Boris and the Brexit plan: revolutionary genius or calculated risk?

Boris has made a clever move on the Brexit chessboard – a game changer, even. But not quite a winning move yet, though it improves his chances. What he has done is to ask for the suspension of Parliament on September 10 or 11. This is technically called a prorogation and will make way for a new session beginning with a Queen's Speech on October 14. As far as anyone can tell that is entirely constitutional, otherwise the Queen might not have agreed to it. Whether she could have refused to do so is uncertain, as her reserve powers are not defined. But it is at least conceivable that she has talked Boris out of doing anything that might have tested them.

The last Parliamentary session was the longest for some three centuries, so the resetting of the political landscape, which prorogation does, was well overdue. The very idea of prorogation, floated by anonymous sources in Downing Street, was proving highly controversial, as indicated by the indignant reactions to the announcement. But note how many of the apoplectic denunciations that greeted it were conditional – they contained the word "if". In essence, they said: "If Boris Johnson is trying to exclude Parliament from influencing the final stages of the Brexit chess game, then that is undemocratic and a constitutional outrage, and must be stopped."

In fact Parliament was due reconvene on September 3 and to rise anyway again on September 14, for what is known as the conference season when party members gather in their thousands to debate and cheer, and MPs go off to enjoy the mingling. So the Government has only clipped three or four day off the Parliamentary timetable. That's three or four more days for Johnson's opponents to plot and scheme against him, using Parliamentary procedures to thwart the prospect of a no-deal Brexit that they think he is heading for.

He is under no obligation to help them do so. And they still have ten days to try their luck. The main parties opposed to the Tories have at last agreed a strategy on how to do so. They will attempt to pass legislation requiring the Prime Minister to ask the European Union for another postponement of the Brexit deadline, as they did with Theresa May. Ten Parliamentary days is more than long enough for that. They hope that a postponement, which the EU will still have to agree to, will be a step towards preventing a no-deal Brexit, though of course it will merely put off the evil day. In the longer term term it is a step towards preventing Brexit altogether, but don't expect anybody to admit that.

The reason the Boris move is so clever becomes clear if the situation as it will be on or after October 14 is considered. European leaders are due to meet three days later, and one of the questions before them will be whether to endorse a new or rebadged version of Theresa May's withdrawal agreement. This will, if Mr Johnson has his way, include a host of measures designed to regulate and facilitate the free passage of goods between Northern Ireland and the Republic, thereby eliminating the need for visible border checks or indeed any other symbol indicating that Ireland is a divided island.

If they say "Yes", he will have a new withdrawal agreement ready for the House of Commons to consider and debate, on a timetable ending with approval on or before October 31. And EU leaders will know this when they meet. They will know that the alternative intended by the Government, Plan B, is a no-deal Brexit on October 31. If they throw out Plan A, they get Plan B. It will look very much like it was their choice, and the Government will make sure the finger of blame is pointed at them if things go pear-shaped under Plan B (as they will).

One thing is for sure. Plan A will not be perfect. Perfection can be the enemy of the good. The real questions for the EU str: "How leaky are you prepared to accept the Irish border becoming? How imperfect an arrangement, as a temporary measure, can you tolerate? And if there has to be an element of bluff, or a bit of a smoke screen, how large could that element be?" The Brexit end-game is going to require some shrewd political thinking in Brussels. After all, no international border can ever be totally impermeable.

But there is another scenario created by Mr Johnson's prorogation move. The withdrawal agreement bill, if and when it reaches Parliament after the Queen's Speech, will be amendable. MPs will be able to move the date to which it applies, so Britain no longer leave the EU on October 31 but at some later date. Meanwhile there is every indication that the Government is preparing for general election soon afterwards, in a bid to improve on its working majority of one.

Boris will want that to be after Britain leaves the EU, so he reap his reward at the ballot box. But if MPs have postponed that by, say, a year, the prospect for an election looks a lot less appetising from his point of view. And the Sword of Damocles of a vote of a no-confidence will hang over him all that time. In addition, the Government he has put together solely with Brexit in mind contains so many manifest contradictions that it will be on the point of collapse in a few months.

Meanwhile, other clocks are clicking than the Brexit deadline one. Generation Brexit, if we may so describe it – consisting of people over 60 who are strongly in favour of leaving the EU – is losing numbers, while Generation Remain – people under 40, who are comfortable with a European identity, is growing year by year. For this reason alone, a rerun of the 2016 referendum in, say, 2022, it has been calculated, would produce the opposite result. So even if the 2016 result was indeed "the will of the people", some of those people are dead. So Boris Johnson hasn't got all day. Time is still on the side of Remain.