Boris Johnson has missed a golden opportunity to reset UK-EU relations

Boris Johnson has missed a golden opportunity to reset UK-EU relations. He could have been at the table when Joe Biden attended the EU’s summit on Thursday and shared the limelight during the west’s show of unity over Ukraine.

One EU insider told me Johnson would “probably” have been invited and that “it was certainly under discussion” until he got himself uninvited, last weekend, by foolishly comparing the struggle of the Ukrainian people to Brexit.

This infuriated EU leaders, who scrapped plans to invite him. “Crass and offensive,” said one EU diplomat, pointing out that Ukraine wants to join – not leave – the EU. “How many citizens died because of Brexit?” asked Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s former president.

In Brussels on Thursday, where he did attend Nato and G7 meetings, Johnson refused to apologise, claiming his remark about the British and Ukrainian people choosing “freedom every time” had been “wildly misconstrued” – although aides admit privately it was a mistake.

This would have been the perfect moment to improve the UK and EU’s fraught relationship since the 2016 referendum. At a time when Johnson gets plaudits from Ukraine for sending arms and is seen as “the most active participant in the race to be anti-Russian” by the Kremlin, attending the EU-Biden summit would have boosted Global Britain on the world stage. The union flag would have flown alongside those of the US and EU in Brussels, giving the UK a pivotal role in a powerful alliance.

Instead, for a fleeting moment, Johnson’s not so splendid isolation was exposed as Nato leaders waited for their photocall. He temporarily cut a lonely figure – hands in jacket pockets (of course) and with no one to talk to. In fact, it wasn’t as bad as it looked on camera, as he shook hands with Biden and Emmanuel Macron.

Attending the EU-US meeting would have helped Johnson’s behind-the-scenes lobbying for Nato to provide Ukraine with more military aid (including tanks and other armoured vehicles) a move opposed by Macron who is worried this would trigger a Russian escalation.

As Europe’s biggest spender on defence (at least until Germany overtakes it), it is obvious the UK should be “in the room” when security cooperation is enhanced to combat the new threat from Russia. Sensible Tories understand this.

Most EU leaders want it, even though diplomats say Johnson’s latest outburst reminded them he is “untrustworthy” and “not serious” – hardly the image he wants to project to the domestic audience after Partygate.

To voters at home, it would not have looked odd or weak to mend fences with the EU while the bloc displays impressive steel and unity against Vladimir Putin (although EU divisions over ending Russian oil and gas imports are now surfacing). Johnson might prefer to pretend that EU institutions don’t exist and to deal with member states bilaterally, but the EU is a big player in this conflict, as today’s deal between it and the US over importing liquified natural gas shows.

Perhaps Johnson’s latest outbreak of foot-in-mouth disease not only shows he can’t change but that he doesn’t want to. His remark was not off the cuff but in a pre-written speech to Tory grassroots activists, a fervently pro-Brexit group whom (along with his MPs) Johnson needs to keep onside to retain his job. Although aides had suggested he would accept an EU invitation, perhaps he didn’t really want to sup with those he needlessly sees as the devil.

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Indeed, this week’s events remind us that Johnson does not want to move on from Brexit. What an irony: he doesn’t want to get it “done” after all, despite winning an election on that basis. He wants to remind voters of his greatest hit by making it an issue at the 2024 general election; he thinks it is Keir Starmer’s weak spot because he backed a Final Say referendum on the Brexit agreement and knows Labour Remainers are badgering him to expose the deal’s obvious flaws.

Even when unity against Russia in a real war should be his overwhelming priority, Johnson hasn’t given up the idea of triggering a mutually damaging trade war with the EU by suspending all or part the Northern Ireland protocol. Not to be outdone by each other in the eyes of Tory backbenchers, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have raised this flag too in recent days.

With the government bound to be blamed for the cost of living crisis after Sunak’s inadequate response in Wednesday’s spring statement, further trade friction with the UK’s biggest market would be a high price to pay politically as well as economically. Even in the red-wall constituencies, voters will surely be more worried about their living standards and whether Johnson has “levelled-up” by 2024 than a Brexit vote eight years earlier.

On EU relations, Johnson should stop cutting off his nose to spite his face.