Boris Johnson will start a week of intense diplomacy on Monday, as he tries to push for a Brexit deal on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
The U.K. prime minister will hold meetings with all the key players—German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and European Council President Donald Tusk—as he tries to persuade them to renegotiate the divorce deal they agreed with his predecessor, Theresa May.
But with the clock ticking down to the Oct. 31 deadline, the tortured negotiations over the U.K.’s departure from the European Union will dominate Johnson’s agenda. He has pledged to leave “do or die” on Halloween and without a deal if necessary—though that would mean defying a law passed by Parliament this month requiring him to seek a delay to Jan. 31 instead.
Supreme Court
Johnson’s New York visit also risks being overshadowed by a U.K. Supreme Court ruling on whether he broke the law when he suspended Parliament for five weeks. That decision is due this week.
Equivocal statements from Johnson and those around him about how his government will respond have put his ministers in the unusual position of giving assurances that he will obey the law. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was the latest to do so on Sunday.
“Of course we’ll respect whatever the legal ruling is from the Supreme Court,” Raab told the BBC. “It’s absolutely vital that we respect the role of the Supreme Court in our justice system, but also in our democracy.”
The government has said the best way out of the impasse is to negotiate a deal with the EU that British politicians can support. But Johnson won’t be able to do so unless he can show the bloc viable alternatives to the contentious backstop, a measure to keep the Irish border free of checks that Johnson has vowed to remove from any divorce deal because it keeps the U.K. tied to EU rules.
Brexit Blame
Raab said he is optimistic about getting a deal at the Oct. 17 EU summit in Brussels, citing what he described as positive comments from European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
In a recorded interview broadcast on Sunday, though, Juncker made clear the EU is not yet convinced Johnson has a solution to the Irish border. He also said where he thought the blame would lie for a no-deal Brexit.
“The EU is in no way responsible for any kind of consequences entailed by Brexit,” he told Sky News. “That’s a British decision, a sovereign decision that we are respecting.”
The key problem remains—as it was for May—how to deliver on three apparently incompatible aims: Moving from EU rules and striking independent trade deals; not having a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland; and not having checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.
Hard Border
Juncker said that a no-deal Brexit would mean a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland to protect the integrity of the EU single market.
“We have to preserve the health and the safety of our citizens,” he said.
Unless Johnson can find a solution, he risks becoming boxed in—by the courts, the EU and Parliament. Even a general election—if he can secure one—looks risky if it comes after the U.K. is meant to have left the EU, with Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party likely to attract disenchanted Conservative voters.
Michael Gove, the minister responsible for no-deal Brexit planning, warned that the Conservative Party will suffer at the polls if it fails to deliver Brexit on Oct. 31. “We are on the razor’s edge of peril,” he wrote in the Sunday Times.
Meanwhile it’s not only Johnson’s Tories that are struggling over Brexit. Splits are re-emerging in the main opposition Labour Party, overshadowing efforts to use the party’s annual conference to build a platform to win a general election.
Leader Jeremy Corbyn said he would renegotiate a deal with the EU in his first three months in office before holding a referendum. That would give voters the choice to back his agreement or remain in the bloc, though Corbyn has refused to say which side he’d support.
That lack of clarity has angered lawmakers and party members, the majority of whom want to stay in the EU, and some are demanding an unambiguous commitment to campaign to remain.
“If you believe in internationalism and if you believe in socialism, why on earth would you back Brexit?” Labour’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, Emily Thornberry, said in a speech on the margins of the conference in Brighton. “We must not just campaign to remain, we must lead the campaign to remain.”
