What is Boris Johnson up to by suggesting some MPs are ‘collaborating’ with foreigners?

The prime minister tangled with Nick Robinson on the Today programme yesterday. Robinson said he had used provocative language such as “collaborators”. Boris Johnson said: “I didn’t actually say collaborators – go back over the quotation.”

The BBC presenter said: “You said collaboration.” To which the prime minister replied: “Correct.” What he had actually said, on 14 August, was: “There’s a terrible kind of collaboration as it were, going on between people who think they can block Brexit in parliament and our European friends.”

It was an inflammatory word, invoking the language of the Second World War, when it was used to describe those people in countries occupied by the Nazis who cooperated with the enemy.

The reason Robinson mentioned it was that the idea had been revived by the front-page headline in the Mail on Sunday: “No 10 probes Remain MPs’ ‘foreign collusion’.”

This was a news report based on a quotation from a “senior No 10 source”, who said the government was “working on extensive investigations” into Dominic Grieve, Oliver Letwin and Hilary Benn, the backbench MPs who drafted the law designed to prevent a no-deal Brexit at the end of this month.

The No 10 source said the inquiry would look at “their involvement with foreign powers and the funding of their activities. Governments have proper rules for drafting legislation, but nobody knows what organisations are pulling these strings.

“We will demand the disclosure of all details of their personal communications with other states. The drafting of primary legislation in collusion with foreign powers must be fully investigated.”

This briefing, and Johnson’s original comment, seem to be part of a tactic associated with Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s chief of staff, of provoking the opponents of a no-deal exit. The aim may be to induce vehement denials and condemnation, which draw attention to the kernel of truth in Johnson’s charge.

In this case, it is true that some of the opponents of a no-deal exit, including Philip Hammond, the former chancellor, have had discussions with people in Brussels and other EU capitals about the length and terms of an extension to the Brexit deadline that would be acceptable to them.

Hence the Benn act requires the prime minister, if there is no Brexit deal by 19 October, to seek a three-month extension, taking the deadline to 31 January next year.

However, this is a reasonable proposal, in the absence of a majority in the Commons for a deal, and can no more be described as “collusion” than Theresa May’s agreement with other EU leaders to postpone the 29 March deadline.

There is of course heated language on both sides. The prime minister’s opponents – including Hammond – have recently suggested that he wants to leave the EU without a deal because some Tory donors stand to gain large amounts of money from speculating that the pound will fall.

Given that no lawyer has yet suggested how a no-deal exit is possible under the Benn act – except by EU leaders “colluding” with Johnson to force us out, which they seem disinclined to do – this is a peculiar theory.

Perhaps both sides should desist from accusing the other of bad faith.