Boris Johnson cannot afford a head-on clash with Emmanuel Macron over Brexit

The prime minister will be looking to do deals with his fellow leaders to avoid his gamble over the Northern Ireland protocol ending in disaster, writes John Rentoul

Boris Johnson has his work cut out for him in Cornwall (Getty)

One line from Tom McTague’s celebrated profile of Boris Johnson for The Atlantic this week struck me as telling: “He is lively and engaged, superficially dishevelled but in fact focused and watchful.”

That is the truth about the master of ceremonies at the G7 show being staged in Cornwall this weekend. The prime minister will be cheerful, artfully disorganised but all the time “focused and watchful”. These summits are mostly about the photos and the platitudes, but there is serious business to be transacted in the gaps in the official schedule.

The problem of the post-Brexit rules in Northern Ireland is one of those items of serious business. Johnson needs the goodwill of Ursula von der Leyen, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and Joe Biden to make this work, and here they are, by chance, all in the same place.