Will the House of Lords be unceremoniously shipped to York, for daring to contradict his liarship, Boris the 1st? If so, of course, no-one would complain, although disbanding it altogether would make a lot more sense! But how about shipping Johnson back to Mustique, the Caribbean island where he spent his Xmas holiday with his billionaire pals and leave him there to stew? That would make even more sense, wouldn't it?
Indeed, thanks to Johnson, the Brexit farce has won another lease of life. By now, his plan to invite people to "bung a bob for a Big Ben bong" has finally collapsed. Instead, a giant clock will be projected onto No.10 on January 31st, counting down the minutes until 11pm, when Johnson will make his speech. A commemorative 50p coin will be unveiled (for the 2nd time!) and Union Jacks will be flown all over Parliament Square to celebrate a so-called "Union" in which two of the four "partners" are being forced to jump onto the Brexit bandwagon, kicking and screaming!
Not anywhere near "done"!
However, the farce goes a lot further than these ridiculous celebrations. While ministers have been banned from using the word "Brexit" in their briefs since it is officially considered "done" Johnson's "oven-ready" Brexit is already proving to be... well, overdone, to say the least.
It turns out that the real negotiations those about Britain's future trade with the EU won't start before March. Johnson claims he can complete them by the end of the year, in just 9 months. Never mind that everyone else says it's not feasible. And so does common sense, since after all, it took over three years to agree the withdrawal deal, which was far less complex.
But since Johnson has now enshrined in law that there will be no extension past the end of the year, he insists that's what will happen. Never mind his own well-known tendency to ignore the law when it suits him. Not to mention his propensity to lie in order to wriggle himself out of the ditches into which he keeps jumping.
Of course, what Johnson and his ministers can't afford to acknowledge is that, just like May before them, their policy means having their cake and eating it. So, they want to be able to boast of having reduced the last leg of the Brexit process to 9 months, while, at the same time, managing to achieve a comprehensive free-trade deal with the EU.
To put it another way, they want to keep all the existing economic benefits resulting from over 4 decades of EU membership, while getting rid of all the constraints attached to EU membership and they want to do this in just 9 months!
The truth is that, (and again, just like Theresa May), either they won't get what they say they will, or else it will take them a lot longer than they claim!
The need to fight back now!
Johnson has brought with him a whole host of Brexit fundamentalists: the most reactionary Tory rightwingers are now having the field day they were hoping for and they seem to think that they can get away with just about anything.
So Javid's latest claim that the government will refuse to accept EU regulations is just a way of threatening a cliff-edge Brexit. Why would the EU agree to frictionless trade if Britain refuses to accept the minimum standards agreed between its 27 member states? And since Javid and Johnson know this all too well, this is just empty nationalist rhetoric, designed to boost their own profiles.
Except that this kind of empty rhetoric has a logic of its own. It immediately sparked off protest among British bosses, who do not care whether Javid's rhetoric is show-business or not they just won't take any risks. The car giants, for instance, know that without frictionless trade, their just-in-time production is as good as dead. Already many car manufacturers have cut jobs to pre-empt these problems. And the odds are that they will cut even more in the near future as JLR just showed by cutting one of its 3 shifts at its Halewood plant, together with 500 jobs.
Likewise, with the threats hanging over the heads of EU workers in fact, all foreign workers. Priti Patel and Johnson have created loopholes which allow May's "hostile environment" to be used against EU workers as well, thereby breaking the commitment made in the withdrawal deal. This is just another case of the Tory right-wing using Brexit to whip up xenophobic, anti-migrant prejudices and trying to divide and weaken the working class.
Today all workers are caught in the web of this Brexit mess. But this does not mean to say that we can't do anything about it. An injury to one is an injury to all! Every attack against the rights, jobs or conditions of any of our fellow workers, whatever their nationality or origin may be, can and must be resisted!