Forget the threats. Ignore the bluster. Disregard the hyperbole. Put aside the crass remarks, general amateurishness and incessant game-playing.

Boris Johnson wants a Brexit deal.

I’d go further: he needs one. Like a gambler hoping his cards will change, the public recklessness of the Prime Minister is a front to disguise his private despair.

The political and economic pressures are building. The recent retraction in the UK economy is the surest signal we are slipping into recession. A no deal Brexit will trigger a (further) run on the pound and lead to chaos in supermarkets and queues and ports and airports.

Companies will fold. Jobs will be lost. Panic and anger will surface.

The optics, as they say in US politics, will be disastrous. Try fighting an election campaign – which Johnson is obliged to do sooner rather than later – with the equivalent of a weekly ‘winter of discontent’ as the backdrop.

“We need some commons sense,” he told the BBC the other day. The hope in Downing Street is that they can catalyse any residual goodwill in the European Commission, coupled with Irish worries at the chaos to come, in order to tweak the existing Withdrawal Agreement enough to get it over the line.

Yet his easiest way out of the Brexit morass has been apparent from the start. The simple, logical solution is staring him in the face.

Keep Northern Ireland in the customs union and relevant parts of the single market in order to avoid regulatory divergence with the Irish Republic, guaranteeing an open border open, while the rest of the UK leaves.

This is hardly a revolutionary idea, admittedly. (It’s the ‘slow learner’ option, to paraphrase Seamus Mallon). At various times over the past three years making Northern Ireland a special case has been suggested as a least-worst solution.

But we are now in injury time and something must give in the next few weeks. No-one is more aware of this than the occupant of 10 Downing Street.

A miNI-backstop (if you will) remains the most plausible compromise arrangement given the EU is clear it will not start unpicking the Withdrawal Agreement and Boris Johnson is equally insistent we’re leaving the EU on 31 October.

But he hasn’t made the psychological leap yet, insisting last week there must be a ‘backstopectomy’ – as he continues his opening gambit of playing hardball with the EU.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s former chief-of-staff and the lead British negotiator of the Good Friday Agreement, was calmly explaining what is really going on. He recently told Irish media that the Government’s bid for a Canada-style comprehensive trade deal with the EU would indeed require a compromise over the backstop.

“There would definitely have to be special measures for Northern Ireland,” he explained. “In that case and there would definitely be a border down the Irish Sea.”

What is needed – what has always been required, in fact – is to lay the ground properly for such a compromise. Unionists, unsurprisingly, are deeply sceptical. They point to the obvious erosion of their Britishness, with Northern Ireland visibly cut-off from the UK with a border-in-the-Irish-Sea.

Of course, they are right. This arrangement does make Northern Ireland different. Plus ça change. But the obvious symbolism should not drown out the practical benefits. The Northern Ireland economy would fare better and might even attract more British businesses to take advantage of their retained access to the single market.

With a stronger economy than will otherwise be the case under a no-deal Brexit, the constitutional status quo might also stabilise. As it stands, Brexit risks pushing moderate unionists towards supporting Irish unity in order to protect their economic self-interest.

Theresa May’s seminal mistake was that she never tried to sell the argument for a miNI backstop to the DUP. Instead, she let their leaders hoist themselves onto a rhetorical hook, rather than challenging them to act in the greater good of the UK. Now they’re stuck up there.

It would have been tricky, granted, but not impossible to convince them. Ministers could have adopted a British version of the Chinese mantra about Hong Kong: ‘One country, two systems’. They could have argued that Northern Ireland would become a hinge between the European single market and the British domestic market, with access to both.

They could have reminded unionists that the principle of being equal but different might also help the DUP justify their view (as they see it) that Northern Ireland should remain outside British same sex marriage and abortion legislation. A la carte sovereignty, so to speak. The best of both worlds. ‘Qualified Brits’.

If these clever arguments didn’t work, the DUP is, as we’ve seen, endlessly biddable when it comes to public cash and prestige. Stuff their mouths with gold as a consolation prize. Put some of their backwoodsmen in the House of Lords. Scatter a few knighthoods around.

But Theresa May and her team did none of these things (with the Northern Ireland Office particularly to blame for poor advice). They allowed the DUP’s reflexive opposition to the backstop to veto what is, manifestly, the easiest way out of this mess.

miNI-backstop honours the Brexit vote and avoids the disaster of hard Brexit. For Boris Johnson, it’s the best way of unifying his party, many of whom vehemently oppose a no-deal cliff edge. It would also put enormous pressure on Labour MPs to respect their 2017 manifesto pledge to help facilitate Brexit.

A Brexit deal is still there for the taking. All it needs is for the Government to accept it must include the miNI backstop.

As it stands, the delicacies of the Democratic Unionists risk visiting economic ruin on the British public. Given Northern Ireland amounts to just 3 percent of the UK’s population and comprises just 1.5 percent of our national economy, ministers should have been bolder in twisting the DUP’s arm.

Yet even now, when all the other variables are removed from the equation, a miNI-backstop remains the most sensible deal to avoid drifting towards a disastrous hard Brexit in a few weeks’ time.

 

Kevin Meagher is author of ‘A United Ireland: Why unification is inevitable and how it will come about’ published by Biteback.