Boris Johnson's Brexit Crunch Point Has Arrived
It is now a little over half a decade since David Cameron introduced the legislation for a referendum on EU membership. And it is four months since Boris Johnson proclaimed that he had successfully brought “the whole political wrangle” of Brexit to an end.
But Brexit was not done, far from it. Another event that day – the first recorded case of Covid-19 in the UK – ultimately meant that relations with the European Union, for the first sustained period in half a decade, have not been the most pressing policy problem facing the prime minister.
Coping with Covid-19 will be the central task confronting the British state for some time. Yet a crunch point on Brexit has also arrived. Big decisions about the future of our most important trading relationship will be made over the next few weeks. And at that point, the two crises will begin to interact.
Despite his 80-seat majority and his outward nonchalance, backbench frustration over Dominic Cummings will have shaken the prime minister. The gradually rising number of Conservative backbenchers, rather than the mounting pile of evidence against Cummings, provided his biggest headache. And it is in this context that he will have to make some key decisions.
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