Boris Johnson’s vision for Brexit would never have worked – his resignation speech proved that

Rarely has a ministerial resignation been as intensely choreographed as that of Boris Johnson. From the photoshoot of the former foreign secretary sitting at his desk signing his letter to the prime minister, to the choice of seat for his personal statement in the House of Commons, it was meticulously planned, unusually for Mr Johnson.

He was surrounded by the hard Brexit awkward squad as he set out his reasons for leaving the government. Mr Johnson chose to stand from the very spot where Sir Geoffrey Howe made his devastating and eventually successful attack on Margaret Thatcher’s premiership in November 1990. The symbolism was all too clear, though the method and timing of Mr Johnson’s prospective act of regicide will develop in a different way.

According to the Boris Johnson school of recent history, the “vision of Brexit” has been lost in the past 18 months of “dithering”, through some tragic failure of self-confidence on the part of ministers pursuing that vision. The prime minister’s Lancaster House speech of January 2017, on this reading of events, is the Dead Sea Scrolls of Brexit, since sadly lost and abandoned as a “fog of self-doubt” has descended on the nation.

It was bold and comprehensive, but the Chequers agreement, which Mr Johnson initially supported, though weakly, is a “Heath Robinson” affair. The May government, according to this senior former member of it, has not even tried to negotiate on the basis of the Lancaster House speech. Mr Johnson made it plain that a “positive”, “self-confident” approach could restore the “vision of Brexit”. He is, he allowed anyone listening to conclude, a famously positive and self-confident personality himself. Theresa May is not often thought of as either positive or self-confident these days.

Not for the first time, Mr Johnson’s version of Brexit does not quite accord with reality. One reason why the Lancaster House speech was abandoned in favour of what is now the admittedly flawed Brexit white paper is because the speech was impractical and fanciful. It was itself full of contradictions, and maddeningly vague on vital issues such as the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Such issues, and for reasons of its own, led the European Union to rule out the Lancaster House approach as an exercise in cherry-picking, the British trying to have their cake and eat it, violating the four freedoms of the EU for their own convenience. The British were never going to get very far with a “vision” of such a one-sided Brexit that required cooperation and support from the EU and gave little back. That rejection might or might not be “fair” to Britain, and it might not be in the EU’s own interests, but Michel Barnier, the EU chief negotiator, made it clear that the “red lines” set down in the Lancaster House speech made a viable free trade agreement on British terms impossible.

The other reason why the government in which Mr Johnson served has had so much difficulty with Brexit is the snap election Ms May called a few weeks after that speech. She asked for a mandate for her idea of Brexit, but instead lost her parliamentary majority. That result was widely regarded as the “revenge of the remainers”. From that, in turn, came legislative chaos and the series of remarkably close recent votes on Brexit in the Commons, and the decisions by a panicked government to accept wrecking amendments to its own legislation from hardline Brexiteers.

Contrary to Mr Johnson’s fantastical claim that some “positive” leadership on Brexit would unite the nation, the truth is that the nation is more bitterly divided than ever, and this is reflected in a parliament that is now paralysed because there is no majority for any given version of Brexit. Having Boris Johnson as prime minister would make a practical, economically friendly Brexit even less likely than it is under Ms May. Like David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, Mr Johnson talks airily about technological answers to many of the problems, despite the technology not yet having been perfected.

All of which leaves the nation in much the same place as it was before. At the Commons Liaison Committee, it was perfectly apparent that even the prime minister herself finds it difficult to explain, or possibly understand, the way in which her “facilitated customs arrangement” with the EU would actually work. Nor was she convincing about such prosaic but vital questions as whether holidaymakers will be able to safely book flights to European destinations after Brexit day, 29 March 2019. The European health card, too, was an area where Ms May could offer no more assurance than that the government is busily negotiating for a deal to be delivered by October.

If it were only one or two of these tricky issues that is at stake, it might be possible to dream they could be resolved in three months flat. With so many more fundamental questions to be resolved, it must be judged virtually impossible. Mr Barnier has indicated that 80 per cent of the decisions have been agreed, but that leaves the most intractable ones in the remaining 20 per cent.

In that sense, the complicated and contrived Brexit white paper is indeed a Heath Robinson affair, ramshackle and slow-moving. The difference is that Mr Johnson’s clear vision of Brexit may be simple, sleek and elegant – he is hard Brexit personified – but is even less attractive, would cost more jobs and would inflict irreparable damage to Britain’s closest friends and neighbours. Boris does not have the answers.