In a digital age, you can spot when politicians are trying to make a point: they write a letter. Why? Because they can release it to the media with an impressive letterhead and a scrawled signature and get everyone talking without having to answer difficult questions, as you would in an interview.
That’s what the Prime Minister has done today, with his letter to the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk. And in the US it’s what senior Senator Charles Schumer has also done today, with a letter to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
It warns that Congress will vote down any trade deal Mr Johnson tries to agree with President Trump which imposes a hard border in Ireland.
Two letters, in two continents — and they both boil down to the same thing. What will Brexit do to the Irish border?
The 310-mile-long line between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom is the insoluble issue of Brexit.
Why? Because it is impossible to leave the customs union and the single market, as the Government says it wants to do, and at the same time keep a fully open border between Ireland, in the EU, and Northern Ireland, which would be outside it.
It would be like leaving home with the back door wide open.
To get around this Theresa May negotiated what’s called the backstop, an emergency measure to make sure that if we didn’t end up with a close relationship with the EU after we left, Northern Ireland would promise to follow EU rules anyway to keep the border open.
Boris Johnson wants to scrap the backstop and he explains why in his letter today.
He says it is restrictive and anti-democratic. Well, that’s what happens when you give up your right to take part in decisions as a member of the EU.
As his letter also shows, he doesn’t have much of an idea about what to put in its place, while still keeping the border open. Nor can he get away from the fact that Britain agreed to the backstop freely: it was not imposed on us by the EU.
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Today’s letters flow from all this. One from Mr Schumer, the Democrat leader in the Senate, defends the backstop. The other, from Mr Johnson, attacks it.
A Brexit deal with the backstop won’t get through the Commons. A trade deal without one won’t pass Congress. We’re stuck.
Of course Mr Johnson doesn’t really expect the EU to agree to his demands — and Mr Tusk duly confirmed it this morning.
What he wants is to blame the EU for not talking and threaten to walk away on October 31 without a deal and without the backstop. The next morning he’ll face exactly the same problem on the Irish border.
Cops count. So do courts
Call for more police on the streets and you’ll sound tough on crime.
Call for more judges and magistrates and people will lose interest. But it’s no good trying to catch criminals if you can’t try to convict them, which is why our report today about courtrooms sitting idle matters.
As many as half the courtrooms in crown courts, including the Old Bailey, Southwark, Snaresbrook, Wood Green, Kingston and Croydon, are not in use this week.
The Government argues that this isn’t holding up justice. But those charged with carrying it out disagree.
“Justice delayed is justice denied, for all those involved in the criminal justice process,” says Richard Atkins QC, chair of the Bar Council.
It is unfair on victims and those charged with crimes alike to make them wait. On top of that, more cases aren’t even making the courts at all. The proportion of crimes ending in a prosecution has fallen to a record low of 7.8 per cent.
Justice deserves better.
Miracle in Tooting
London’s hospitals are amazing. They carry out world-leading work to save lives every day.
Take our report today on St George’s Hospital, Tooting — doctors there carried out transfusions on an unborn baby at just 20 weeks.
Now he is “happy and healthy”, says his mother.
We hear too much about the NHS being in crisis — and we should remember its massive successes too.