On Boris's big day, Tories kid themselves this is the deal they always wanted | John Crace
After Keir Starmer gave MPs a quick refresher course on Johnson's lies, the session finished with a whimper
Who would have guessed? When push came to shove it turned out that a bad deal was better than no deal after all. The first deal in history to put more barriers in the way of free trade than the one that preceded it. A 1,200-page treaty and 80-page bill that was granted a mere four and a half hours of what passed for scrutiny in a recalled House of Commons to allow it to become law before the end of the year. In most countries this would be called a farce: here in the UK we call it a return of parliamentary sovereignty.
At least that's the way Boris Johnson was selling the deal to his eager backbenchers, who were all desperate to applaud his negotiating skills and brinkmanship, as he opened the debate. Such as it was. The sense of anticlimax was almost tangible. Almost as if the Tories were also having to kid themselves that the deal was the one they had always wanted.
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