next PM. We are (as widely predicted) heading to towards an extremely rough autumn. 10/10
