Keep the champagne on ice: Johnson and Varadkar haven’t saved Brexit yet

Editorial: It could still all go wrong. There have been so many false dawns that it is difficult to ignore that the Irish and the EU remain sceptical about the efficacy and practicality of the customs arrangements

According to its website, Thornton Manor, scene of the meeting between Leo Varadkar and Boris Johnson is a “luxury wedding venue”. The images of the two leaders taking a walk in the woods around the grounds were certainly consonant with the cautiously optimistic tone of the official briefings, and the reference to future “intense discussions”.

The talks were, at least, not a disaster. There was not the “catastrophic failure of statecraft” that Jeremy Hunt has warned would lead to a no-deal Brexit. Instead, the “broad landing ground” for a deal that Mr Johnson has spoken about is about as smooth and expansive as can be hoped.

No doubt part of Mr Johnson sees himself as a hero-in-waiting of the rough times that would follow a no-deal Brexit, along the lines of Winston Churchill in 1940. But he also knows that the chaos that would follow immediately, and the protracted recession that would arrive soon after would do his party – and, more to the point, his own electoral chances – no good.