Why is Boris Johnson denying his deal includes customs checks?

The prime minister is saying one thing while his deal says another. What’s he up to, asks Jon Stone

Pants on fire: not telling the truth is something that has caught up with the prime minister many times before (AFP/Getty)

Downing Street again insisted on Friday that the Brexit deal struck by Boris Johnson doesn’t introduce customs checks between different parts of the UK. “There will be no checks,” his spokesperson told reporters yesterday morning.

But that isn’t what the deal says, and the EU again hammered that home, drawing a map for the prime minister of where the checks will go, and spelling out how they would work. So why is Mr Johnson still insisting that there won’t be any?

Is it possible that the prime minister doesn’t understand his own deal? This seems unlikely: other ministers have admitted there will be checks. We know, because of leaks, that the government internally says there will be. Johnson will have been told many times by officials.

On the same basis, it does not seem like the government is planning to deliberately ignore the contents of the deal. It could kiss an EU trade deal goodbye if it did.

So it does seem like the prime minister is simply denying the truth about what his withdrawal agreement contains. Why? The short answer is because he probably feels he can get away with it, and it is politically convenient for him.

Customs rules are technical, the kind of subject that makes voters switch off (perhaps you already have). Often in the melee of politics it is difficult to get past the “he said, she said”; of course the opposition would accuse the government of lying, you might think.

Politically, it’s useful for the prime minister to be able to claim there are no checks, because he can present his Brexit deal not as largely a surrender to some fundamental EU demands with some camouflage, but as a triumphant victory. This makes him popular with Brexiteers.

And of course, are people still going to be thinking about this issue in a year’s time when the checks begin at the end of the transition period? It’s likely the debate will have moved on. Someone might dig up an old quote of him denying there will be checks, and juxtapose it with a photo of the checks occurring. But people may be too busy with something else to notice.

Not telling the truth is also something that has caught up with the prime minister many times before.

Many years ago he was sacked from his job at The Times for making up quotes, and the habit appears to have continued.

In 2004 he notably denied reports he was having an affair, only for those reports later to turn out to be true.

During the recent election campaign he was caught on camera telling an angry father with a sick child that there were no press at an event he was attending at an NHS hospital – there clearly were.

And of course, he backed the infamous £350m for the NHS falsehood on the side of the Vote Leave bus.

Those are just a few examples of times when he’s been caught out not telling the truth – many more are public record. So the answer to the question may be: it’s just something he does.