(Bloomberg) -- Boris Johnson is trying to reach a Brexit deal with the European Union, but his first effort at compromise looks too tough for Brussels to stomach.
So what is his Plan B?
According to two people familiar with the matter, the prime minister hasn’t ruled out keeping the contentious backstop arrangement for the Irish border, with one crucial condition: that the EU puts a clear time limit on it.
That idea is not something that the EU is formally considering, but it has been discussed as a potential back-up option, including by the bloc’s power axis of France and Germany, EU officials said earlier this week. Persuading the Irish to accept it would still be a considerable stretch.
One person familiar with Johnson’s thinking said the option of keeping the backstop but adding a time limit was the government’s Plan B. Another confirmed the prime minister isn’t ruling it out.
The so-called backstop is a set of arrangements designed to ensure that there are never any checks on goods crossing the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. It’s supposed to remain in place until a more permanent system can be introduced in the years after Brexit.
Johnson wants to abolish the backstop because it would keep the U.K. tied into the EU’s customs regime indefinitely and prevent his government seeking trading deals with other countries, a core ambition of the hard core Brexit faction in his party. Dublin sees it as a guarantee for the Irish economy and the peace process that largely brought an end to terrorist violence on the island in the 1990s.
A cut-off date is an idea the British have floated before but has always been rejected by the EU, which has argued that an expiry date would defeat the whole point of the backstop as an insurance policy.
One key issue will be whether the backstop applies to the whole of the U.K. or just to Northern Ireland. The EU is more likely to accept a Northern Ireland only backstop but Johnson’s allies in the Democratic Unionist Party would insist that it applied to the whole U.K.
For now, Johnson’s aim is to make progress in talks on his official proposal in the next few days. But he has also said his plan shows the “broad landing zone in which I believe a deal can begin to take shape” -- a clear signal that he could move further if the EU is willing to do the same.
“What we are looking for the EU to do is engage positively with this process so we can work together to get a deal,” Johnson’s spokesman, James Slack, told reporters in London on Thursday.