A talking potato would be more convincing than Boris on Brexit deal detail

Boris Johnson started the Conservative Party’s national campaign yesterday with a tour of successful food and drink manufacturers across three regions of the UK.

In County Armagh, he visited the Tayto crisp factory where he will have encountered the company’s mascot – a jocular, oval-shaped man, dressed in a suit and resembling a potato, who doesn’t look terribly unlike the prime minister himself.

Maybe a mix-up took place; because later, when Mr Johnson addressed concerns about the effects his Brexit deal might have on Northern Ireland businesses, he made about as much sense as his cartoon, snack-flogging counterpart, Mr Tayto.

At a gathering of NI Tory activists, the Conservative leader gave a halting defence of his Withdrawal Agreement and the Irish Sea border it contains. Challenging what he described as ‘misinformation’ about the deal, Mr Johnson claimed, “there will not be tariffs or checks on goods coming from GB to NI that are not going on to Ireland.”

“And the great thing that’s been misunderstood about this,” he continued, “(is that) there will not be checks – and I speak as the prime minister of the United Kingdom and a passionate unionist – there will not be checks on goods going from Northern Ireland to Great Britain. We’re the government of the United Kingdom and we will not institute or implement such checks.”

In a press release, the Northern Ireland Conservatives welcomed “a prime ministerial guarantee that there will be no additional checks or paperwork between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.”

Mr Johnson was fortunate that he delivered this analysis to such a friendly, credulous audience. Outside that room, his comments add to suspicions that he either doesn’t understand what he’s signed up to or that he’s being deliberately misleading about the agreement.

The idea that there will be no checks or tariffs in the Irish Sea contradicts the text of the deal, but it is also directly at odds with statements from the prime minister’s own ministers and officials.

Companies in Northern Ireland will have to pay tariffs on goods they buy from Great Britain if those products are at risk of entering the Republic of Ireland or elsewhere in the EU. Any material that will be processed into a final product, i.e. anything that is intended for manufacturing, automatically falls into the ‘at risk’ category. It’s simply not true to say that there will be no tariffs and checks unless the goods are bound for Ireland.

Both the Northern Ireland Secretary, Julian Smith, and Brexit Secretary, Steve Barclay, disagree that no paperwork will be required for Northern Irish companies to sell to Great Britain. In fact, after prevaricating, then being prompted by officials, Mr Barclay dropped the bombshell that NI to GB trade will require the completion of export declaration forms.

The government admitted that it had not calculated the exact costs of this extra administration, but its impact assessment estimated that it could amount to between £15 and £56 per declaration. For companies that sell small consignments of goods to the mainland, that business would be unsustainable.

Customs experts are contemptuous of the idea that the government can simply decide to waive any requirements for paperwork and checks, as Mr Johnson seemed to suggest. Indeed, while some government figures have suggested that the burden will be negligible, nobody else has dismissed the need for paperwork so airily or completely.

Ironically, the prime minister expressed regret that ministers did not get a chance to explain in detail the consequences of his deal. Of course, that’s because, as soon as the effects of the agreement began to emerge in the House of Commons’ chamber and in its committees, Johnson promptly withdrew his legislation and sought an election.

If the Conservatives win that poll, the timetable for installing a new government, passing a Queen’s Speech, debating a budget and leaving the EU on the 31 January 2020 will be so cramped that the Withdrawal Agreement Bill will probably never be scrutinised properly. And it seems that was precisely Boris Johnson’s intention.

Senior Tory Brexiteers claim the problems the deal creates for Northern Ireland can be mitigated during the implementation period or nullified by a free trade deal. Iain Duncan Smith recently assured a concerned Northern Irish correspondent that tariffs should not be a problem, “given the uniformity of GB-NI trade”; a phrase of jaw-dropping meaninglessness.

But even they haven’t quite matched Boris Johnson and his ‘nothing to see here‘ chutzpah.

He should be aware that people in Northern Ireland won’t be easily fooled. We know that the Conservative leader will gloss over the detail of his deal and appeal to voters to “get Brexit done” at this election. And we realise that, outside the province, most electors are so bored and fed up that his message will likely resonate.

But please, Mr Johnson, don’t deny features of your agreement that are plainly there in black and white. We wouldn’t take such nonsense from a talking potato and we won’t believe it from you.