Counterpoint. While I am sure everyone on the EU side will read this - this is a message for a domestic audience. And it is interesting in several respects. Let’s look at it in detail (thread)
First: where do you leak to. The Spectator - meaning this is a message to the converted.
Second: what message do you want to get across? This is virtue-signaling. For the group that thinks that negotiations involve being the toughest tough guy in toughland. Hard as steel.
Third: the content. There are a couple of (in international relations) rather stunning things here. Just one: granting an official UK request for extension (because that’s what it would be) will be seen as “meddling in internal politics”. The civil war is carried to the outside.
And then there’s the thing about future cooperation. It deserves to be repeated in full. 
That sounds very tough. But it is rather surprising on two levels. 1) It says that also within EU competences it would put a member state that follows the UK’s request to extend to the bottom of the queue for cooperation. But a) this seems to misunderstand what EU competences are
And b) it sort of seems to reiterate what Barnier already said: we won’t do no-deal mini-deals. (Link to the Barnier letter: ec.europa.eu/commission/sit…)
However, I dare say they are not that uninformed about how the EU works. And I think this is an internal message. Which brings me to the main point of the text (and of my thread) - relating to this
In reality this is about a fight with the Brexit party. The goal is to destroy the Brexit party and get the Conservative voters back. This is where the PM can win votes, this is how he can win votes with the Brexit party. But this raises a fundamental conundrum.
Johnson follows a logic that the late Strauß, a Bavarian CSU(read CDU) politician once expressed as follows: to the right of [our party] there cannot be a democratically legitimate party.
To some extent, this has served both parties well. Populism for a long time was kept at bay. However, as soon as there’s a strong, convinced actual party to the right of the Tories / CDU you run into trouble. What do you do?
The risk is that you follow the radicals and try to outradical them at each step. You criticise the EU? We HATE the EU! You want out with a deal? We want NO DEAL! You want no deal? We are the TOUGHEST BASTARDS IN THE WORLD etc. Etc.
But no matter how much you run to copy them, they will remain the original. Iff you have responsibility and want to act responsibly at some level,you will be attacked for it.Even if you have moved the line far beyond what ERG and UKIP wanted in the past - it’ll never be enough.
