Boris Johnson once claimed that ‘chances of a no-deal Brexit are a million to one’

After years of negotiations, it now appears that Brexit could end in a no-deal than deal, with Boris Johnson confirming that the scenario is now a ‘strong possibility.’

With the deadline of 31 December looming ever closer the prime minister flew to Brussels this week to try and strike a last-minute deal with the European Union but that doesn’t appear to have come to fruition and Johnson is now reportedly telling his ministers to begin preparing for a no-deal as “the deal on the table is really not at the moment right for the UK.”

Speaking to the press on Thursday evening, Johnson said “What I’ve said to our negotiators is that we’ve got to keep going … And I will go to Brussels, I will go to Paris, I will Berlin, I will go to wherever to try and get this home and get a deal but looking at where we are I do think it’s vital that everyone now gets ready for no deal.”

This really isn’t the situation that the UK wanted. Remainers and pro-EU activists are likely to be aghast at the news but probably not shocked. Hardcore Brexiteers will probably welcome the news but it is slightly embarassing for Boris Johnson who spent most of 2019 claiming that he had an ‘oven ready deal’ that was good to go.

This wasn’t just some token slogan either.

Johnson claimed that a no-deal wasn’t even a possibility. Here is he during the Tory leadership campaign which led to him first becoming the prime minister. At a hustings event in July of that year he was asked if he stood by his claims that the chance of a no-deal Brexit was a million to one to which he replied, “Yes I do, I mean this is not a bookies but I do.”

Suffice to say, it looks like he found that one.

Here he is again in September 2019, standing next to the then Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, saying that a "no-deal outcome would be a failure of statecraft."

It doesn’t end there either. Here he is speaking to Gareth Owen of ITV News in December 2019 that they ‘have a deal’ but when pressed on the actual trade deal he exclaims that “100 per cent of the issues you need to address in a trade negotiation are already addressed.”

If you want to go even further back, here he is many years before he was prime minister saying that he would vote to stay in the Single Market. So much for that then…

Credit where credit is due, here is Johnson at last year’s Tory conference saying that a no-deal is “not an outcome that we want, it is not an outcome that we seek at all but let me tell you it is an outcome for which we are ready.”

We really aren’t sure how ready they are and it remains to be seen what the impact of a no-deal Brexit will be but Johnson’s ‘oven-ready deal’ either tasted bad or was well past its sell-by date.

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