LONDON — It’s Wednesday July 24. Boris Johnson is settling in to No. 10 Downing Street. And he’s a man in a hurry.
Johnson’s supporters say they are taking “nothing for granted,” but barring a dramatic shift in opinion among the 160,000 Conservative members who will decide the party’s next leader — and the U.K.’s next prime minister — Johnson will take power in little over a fortnight.
With just 100 days between taking office and the U.K.’s scheduled Brexit date of October 31, MP supporters and campaign officials expect the former mayor of London to begin his tenure with a frenzy of activity, at home and abroad.
“It will be an administration that wants to get a lot done quickly,” said one senior MP familiar with Johnson’s intentions. “It hasn’t got a lot of time until October 31. It’s going to want to engage on numerous fronts very fast.”
A transition team consisting of officials and MPs, headed by Johnson’s former chief of staff at City Hall, Edward Lister, has begun planning for the first 100 days. Also involved are former Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson, ex-MP James Wharton, former party chair Grant Shapps, Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock, and junior Cabinet Office Minister Oliver Dowden.
According to four people close to Johnson’s campaign they are planning a busy summer. He will seek to renegotiate Theresa May’s deal with Brussels; step up preparations for no deal at home; and launch an “exercise in reassurance” that such an outcome will not be as bad as the worst predictions.
Diplomatic overtures to Washington — and potentially an early meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump — are high on the agenda.
Feel-good strategy
Johnson’s first words to the nation as prime minister could come from the lectern in Downing Street, minutes after being appointed by the Queen in a private meeting at Buckingham Palace. The new PM will be the Queen’s fourteenth — Winston Churchill was in power when she took the throne.
Members of Johnson’s campaign say no one, not even Johnson himself, knows what he will say in his first address to the nation. But his communications strategy in this first summer will be one of seeking to “make the country feel good about itself,” a second MP briefed on the transition team’s approach said.
Johnson will prioritize domestic policies he feels promote a sense of national unity, and he is particularly interested in rolling out full-fiber broadband to the entire country by 2025. The idea enthuses him, the second MP said, because it is “about uniting the country and giving everyone the same advantages there are in London.”
Negotiate early
While May’s first summer in charge, in 2016, involved a whistle-stop tour of EU capitals (she visited Berlin, Paris, Rome, Bratislava and Warsaw within her first two weeks), officials and MPs on Johnson’s campaign talk down the prospect of their man taking a similar approach.
The candidate himself told the Spectator magazine (the publication he used to edit) in an interview this week that he intends to be “carrying out negotiations throughout August and September,” implying he will make a beeline for the U.K.’s negotiating partner, the European Commission. May did not launch formal negotiations until a year after she took power. Johnson simply doesn’t have time for that.
Whether the EU, whose leaders have said repeatedly that the Withdrawal Agreement is not up for renegotiation, will engage remains to be seen. Brussels also traditionally empties of Commission officials in August, so he may find no one to conduct negotiations with.
The nominee for Commission president, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, will not formally take over the reins (assuming she is confirmed by MEPs) until after the U.K.’s official leave date. But Johnson’s team will be hoping she begins exerting her influence earlier than that because of her existing contact with Gavin Williamson, a senior figure in the Johnson camp. He has remained in touch with her since his time as U.K. defense minister.
“She is an amazing individual with a real passion and understanding of her brief who was a real joy to work with. I always felt she had a strong understanding of what the U.K. delivered for European defense and security,” Williamson told POLITICO.
Von der Leyen will not take charge until November though, and has given no indication she will push, even then, for a revision of the Commission’s stance that the Withdrawal Agreement is closed.
Be prepared
Key to persuading the EU to think again, the Johnson camp say, will be a very visible ramping up of preparations for a no-deal exit on October 31 to prove the U.K. is serious. Delay in preparation, the former foreign secretary told the Spectator, “robs the U.K. of conviction during the negotiations.”
Johnson’s leadership rival Jeremy Hunt, who has laid out his approach to Brexit in detail, has talked about setting up a no-deal task force similar to the U.K government’s emergency “Cabinet Office Briefing Room” (COBRA) meetings. Team Johnson are considering making a similar public show of stepping up preparations, and have also been told by ministers working on existing plans that individuals and businesses will need to be alerted to step up their own preparations.
But alongside this approach, they are planning what the second MP described as a “big exercise in reassurance to the public.” Johnson wants ordinary people to not only feel like the country is ready for no deal, but that the outcome won’t be that bad.
“We don’t want it to feel like an embattled island,” the MP said.
The team may highlight the opportunities a no-deal Brexit can afford via “heavy engagement” with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration from day one, the second MP said, in pursuit of a post-Brexit U.K.-U.S. free-trade agreement.
The first MP concurred: “Opportunities do present themselves because there will be a very different Washington-London relationship.”
Johnson, who Trump says he likes (the president spoke to him on the phone during his recent state visit), knows that a trade deal with the U.S. would not come without significant sacrifices. Washington has made no secret of its determination to unlock the U.K. market for American farmers, something their British counterparts dread.
But an early photo opportunity with Trump, potentially in Washington, would contribute to Johnson’s plan to persuade the EU he is serious about Britain making a clean break.
Parliamentary roadblocks
The elephant in the room for Johnson during this first summer will be parliament.
It has never found a majority in favor of leaving the EU with no deal, as Johnson vows to do if he cannot persuade the EU to renegotiate the Northern Ireland backstop. That arithmetic will not change without a general election.
The key figures in the resistance to Johnson could be Conservative soft Brexit rebels led by potential Cabinet casualties of Johnson’s first reshuffle. Those are likely to include Chancellor Philip Hammond, Justice Secretary David Gauke, Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington and International Development Secretary Rory Stewart.
The opposition Labour party may well test their resolve on Thursday July 25, the day after the new prime minister takes office, by calling a vote of confidence in the government, but even they do not expect success at this stage. “The real fight will be in the autumn,” said one senior Labour official.
If Johnson loses that fight, the most likely outcome is a general election.
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