Will Boris get it right on trade?

The time has come,” the walrus said, “to talk of many things: Of shoes and ships – and sealing wax – of cabbages and kings.”

There have been a number of references recently to the possibility that Britain’s Brexit and global trade negotiators risk disappearing down a rabbit hole, like Alice at the start of her adventures in Wonderland. I do not necessarily demur from this assessment of our unpreparedness for the difficulties ahead, but I wonder if one of  Lewis Carroll’s other masterpieces, The Walrus and the Carpenter, is not equally apposite.

I should admit straight away that I’m not sure about the sealing wax. Sales of this once popular product have been slipping in recent centuries and are now largely confined to the College of Heralds and, I should imagine, internal documents shared between the Immortals of the Académie française.

So do not expect Boris Johnson to spend a lot of his time, when he could be reciting the Iliad in the original Greek, seeking to agree the ideal tariff on sealing wax.

But as to shoes and ships, cabbages and kings … well, everything is up for grabs and time is short.

Jacob Rees-Mogg has assured us that shoes will be cheaper when we leave the EU, though (and I’m going out on a limb here) as someone who chooses only hand-made footwear, at a likely cost of a thousand pounds a pair, the Leader of the House may not be the obvious person to whom we should turn for guidance on this particular subject. Few would surely object to paying a few quid less for a pair of sneakers than they do now. But how many would regard the saving as a measure of the value of leaving the Customs Union?

Ships? Well, these are much in the news these days. Britain needs to protect its registered tankers passing through the Straits of Hormuz from Iran’s Republican Guard. But the Navy is finding itself hard-pressed to supply the necessary escorts. The destroyer Duncan and the frigate Montrose could find themselves fated to criss-cross the Gulf ever day for the next ten years, knowing that if they fail it will be another rivet in the coffin’s of British prestige.

Ships will also be vital, post-Brexit, if Global Britain is to be more than a slogan. As things stand, the good ship Royal Sovereign, newly captained by the trade secretary Liz Truss, is all at sea, scurrying between America, China, Japan, Australia and – with some difficulty, one imagines – Switzerland. Cap’n Truss has quite a job on her hands, preparing the way for British exporters to supply goods to the world on terms unobtainable by Brussels. But – as on HMS Queen Elizabeth the other day – it is all hands to the pumps, and with luck and a following wind we should be all tied up by Christmas … Christmas 2025, that is.

Which brings us to cabbages, standing in this instance for all of British agriculture. The PM was in Wales this week to reassure Welsh hill-farmers that in the event of the EU declining to accept their freshly-slaughtered lambs after October 31, the British Government will step in and buy up the entire supply. How long this policy could be sustained before the nation’s freezers ended up choked with chops is not a question I can answer. The question is, can Boris?

And finally, kings – which I shall interpret as the leaders of both the EU and more distant lands, including the America of Donald Trump. As a child, the Prime Minister, famously, wanted to grow up to be World King. Now that he has kissed the hand of Her actual Majesty and looks set to apply his lips to the posterior of Mr Trump, some realism will have intruded into this particular fanstasy. But Europe’s princes are to be made to wait their turn, because the parley due to resolve all outstanding issues relating to Brexit looks to have about as much chance of success as that which stalled so disastrously on the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. No talks, it has been decreed by Downing Street, can begin until the central issue – in this case the Irish backstop – is taken off the table, which is a little like two sides agreeing to peace talks after years of bitter conflict on condition that no one mentions the war.

Will Boris succeed? Will success crown his efforts? Let us hope so. It would certainly silence the doubters and provide all who oppose him with an unmistakable stamp of his authority. So perhaps the sealing wax will be needed after all.