SIX WEEKS AFTER taking office, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will meet with EU Commission president Jean-Claude Junker in Luxembourg today.
After comparing the UK to comic book super-smasher Hulk, Johnson will enjoy a genteel working lunch with Juncker.
The meeting comes just over six weeks ahead of the proposed Brexit date with Johnson again insisting today that the UK is preparing to leaving without a deal. It is the first meeting between the new PM and the outgoing commission president.
Downing Street has confidently billed the today’s visit as part of efforts to negotiate an orderly divorce from the union before an 17 October EU summit.
But Brussels has played down talk of a breakthrough, insisting Johnson has yet to suggest any “legally operable” proposal to revise a previous withdrawal accord.
Chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier, who will join the leaders for their talks in Juncker’s native Grand Duchy, has said he has “no reason to be optimistic”.
And the European Parliament will this week vote on a resolution rejecting Johnson’s demand that the backstop clause be stripped from the deal.
Johnson insists this measure, which temporarily effectively keeps the UK in the EU customs union, has to go if he is to bring the agreement back to the House of Commons.
But the accord will also have to win the support of the other 27 EU leaders and the European Parliament if Britain is not to crash out with no deal on 31 October.
Johnson, in turn, boasts that he would rather be “dead in a ditch” than ask his European counterparts to postpone Brexit for a third time into next year.
“Be in no doubt that if we cannot get a deal — the right deal for both sides — then the UK will come out anyway,” Johnson said, writing in the Daily Telegraph today.
It is difficult, then, to see what might come from the lunch, which will be held behind closed doors with no plan for a joint statement afterwards.
A fortnight ago, the House of Commons passed a law that compels Johnson to seek a Brexit extension if no deal can be reached but Downing Street is reportedly looking at legal loopholes that would allow them avoid such an obligation.
Johnson’s meeting with Junker comes 26 days after he met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. At that meeting, Johnson had embraced Merkel’s mention of a 30-day period as a timeline to find an alternative to the backstop.
No firm alternative has been raised so far.
‘Hulk smash!’
Nevertheless, Johnson told the Mail on Sunday he remains “very confident” of getting a new deal before the 17 October summit.
“A huge amount of progress is being made,” he said, referring to “technical talks” on border procedures between his Brexit adviser David Frost and Barnier’s team.
Speaking to the BBC Sunday, Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay indicated that any post-Brexit transition period could be extended past 2020 in order to resolve issues with the border.
Johnson compared the UK to Marvel comics hero Hulk, the rampaging mutant alter-ego of a mild-mannered nuclear scientist.
“The madder Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets and he always escaped, no matter how tightly bound in he seemed to be,” Johnson told the paper.
The comparison was labelled as “infantile” by the European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt who likened it to something US Donald President Donald Trump would say.
The Belgian MEP tweeted:
Even to Trumpian standards the Hulk comparison is infantile. Is the EU supposed to be scared by this? The British public impressed? Is this Boris Johnson whistling in the dark?
Also on the Brexit front, the UK’s Northern Ireland Secretary Julian Smith travels to Dublin today where he will speak about the ongoing impasse and efforts to restore Northern Ireland’s power-sharing executive.
Smith is due to meet with Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney as well as Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan.
- With reporting by © – AFP 2019
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