Queen Elizabeth encouraged Johnson-Varadkar summit to break Brexit deadlock, new book claims

The late Queen Elizabeth II intervened to suggest a meeting between Boris Johnson and Leo Varadkar which led to the Northern Ireland protocol, a new book claims.

Anthony Seldon’s Johnson at 10: The Inside Story recounts how Mr Johnson and Mr Varadkar “hit it off” in September 2019 as the EU and the UK were at loggerheads over Brexit.

Mr Varadkar had not warmed to the “cold awkwardness” of Mr Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May.

In contrast, the relationship between Mr Johnson and Mr Varadkar, Seldon suggests, became the “strongest within the EU” and was a counterbalance to the one the British prime minister had with German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Emmanuel Macron.

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Both had “torn Johnson to shreds” over his perceived bad faith in relation to the EU negotiations, the book alleges.

Northern Ireland proved to be the stumbling block in Brexit negotiations and Mr Johnson surmised that if he could find a deal acceptable to Ireland, it would also be acceptable to the EU.

Mr Seldon writes: “The idea to approach the EU through Varadkar had been bolstered during Johnson’s early September visit to Balmoral [Castle]: after a private walk with the queen he suggested to officials that she had delicately planted, without saying so explicitly, the idea of talking to Varadkar to solve the impasse.

“Johnson and Varadkar held a critical phone call in the early days of October, when the prime minister talked about his desire to perform a ‘backstopectomy’ to avoid a hard border. The Taoiseach was willing to hear what Johnson had to offer and agreed to a summit on 10 October.”

[ Brexit: All eyes on Brussels as Johnson and Varadkar move closer to ‘possible deal’ ]

The famous meeting which led to the Northern Ireland protocol occurred at Thornton Manor in the Wirral outside Liverpool on that date. It was described by British officials as the “kind of hotel Premier League footballers use for their weddings” but was deliberately chosen to encourage a break from “entrenched mindsets and positions which had dogged negotiations”.

Mr Johnson and Mr Varadkar met for 90 minutes on their own. Afterwards, Mr Johnson proclaimed: “We’ve agreed.”

One official is quoted in the book as saying: “There’s an open question about how much he contributed to the substance of Brexit, but with Varadkar he personally played a dynamic role in landing a deal. There’s strong evidence that the prime minister was important in getting us there.”

The two leaders made the fateful decision at that meeting to put a border in the Irish Sea rather than on the island of Ireland – a decision that was in direct contradiction of Mr Johnson’s infamous pledge to the DUP in 2018 that he would never allow such a thing to happen.

Mr Seldon suggests that Mr Johnson agreed to the protocol so he could call an election and claim that he had got Brexit done, but as one former No 10 aide stated: “He always felt that the Northern Ireland agreement would never hold. It’s typical of him, because he’ll agree to something today even if it means a bigger problem tomorrow. He always meant to tear the protocol up.”

The then British prime minister’s claim in August 2020 that there would be a trade border in the Irish Sea “over my dead body” was, according to Mr Seldon, “not born of ignorance as to the deal he had signed up for, but of a brazen disregard for honesty. Johnson placed his political survival ahead of the integrity of the United Kingdom, the very thing his predecessor had refused to do.”