The Irish border backstop is widely seen within the Conservative party as the single obstacle to a deal. It has been repeatedly claimed that if it was removed, May’s deal could be swiftly dusted down and passed in parliament.

But this week it emerged that Boris Johnson wants to drive a coach and horses through other areas of the Brexit deal too, so even if the backstop were removed, support would not be guaranteed.

Here is what we have learned this week:

He wants to renege on the level playing field

The European commission told diplomats that Johnson was demanding that the EU rewrite the part of the political declaration text which committed to a level playing field in key areas such as environment, employment law and social policy. Johnson’s negotiator, David Frost, told them he wanted them to commit to a “best in class free trade agreement” whereby the UK would be able to diverge on standards including employment protections, something the Labour party have feared all along.

Loosen the defence pledges

The UK is also demanding Brussels rewrite the defence pledges in the Brexit deal.

The current political declaration contains a commitment to “close cooperation in [European] Union-led crisis management missions and operations, both civilian and military”.

“It looks like they are seeking leverage,” one diplomat told Daniel Boffey. Other senior officials said they regarded the demand as being part of a broader move to have a “clean break” from the EU in all parts of the relationship.

Row back on general commitments on Anglo-Irish cooperation

Officials have been told that the UK wants to renege on the general commitments on Ireland made in December 2017, which ended the first phase of Brexit talks. EU member states have been told that London was moving from its pledge of “frictionless trade” on the Irish border to “as frictionless as possible”, seen as a serious watering down of a commitment. According to reports by RTE’s Europe editor, Tony Connelly, the UK is also resisting the agreement that the commitments would be “legally operable”. Instead the UK wants this pledge replaced with “aspirational”.

The joint report was almost torpedoed by the Democratic Unionist party when they learned Theresa May had agreed to regulatory alignment across the island in the event of no deal. However, the report also commits to continued “north-south and east-west cooperation across the full range of “political, economic, security, societal and agricultural contexts”.

The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, said the refusal of the Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, to restate this commitment when challenged in the House of Commons on Thursday was “deeply concerning”.

Scrap the Irish border backstop

Johnson has frequently said he wants the backstop scrapped. What does that mean in detail? It emerged this week that the UK wants to strip all elements of the backstop out of the withdrawal agreement, leaving only a commitment to the all-island electricity market and the common travel area. The UK also wants the backstop taken out of the agreement and moved into the political declaration.

The UK has not presented any alternative proposals, with the Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, saying on Thursday night that a no-deal Brexit would mean checks near the Irish border.

Ask Ireland to align with the UK rather than the EU on food?

Irish PM 'looking forward' to hearing Boris Johnson's Brexit proposals Read more

Johnson said this week he was open to finding a way of treating agrifood on a “common basis across the island of Ireland”. This has been interpreted to mean his proposal, likely to be advanced in a meeting with Varakdar in Dublin on Monday, that there would be checks in ports and airports on animals and agrifood, doing away with the need for such checks on the Irish border. However, there is speculation that Johnson has something different in mind – regulatory alignment between Ireland and the UK on food, something proposed by the Alternative Arrangements Commission. It would mean Ireland shifting its food standards whenever the UK diverged from EU rules, for example allowing chlorinated chicken or hormone-treated beef into supermarkets. This is a non-starter. Varadkar pledged in a keynote speech on Thursday that “whatever happens, Ireland will not be dragged out of the single European market”.

Changes to the dispute settlement

Johnson is also looking for changes to the dispute mechanism with the EU but provided no “concrete” proposals for an alternative. The European Research Group has made noises about stripping out any role for the European court of justice but this has baffled legal experts, who point out the EU has already dropped the plan to make the European court of justice the final arbiter in disputes.

And finally … the EU has warned that the demands make a EU-UK trade deal more, not less difficult

The level playing field demands have made a trade deal more difficult, EU officials warned this week. National parliaments will have to agree the deal and officials warned that given the resistance across Europe to the recent Canada free trade deal and to proposals for a pact with the south American Mercosur group, Johnson is likely to encounter problems.

Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s Brexit co-ordinator, told the Financial Times on Thursday that “asking for a basic trade deal with the Union while refusing regulatory alignment and tearing up their level playing field commitments means the UK will find it very difficult to achieve an ambitious trade agreement with the EU”.