Boris Johnson admits he doesn’t know the law he’s basing his entire Brexit strategy on

By all accounts, BBC veteran Andrew Neil did an excellent job on Friday of holding Boris Johnson to account where others have sometimes allowed his blizzard of pompous bluster to block out reality.

During his bid to become the prime minister that leads the UK through Brexit, he has based his strategy on a World Trade Organisation law called GATT 24, which he says could allow for continued free trade with the EU even in a no-deal Brexit.

But moments after the contender for prime minister castigated Andrew Neil to “get the detail right”, it became hideously apparent that he himself was only familiar with a quarter of a sentence of the law in question.

Paragraph 5C is not only part of the same sentence as 5B, it's also an essential condition for the latter to work. Read for yourself in the tweet below:

When the journalist asked "How would you handle paragraph 5C?", Mr Johnson replied:

I would confide entirely in paragraph 5B.

Pressed further, he was asked:

How would you get round paragraph 5C? Do you know what’s in 5C?

To which he bluntly admitted:

No.

Instead of addressing the glaring block that the paragraph puts on his plan – that Britain and the EU would have to agree on a plan and schedule for a future trade agreement, he says:

Why this defeatism? Why this negativity?

His admission and state of complete denial would almost be comical, if it didn’t have such disastrous undertones and highlight the complete lack of expertise that has become the norm in today’s politics.

It’s hard to tell if this is worse than the time that former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab admitted he hadn’t even read the Good Friday Agreement.

People were angry and concerned in equal measure.

One could be forgiven for thinking he hadn't prepared for the interview at all. He's apparently been doing it for years.