Keep the champagne on ice: Johnson and Varadkar haven’t saved Brexit yet

According to its website, Thornton Manor, scene of the meeting between Leo Varadkar and Boris Johnson is a “luxury wedding venue”. The images of the two leaders taking a walk in the woods around the grounds were certainly consonant with the cautiously optimistic tone of the official briefings, and the reference to future “intense discussions”.

The talks were, at least, not a disaster. There was not the “catastrophic failure of statecraft” that Jeremy Hunt has warned would lead to a no-deal Brexit. Instead, the “broad landing ground” for a deal that Mr Johnson has spoken about is about as smooth and expansive as can be hoped.

No doubt part of Mr Johnson sees himself as a hero-in-waiting of the rough times that would follow a no-deal Brexit, along the lines of Winston Churchill in 1940. But he also knows that the chaos that would follow immediately, and the protracted recession that would arrive soon after would do his party – and, more to the point, his own electoral chances – no good.

Far better to get a deal, even if some of his circle have already written it off, dismissed the talks as a “sham”, and still prefer to crash out in any event.

If all goes well, tweaks to the Ireland-Northern Ireland customs regime will be enough to appease both the DUP and the Conservative “Spartans” in the House of Commons, but also acceptable to the European Commission as no threat to the integrity of the EU customs union and single market. Hence the dispatch of Stephen Barclay, the Brexit secretary, to confer with EU lead negotiator Michel Barnier, and the parallel “consultations” between the Irish government and the EU’s Taskforce 50, charged with overseeing Brexit.

Bouncing off a miraculous achievement of a deal would be the ideal start to an action-packed few weeks for the prime minister, headed towards what he imagines would be a general election win with a working majority in parliament – a mandate for a full five-year term in which he can refashion the nation, including its relations with Europe, in his own image.

The plan is coming into view. First comes the “new” – that is, tweaked – Withdrawal Agreement, in due course then its successful passage in the Commons; then the Queen’s Speech setting out his programme on the home front on Monday, followed by an electioneering budget in early November, a new parliament by December, and a celebratory Christmas at Chequers for Boris, Carrie and the wider Johnson clan.

Still, it could all go wrong. There have been so many false dawns that it is difficult to believe that Mr Johnson will find himself striding around the sunlit uplands of post-Brexit Britain, at last able to deliver on his acronymic summer slogan, DUDE: Delivering Brexit; Uniting the nation; Defeating Jeremy Corbyn: and Energising the economy. All are still some distance away.

The Irish and the EU remain sceptical about the efficacy and practicality of the customs arrangements. Will they reliably protect the integrity of the EU customs union and single market? Will they become targets for armed republicans, on both sides of the border?

There is also the matter of the DUP’s veto over the future of the Withdrawal Agreement. If the DUP decide to take Northern Ireland out of the EU single market at some point, then what is the backstop protection for Ireland and the EU supposed to be? Could they offer Sinn Fein a parallel lock, and would the DUP accept that?

Or would the DUP, as has been mooted, accept a customs border in the Irish Sea – leaving Northern Ireland inside the EU customs union indefinitely?

These questions require answers, but more to the point, those answers need to be legally formulated as part of a proper international treaty, consistent with the Good Friday Belfast Agreement and the EU’s own constitution. Rightly, Mr Johnson is neither respected nor trusted by many on either side of the English Channel, which makes the job much harder. The champagne should stay on ice.