The Boris Johnson Brexit strategy is maximum verbiage, maximum risk – and minimum actual work

Welcome to the Thunderdome! Oh boy, do we have a contest for you at the Westminster Arena this week. Only... we can’t tell you who the sides are: anyone could be deselected from Boris Johnson’s team at any moment; Seumas Milne and Justine Greening are, for the moment, as one. And we can’t tell you what the contest is about. I’m pretty sure it was about the European Union once, but that’s like saying the First World War was about Slavic separatism.

We can’t even say what game is being played: it could be Quidditch, it could be Texas-Hold-’Em, it could be WWE, it could be all of those things at once.

But while it is impossible to predict how the parliamentary shenanigans will pan out, the tactics of the main players are now becoming clear – and might offer the best clue as to who will be left standing.

The received view has been that Boris Johnson and his waistcoated wangler Dominic Cummings are the strategic geniuses here, the ones who have “brought the submachine gun to a knife fight”. The proroguing of parliament was a goading tactic – government by clickbait – and everyone fell for it. Johnson and Cummings welcome the street protests and deselection threats; they love it when lifelong Conservatives such as Ken Clarke and Oliver Letwin weep into their pillows about the fate of their party.

Why? Because it signals to the EU that they are deadly serious about no deal. It’s part of Johnson’s “run down the clock” strategy; and so too is the potential 14 October election that it is assumed Johnson wants (even if he can’t admit that; even if it’s a mad risk). Only if the other EU leaders believe that we are prepared to turn ourselves into an apple republic will we get the actual deal that we are told No 10 actually wants.

The problem is, everyone seems to be basing their impression of Cummings on that Benedict Cumberbatch docudrama rather than the unpleasant and weird figure he actually is. Cummings added the irate techno-geekery to the Vote Leave campaign, yes – but Leave would never have won if it weren’t for the dog-whistling of Nigel Farage (who incidentally detests Cummings), plus decades of anti-EU propaganda, the myriad failures of Osbornomics and so on.

If you want a glimpse of Cummings’s actual obsessions, you only need to look at his blog: 10,000-word screeds on how “ideas like this have to be forced down people’s throats practically at gunpoint”... which seems scary, until you realise his idea is actually just installing a few iPads in the cabinet room. Cummings seems to think he is playing World of Warcraft and that the best way to win is to troll the group chat with “die scum, LOL ur dead”.

Meanwhile, we are also asked to believe that Johnson is a pragmatist disguised as a fantasist. He has no desire to lead a hard-right dictatorship defined by civil unrest, queues at Dover and awkward questions about cancer patients dying because of medicine shortages. This is Boris, guys! He wants everyone to coo at his new puppy.

But “run-down-the-clock” is signature Johnson: maximum verbiage, maximum risk, minimum actual work.

There is no evidence the prime minister has been speaking to anyone he actually needs to be speaking to about a deal; nor have we seen the sketchiest of sketches of his vision for the Irish border. According to reports, he has rejected all sensible suggestions from his team, including putting a time limit on the backstop. His bet is that the EU will somehow find a solution so he doesn’t have to.

So Johnson is playing poker. He can complain about treacherous rebels “cutting the legs off” his strategy all he wants. His strategy is to bluff – and that doesn’t usually work when you’ve told everyone that you’re bluffing. The only possible way out of that is to pretend you meant to lose all along. No deal.

I’m not convinced that Johnson knows what he wants anymore: pretend no deal or actual no deal. Michael Gove (the man who brought Cummings into government) seems persuaded by his own no deal propaganda campaign; he and Johnson are journalists and journalists are susceptible to fancy rhetoric.

In the face of this the Rebel Alliance is playing a surprisingly disciplined game. The response to the proroguing of parliament and Gove’s unprecedented threat to break the law has been galvanising. There is even talk of an anti-No Deal Progressive Alliance if it comes to a 14 October election.

Jeremy Corbyn appeared to be walking into that “elephant trap” on Monday, auto-piloting into a rousing “BRING IT ON” in Salford. But that night, his Labour colleagues made a swift correction: no, they will not assent to an election while no deal is still a possibility. Johnson’s allies will cry “HYPOCRITE!” But Labour has an easy comeback: an election is just a sneaky way for Boris to get his way.

The chess player in all of this may turn out to be Seamus Milne, Corbyn’s own Cummings. He is a man just as feared and detested, yet he is also cautious and capable of charm. Positioning Corbyn as a figure of unity, capable of working with other parties and putting the country first is a far more sensible strategy.

And then what? If, as expected, the rebel bill passes and Johnson calls for an election which is then rejected by Labour MPs? Well, it was a referendum that got us into this mess and a referendum that may then seem the only way to get us out of it.

As for which way Labour would campaign in a second Referendum... well, then we’re into four-dimensional backgammon.