There is only one speech that matters this week, here in Manchester at Tory party conference.
It will be Boris Johnson’s on Wednesday and it will be significant – potentially historic – for what he has to say about how and whether he hopes to break the impasse with Brussels on negotiating an alternative to the Northern Ireland backstop and therefore strike a new deal to leave the EU.
Intriguingly, perhaps weirdly, cabinet ministers are ebullient with optimism that Johnson is on the verge of striking a deal with Juncker and Barnier that is sellable to most Tory MPs, Northern Ireland’s DUP and even enough Labour MPs to carry it across the line in a Commons vote.
By contrast when I talk to EU sources about this British optimism, they think I am taking leave of my senses.
Because they have heard nothing from British negotiators – either ministers or officials – to suggest an acceptable compromise is anywhere in sight.
On the other side of the Channel, in Brussels, Berlin and Paris, the working assumption is the UK is leaving the EU without a deal, possibly on the due date of 31 October, more likely a few short weeks later after a general election.
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