With just a week to go before the result is announced of the election to choose the new Tory leader, and our new PM, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt are shape-shifting into each other.
On Brexit Hunt is adopting more and more of Johnson’s rhetoric about the need to keep open the option of a no-deal Brexit.
And in Monday night’s Sun debate, both of them made a new commitment that makes no deal the most likely outcome – they both said they wanted to scrap the so-called backstop, the mechanism for keeping open the border on the island of Ireland.
Johnson said that putting a time limit on the backstop, or acquiring a unilateral right for the UK to withdraw from the backstop, would no longer be an acceptable reform.
The backstop had to go altogether.
Hunt concurred.
Most EU leaders will see that shift as the official moment the Tory party became the no-deal party – because EU leaders have consistently said the backstop cannot and will not be dumped.
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