Why there’s still a chance of a deal

One of the reasons why Boris Johnson is Prime Minister is that he is an optimist. After the negativity of the May years, the Tory party yearned for some can-do spirit, which he was able to provide. But his relentless positivity has made it difficult to assess how realistic a Brexit deal is. At cabinet on Tuesday he made very bullish noises about the prospects of an agreement being reached. How realistic is this, though?

Johnson told the assembled ministers that he’d had a ‘good lunch’ with Jean-Claude Juncker. There were chuckles. More seriously, he pointed out that the EU had shifted from its prior position, which was that the withdrawal agreement could not possibly be reopened and that only the political declaration could be changed. Michael Gove, one of the cabinet ministers who is most keen on a deal, backed the Prime Minister on this point. The implication was clear: the EU has dropped one red line so might be prepared to shift on others.

This is at odds with what we saw on Monday — the Luxembourg PM Xavier Bettel’s attempts to humiliate Johnson — but the theatrics of the press conference were of far less importance than Johnson’s lunch with Juncker. Before that lunch, No. 10 was hopeful that it might advance the prospects of a deal. The DUP and the Irish government have shifted their positions to varying degrees, which suggests that there might be a solution to the issue of the Irish backstop.

The movement by the DUP is most significant. If the DUP can accept whatever alternative to the backstop is proposed, and if the EU agreed to it, then a deal would have a good chance of passing parliament. It is hard for an MP to declare that they are objecting to something on Unionist grounds if the DUP are prepared to accept it.