Brexit: Time to End the Boris Cake Off?

Boris Johnston famously showed how easy he believed it would be for the UK to form a customs union with Europe, and how cavalier he has been with the whole issue of Brexit by declaring last October that “our policy is having our cake and eating it.”

Chancellor Philip Hammond took a more cautious and adult approach on March 29, a few hours before Theresa May triggered Article 50 to begin the departure process, by saying that “we can’t cherry pick. We can’t have our cake and eat it.”

Jeremy Corbyn promptly attacked the Conservatives in the House of Commons over the contrasting approaches of the two Cabinet members to their confectionery conundrum. Who else has piled in for a slice of Boris’s misleading sugarcoating?

Philip Hammond

Hammond spoke at an event in Germany held by the conservative CDU party, which he said had spent the past 54 years promoting “a social market economy based on the values and ideas of Ludwig Erhard.”

He then quoted the CDU politician as saying that “a compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece”.

He then added wryly that they were “wise words with some applicability to the Brexit negotiations although I try to discourage talk of `cake` amongst my colleagues.”

Mark Carney

The Governor of the Bank of England made a more subtle reference to Johnson’s half-baked claim in his Mansion House speech on June 20. 

“Depending on whether and when any transition arrangement can be agreed, firms on either side of the channel may soon need to activate contingency plans,” Carney said.

“Before long, we will all begin to find out the extent to which Brexit is a gentle stroll along a smooth path to a land of cake and consumption.”

The Dropped Cake

In November a photograph of notes carried by a Conservative party aide after taking part in a Brexit briefing  read “What’s the model? Have cake and eat it” as though Boris’s baking may have been saved from burning and was now being considered as a genuine policy.

Business Secretary Greg Clark said that the document did not resemble talks held in Downing Street. “I don’t know what the provenance of that note is,” he said. “All I can say is that it is going to be a negotiation which has to be serious, we have to get our negotiating mandate in place but this is being done soberly and meticulously.”

He then insisted that the impossible goal of having our cake and eating it too was not the official strategy of the British Government. “It would be nice to have [cake and eat it] but it’s not the policy.”

Xavier Bettel

The Prime Minister of Luxembourg extended the cake metaphor to warn the UK that it could not have any concessions before Article 50 was triggered and could not cherry-pick what it did and didn’t want from the EU. “They want to have their cake, eat it, and get a smile from the baker, but not the other things,” Bettel said.

Is it any wonder that the Europeans think they are dealing in the Brexit negotiations with people who are not entirely serious or well prepared for the momentous decisions that are about to be made?

By Stewart Vickers @VickHellfire

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