Brexit is not the first thing Boris Johnson has found difficult, but it might be the first difficult thing he cannot simply abandon. The path by which he arrived in Downing Street is strewn with jettisoned jobs, principles and relationships. He finds other people’s needs burdensome, and is used to shrugging them off. But now he is yoked to an onerous national duty. His discomfort was obvious in parliament today. Johnson’s traditional repertoire of glibness and bluster served him poorly as his authority and his majority melted away. The first significant test of his command of the Commons resulted in humiliation. He was defeated by a majority of 27, forfeited control of the legislative agenda, desperately threw a general election gauntlet across the chamber and watched helpless as the leader of the opposition dodged it.
Earlier in the day Johnson’s statement on last week’s G7 summit had been upstaged by a Tory MP, Phillip Lee, ostentatiously quitting his seat on government benches and swapping it for a berth with the Liberal Democrats. When MPs, including former chancellor Philip Hammond, demanded evidence of progress in Brexit talks, the Conservative leader could not even wriggle with eloquence, let alone defend himself with facts. The prime minister does not look like a man with well-laid plans coming to fruition.
There is a reason for that. Johnson chose the leave side in the 2016 referendum, thinking it would probably be beaten. He intended to earn kudos among Eurosceptic Tories, while evading responsibility for turning their romantic fantasy into reality. He flaunted his unreadiness to own the result, withdrawing from the subsequent Conservative leadership race on the day of his campaign launch. He served in Theresa May’s cabinet only for as long as he could be idle in a grand office. When the time came to commit to a workable Brexit model, he resigned.
In part, Johnson is captive to the public school cult of effortless dilettantism that despises diligence as vulgar and swotty. He is also a hostage to his own breezy rhetoric. Even now that the technical complexities and economic hazards of Brexit are indisputable, the prime minister pretends that obstacles are trifling or illusory. He claims that leaving the EU without a deal would not be a calamity, but also that the threat of calamity is necessary to persuade the EU to grant a deal. He says that MPs’ demands for an article 50 extension make it harder to negotiate in Brussels because continental leaders will compromise only when they see that the UK is beyond reason. In short: there is no cliff, and even if there was one, the way to avoid it is by driving towards the edge at full speed with no brakes...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/03/brexit-ultras-pantomime-boris-johnson
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