LONDON — Boris Johnson is up to his old tricks.

There’s something about the foreign secretary and £350 million that makes people lose their minds. Every mention of the figure sparks howls of outrage and debate about Britain’s actual financial contribution to Brussels.

And every time it happens, those shouting the loudest lose the argument.

It happened during the EU referendum campaign, when David Cameron's team repeatedly singled out the “lie” as evidence of Vote Leave’s duplicity. Arguing that exiting the EU would mean the U.K. has £350 million a week extra to spend on the NHS confused net and gross contributions, bookish Remainers protested, as well as implicitly depriving farmers, U.K. regions and others of money they currently receive from Brussels via member country contributions.

But arguing over the accuracy of the claim only increased the salience of the cost of EU membership in voters’ minds.

The question now troubling journalists and MPs is whether Johnson has pulled the same stunt again.

Is there an ulterior motive to his 4,000 words of bluster in the Daily Telegraph?

For all the sound and fury at Johnson for claiming that £350 million a week will be under U.K. "control" to spend on its own priorities after Brexit (David Norgrove, the head of the U.K. Statistics Authority, called it a “clear misuse of official statistics”), he used his piece to accept that the money would only be available “once we have settled our accounts” with the EU.

It was an admission that Britain has a Brexit bill and it will have to be paid.

Ironically, Johnson’s position is not even that controversial on the Continent.

What's more, aides close to Johnson made clear over the weekend that the foreign secretary accepts the idea of continuing payments to the EU during a transition period — a major concession that helps clear the way to a potential interim deal while a future free-trade agreement is negotiated.

The two facts were largely ignored amid the outrage over the £350 million.

Johnson’s insistence that Britain will not pay to access the single market after Brexit also sparked controversy. “We would not expect to pay for access to their markets any more than they would expect to pay for access to ours,” he said. The assertion sparked claims that he was battling to stop Theresa May giving way to the soft Brexiteers and that she was considering a Norwegian or Swiss model, with annual payments to Brussels in return for access to the European market.

On Monday, the Sun reported that Johnson had told friends he could not live with such an arrangement and on Tuesday the Telegraph claimed he was on the verge of quitting, only for Johnson himself to reject the allegation in an interview with the Guardian published later in the day.

Johnson’s position on continuing payments to Brussels is on the hawkish end of the Brexit spectrum, senior government aides admit, but it is consistent with being outside the single market and negotiating a free-trade agreement, which is currently May’s official position (although she has not ruled out continuing payments for extra access).

In the interview with the Guardian, Johnson explained his position: “I don’t think the sums should be too high, but it is obviously legitimate and right that we should pay our dues — we are a law-abiding country — during the period of membership. Where our lawyers say we are on the hook for stuff, then we are going to have to pay. But what I do not envisage is that we should pay into the EU just for access to the single market, or some such concept. It does not seem to be necessary. We do not get money for access to our markets.”

Ironically, Johnson’s position is not even that controversial on the Continent. One senior French official who spoke to POLITICO on condition of anonymity said Britain would not be expected to pay into the EU budget, accept the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice or freedom of movement if it wanted only a limited relationship like Canada’s.

Johnson, in other words, has smuggled two concessions into what appears, on the surface at least, to be a hard-line stance. There is nothing in the Telegraph article that prevents the U.K. making progress in the Brexit talks, particularly over the bill, next week.

No need for clearance

The real relevance of the intervention is that he felt he could do it and didn’t feel the need to get the agreement of the prime minister's office.

When it landed on the desk of Robbie Gibb, May’s director of communications, on Friday, the piece did not spark immediate panic, according to one aide familiar with what happened. The article was seen as largely anodyne, repeating many of the things already known about his position, although it was obvious it would cause a stir.

“It’s not a contradiction of official government policy,” one senior government aide said.

What was more striking was that it was presented “as a fait accompli.” Johnson was not asking for permission to write a giant and potentially controversial article.

“People have got to make up their minds. What do they want? What I want from my critics is some bloody consistency, the great inveterate jalopies" — Boris Johnson

This is the lesson from the whole episode. Since the election, Cabinet ministers do not feel they have to “clear” contentious interventions with the prime minister's office, said one adviser to a Cabinet minister.

Johnson — like every member of the Cabinet — is more powerful than he was before the election and is evidently keen to showcase this strength.

Until now, Johnson has been a relatively minor figure in the Brexit process, a peripheral beast prowling at the edges of the debate while Brexit Secretary David Davis and May's trusted advisor on Europe Olly Robbins battled for supremacy and the prime minister’s ear.

In his interview with the Guardian, Boris admitted that he wanted to have his voice heard.

“It is perfectly true that I had thought ‘res ipsa loquitur’ [the matter speaks for itself], just get on and do the job, but I was conscious that people wanted me to contribute to the public debate.

“One after the other people wrote articles saying ‘where oh where, why cannot we hear from Johnson?’ I then obliged them.

“So I contributed a small article to the pages of the Telegraph, and now everyone who had previously accused me of saying too little are now saying I am saying rather too much.

“People have got to make up their minds. What do they want? What I want from my critics is some bloody consistency, the great inveterate jalopies.”

In the run-up to the speech, May consulted regularly with Davis and other Cabinet ministers. There was a meeting last week where six secretaries of state were brought in to talk about Europe, but Johnson wasn't there because he was in the Caribbean in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma.

With his intervention on Saturday, he has assured his voice cannot be ignored, even if the actual meat of his demands do not bind the prime minister’s hands as much as the initial furor suggested.

If Johnson is "backseat driving," as Home Secretary Amber Rudd suggested, the course he is setting is not so distant from the prime minister’s, even if he wants to get there a little bit faster.

This was the view set out by a senior government official in New York Tuesday. “As the PM said, they are all clearly heading in the same direction on Brexit. All the Cabinet are heading in the same direction.”