Boris Johnson plays up Remainer ‘collusion’ – but what if he is the treasonous one?

Only an irresponsible fool would confect the accusation of treachery.

Any doubt about this died yesterday at the bijou hand of the president. Trump concluded a typically thoughtful dawn chorus tweet by demanding that the Democrat leading the congressional investigation into his diplomatic dealings with Ukraine be questioned about treason.

Here, we are more circumspect with the language, as the Mail on Sunday confirmed the previous day. It studiously avoided the T word when filling its front and inside pages with a subtler take on the same accusation.

“No 10 probes Remain MPs’ ‘foreign collusion’… ” was the headline above a steaming mound of freshly excreted propaganda about a fiendish plot to draft the Benn Act known to our prime minister by a different name.

“Last night, a senior No 10 source said: ‘The government is working on extensive investigations into Dominic Grieve, Oliver Letwin and Hilary Benn and their involvement with foreign powers…’”

The government is doing no such thing. The government is doing nothing, in fact, beyond semi-exonerating its guv’nor for grabbing ’em by the thighs, ignoring grave allegations that he abused public funds as London mayor, preaching unicorny gibberish to comatose conference delegates, and waiting for the day Johnson is replaced.

But breaking a credible news story was not the purpose of that report. The point was to do Johnson’s bidding by fomenting rage and ratcheting up public pressure for a general election.

Accusing Messrs Letwin, Grieve and Bercow of consorting with foreign powers against the interests of Her Majesty’s realm – a useful saloon bar definition of treason – happened to be the chosen method du jour. Next Sunday, it will be something else.

And so to the more credible claim, in today’s Times, that the PM is asking the EU to rule out any further extension to Article 50 in the unlikely event that he and it agrees an exit deal.

His fondest desire (you may recall the tactic being trialled by Theresa May, with limited success), is to force the Commons with a binary choice between his deal – one expected to throw Ireland beneath one of those buses he loves so much – and no deal.

Only a rabble-rousing buffoon, as perhaps I mentioned, levels the accusation of treachery. But if the Times is accurate, this looks at least like the kind of knavish trick to dement the Mail on Sunday and all God-fearing patriots with anger.

It would constitute collusion with foreign powers to stymie the very parliament for the restoration whose sovereignty (yeah, that old irony) Brexit was nominally conceived.

But even if true, it’s hardly treason. The last person executed for the crime was Lord Haw Haw (real name: William Joyce. Catchphrase: “Germany calling, Germany calling”), who went to the gallows in 1946 for broadcasting propaganda to Britain from the Fatherland. There is a massive and crystal clear distinction between aiding with the enemy in wartime and colluding with foreign powers to render parliament that tiny bit less sovereign than the Mark Francois and Peter Bone would wish.

But what if Johnson has lobbied individual EU leaders to use their veto to crash us out on Halloween? There has been speculation that just such an approach was made to Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary.

How close Johnson is to Orban isn’t clear. There have been no reports yet that he squeezed the Magyar supremo’s thighs under a table, or even those of his wife.

But 18 months ago, during his dazzling stint as foreign secretary, Johnson took the trouble to congratulate Orban – a zealous peddler of antisemitic tropes, some involving George Soros – on winning his re-election after a nasty, xenophobic campaign.

The Hungarian foreign minister (not that foreign ministers, as experience teaches, can automatically be taken on trust) recently rejected the idea that Orban, a Brexit sympathiser if not a declared Hexiteer, would veto.

But in the eyes of the law, as I hope Lady Hale would confirm, it’s irrelevant whether or not a conspiracy succeeds. The offence is conspiring.

If Johnson has covertly approached an EU leader, directly or otherwise, with a request to veto, might that qualify as the kind of disloyalty to the Crown that satisfies the definition of treason?

It was the Queen who gave her assent to the law mandating an extension to Article 50 to avoid no deal. Would secretly colluding with a foreign power to defy her will, and to undermine her parliament’s sovereignty by exporting power over the country’s future, be high treason?

In the absence of our very own whistleblower to unveil the mysteries of inter-leader phone chats, we will never know whether Johnson’s disregard for the decencies of his office extends to outsourcing the customer care of this nation to a call centre in Budapest.

But whatever he has or hasn’t done in pursuit of no deal almost certainly wouldn’t qualify as treason, since none of the EU27 is our enemy. Each and every one, as he often mentions with barely a hint of sardonic disdain, is our friend (albeit that with friends like Orban, who needs…?).

So rather than dwell on any betrayals in the public domain to mirror those in his private relations, let’s welcome the new Johnson who insists he is working like a demon to negotiate a splendid new deal.

At this late and darkest hour, he tells us, he has surrendered to something very like the fabled advice of his hero, Winston Churchill. Finally for Boris Johnson, it’s jaw-jaw, not Haw-Haw.