Don’t assume Boris Johnson will be able to force through a no-deal Brexit

Editorial: Crashing out of the EU is an outcome the vast majority of the British people, the Commons and even Conservative MPs are opposed to

By admitting that ramping up the talk of no deal is a negotiating technique, Johnson rather gives the game away (AP)

Is Sir John Major making a no-deal Brexit paradoxically more likely though his decision to add his weight to the Gina Miller-led judicial review of the suspension of parliament?

Boris Johnson certainly says so, and his argument has a certain superficial appeal. To avoid war you must prepare for war, the old adage goes – si vis pacem, para bellum, to add a suitably Johnsonian touch. To avoid no-deal Brexit, you must prepare for no-deal Brexit. Hence the prime minister’s high profile and ever more energetic preparations for no-deal Brexit, the high-handed dismissal of parliament, the conspicuous expenditure – waste – of billions on ferries and stockpiling medicines, and the general sense of a nation being run out of a bunker of madmen in Downing Street, willing to take the UK out of the EU on 31 October – do or die.

If it is true, as Mr Johnson reiterated in his latest Sky News interview, that the best way to avoid a no-deal Brexit is to prepare for a no-deal Brexit, then he really is the friend and ally of those who want a deal. Surrounding himself with true believers such as Dominic Cummings, Dominic Raab and Jacob Rees-Mogg is merely to add to the sense of theatre. The more the EU believes that no-deal Brexit is a realistic possibility, the more terrified it becomes – and the more willing to make that crucial concession on the Irish backstop. Sooner or later the bloc will cave in. But if MPs decide to rule out no deal, then the negotiating strategy lies in ruins, and exactly where Theresa May left it, a broken reed. Thus the nation needs to unite behind the possibility of no deal, and back Johnson: otherwise they are “colluding” with the EU.