10 days in to Boris Johnson’s premiership and the big change is, as I say in The Sun this morning, that the government machine now thinks no deal really might happen.
Those involved in no deal planning meetings say that there is now an intensity to them that there never was before. Rather than querying whether no deal is desirable, officials are getting on with preparing for it.
Ministers are also bound into this strategy. One of those who served in both May’s Cabinet and the new one says that under the previous Prime Minister Sunday’s Cabinet conference call would have led to a long discussion about the merits of no deal. But now all ministers are signed up to leaving on October 31st whether there’s a deal or not, it didn’t. ‘People don’t realise how far down the line to no deal we are’ says one government insider.
Boris Johnson remains confident that the EU will offer up concessions rather than see the UK leave without a deal on October 31st.
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