The mantra right up to the grisly end was that he had got Brexit “done”.
Boris Johnson’s apparent double miracle was to break the parliamentary impasse that tormented his predecessor Theresa May when trying to pass her withdrawal agreement and then to successfully negotiate a trade deal with the EU in the following 10 months.
“This deal means a new stability and a new certainty in what has sometimes been a fractious and difficult relationship,” Johnson had said on Christmas Eve 2020 as the ink was drying on the new trade agreement.
Johnson certainly achieved a political feat in uniting his party after removing May from office and then forming an unlikely electoral alliance in the wider country – despite misleading the Queen, in the opinion of a Scottish court, as he sought to threaten recalcitrant MPs with a no-deal exit back in the dark days of 2019.
But recent polling suggests support for Brexit in the UK has collapsed – and the outgoing prime minister’s critics might confidently argue today that Johnson leaves a mess of issues behind rather than the “certainty and stability” that he claimed to have secured 18 months ago. » | Daniel Boffey in Brussels | Friday, July 8, 2022
