Fintan O’Toole: Britain’s fate may rest on Boris Johnson’s ability to polish poo

Blessed are the poo-polishers, for they shall see the kingdom of Brexit.

A little over a year ago, when Theresa May browbeat her recalcitrant cabinet into endorsing her Brexit plan at Chequers, Boris Johnson, then foreign secretary, repeatedly complained that arguing for the plan would be like "polishing a turd".

He added sarcastically: “Luckily we have some expert turd polishers”, while, as the Mail on Sunday reported at the time, “shooting a glance at one of Mrs May’s spin doctors”.

Turdism, as we might call it, subsequently enjoyed a brief flowering at Westminster. In the debate on the withdrawal agreement in March, one Tory MP, Steve Double, agonised over the choices: "One option – if you will excuse my language, Mr Speaker – is a turd of a deal, which has now been taken away and polished so that it is a polished turd, but it might be the best turd that we have before us. The alternative would be to stop Brexit altogether."

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It is worth pointing out that turds really can be polished. In the Discovery Channel's series Mythbusters, in 2008, the hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman brought in an expert in the Japanese pastime known as dorodango, in which children create spheres of mud, dust them with fine soil and then polish them to a high gloss with a cloth. They tried the technique on ostrich and lion faeces and proved that it also works splendidly on poo.

Last week, we learned that the department of international trade in London has launched a scheme to recruit school leavers with no other qualifications and train them as trade experts. My sources tell me that the word has also gone out to Japanese schoolchildren to come over and teach Johnson dorodango.

Chequers plan

The question on which the fate of Britain may now turn is whether Johnson can persuade the European Union to put a bit of gloss on the withdrawal agreement and then sell it to parliament not just as “the best turd that we have before us” but as the finest poo known to humanity.

For Johnson has always been right about one thing: the withdrawal agreement is obviously worse for Britain than staying in the EU. As he put it in September, even the Chequers plan (which was not achieved) was “substantially worse than the status quo”.

This is the fundamental and inescapable truth of the entire Brexit process. Membership of the EU is the status quo; the withdrawal deal and close alignment with the customs union and single market is a Status Quo tribute band.

And it’s not going to get any better. Reopening the withdrawal agreement would be disastrous for the EU. The EU is a delicate fabric held together by rules, procedures and commitments. Undoing the agreement by ditching the backstop would not just unravel what has been achieved on Brexit – it would unstitch the whole fabric. No one – and certainly no small member state – would ever again be able to believe what the EU says. So there will be no meaningful change. Whatever is added will be gloss.

What could be buffed up? Any amount of language could be ladled on to the (rather thin) political declaration, but none of it will have legal force. What could be added to the legally-binding withdrawal agreement is, perhaps, a grand international task force to work on “alternative arrangements” for control of the Irish Border so that the backstop never has to be invoked.

Have it chaired by a big global figure, pack it with experts and feed it money. Make a big fuss of it and hope that the noise drowns out the awkward truth that while technology can work marvels with compliant traders, it can’t do much with people who want to evade compliance.

Grandiose bluster

Now, if you do want someone to sell something like this as a fabulous victory, Johnson is your man. He has all the right character traits – a complete absence of principle (asked if he has any convictions, he replied that he has just one: for speeding) and an endless capacity for mendacity. He does grandiose bluster like no one else. Who better to step down from a Spitfire that has flown him back from a dramatic summit in Brussels and announce: “I hold in my hand a piece of paper...”?

We must never forget that the hard Brexiteers have put their trust in a man who resigned from government in 2017 and denounced the withdrawal agreement for making the EU “our colonial masters”.

In March he voted in the House of Commons for the withdrawal agreement, backstop, colonial masters and all. He switched back to diehard opposition for the leadership race. There is no reason to believe he will not reverse himself yet again. It is his nature.

And as for all the bluster about no deal, I would guess that Johnson is secretly delighted that parliament will put a stop to it. He can and will blame those weak-willed MPs for losing their nerve.

It will be their fault that the EU didn’t crumble. If it had not been for Johnson’s magnificent last-minute dorodango, all would have been lost. Hold your nose and pass the polish.