Donald Trump famously wrote a book called The Art of The Deal; equally famously, he didn’t write it at all, but hired Tony Schwartz to bash his bullshit into shape.
If you ask Google how many copies were sold, the answer is muddy. A first printing produced 150,000 copies, but further certainty is unavailable, as the book was published in 1987, before data was compiled by the Nielsen BookScan.
A Wikipedia footnote adds that “several magazine and book accounts” state that the book sold “over one million hardcover copies”. And if you think that sounds like the sort of non-specific, big bollocks boast the supposed author might make, you won’t have any argument from me.
I only mention Trump and his boastful book in order to compare it with the new one by Boris Johnson. This terrifying tome is called The Art of the No-Deal (subtitle A Charlatan’s Charter).
The pages are written in magic ink. Some are full of bluster about “do or die”, only for those words to dissolve on a second look. On page one, Johnson blusters that the chances of a no-deal Brexit are “a million to one”, even though that’s what he’s betting the house on.
Pages two to 33 show the man who chanced his way into Number 10 in a variety of poses with his thumbs up and an inane grin occupying his features.
Page 34 features the foreign secretary Dominic Raab lying through his teeth about how everyone was talking about the possibility of a no-deal Brexit during the referendum.
Raab did the fibbing through his fangs business on the BBC Today programme last week. After his claim that just about everybody had been talking about a no-deal Brexit (spoiler alert, they weren’t), the Press Association archive was shown to reveal that no-one was quoted as using the words “no deal” during the referendum campaign period of April 15 to June 23, 2016.
Somehow a simple yes/no question, narrowly won by yes (no spoiler alert), has been turned into a manifesto for Mad Boris to drive the country off a cliff.
As far as I can tell, the art of no-deal is that you shout your nonsense louder than anyone else, while keeping your fingers crossed.
Johnson is skidding the charabanc towards the tufted grass at the precipice of infinity (or at the very least a long drop to God knows where). He has no clue what will happen, just a belief in his own brilliance at improv-politics, making everything up at the last minute, as always.
Talking of minutes, Johnson has had an Armageddon Clock installed in Conservative HQ. This 24-hour timepiece sits beneath the slogan: “We will have delivered Brexit and left the EU by…”
The squandered seconds count down to Halloween, the latest deadline and one Johnson has wedded himself too, like a doomed actor in a hammy horror film who believes he can make that jump over the precipice (spoiler alert, it’s a long way down and the parachute has been nibbled by moths).
A no-deal Brexit is hazardous, foolish, and a sign of failure. But it’s being promoted as an indication of political virility, a badge of swaggering pride. Well, you know what they say about pride? It comes before a fall in the pound. And, boy, that pound is plummeting.
When Boris Johnson was “elected”, Donald Trump said one of those vainglorious stupid things. “They call him Britain Trump,” he said of Johnson, coining a phrase literally no-one had ever used. He also said: “They like me over there” – another phrase from Donald’s Fantasy Diary.
Trump thinks a no-deal Brexit is a great idea, but only because in the ensuing chaos we will be prepared to sign whatever dodgy deal the US offers us.
The Art of the No-Deal? Everyday Boris Johnson writes the book, as Elvis Costello almost said years ago. But is he working on a sequel? Yes, and it’s called Don’t Blame Me It Was Europe’s Fault.