Congratulations are in order only guardedly for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who just signaled that he’s prepared for Britain to go into the Brexit era without a deal with Europe. That certainly would be nice, and it’s a moment for President Trump to signal America is prepared to step up. It would invite concluding a British trade pact of our own as soon as the Mother of Parliaments is fully free from the continent.

We don’t want to get too effusive, though, at least not yet. It’s unclear whether Mr. Johnson is truly walking away from negotiations. The hangups reportedly involve various subsidies, how level the field is going to be for trade, and fishing rights, which President Macron covets in Britain’s territorial waters. The founding father of the Brexit movement, Nigel Farage, sees the fisheries as an acid test of British independence.

Mr. Farage offered rare compliments to Mr. Johnson today, after the prime minister’s public statement (please see above). He sees the goal of a “Canada-style deal” as having been “always impossible” given the agreement struck shortly before Britain’s withdrawal from Europe became effective on January 31. “Boris now reaching the right solution,” Mr. Farage reckons, meaning a “no deal Brexit,” which the Sun has preferred from the start.

What a no deal Brexit means in practice is that Britain would conduct its business with Europe on the standard terms of the World Trade Organization. That would be a fine solution, and make it possible for America, Canada, and other freedom countries — Australia, New Zealand, India, Free China, Free Korea, and Israel, among others — to work on freeing trade with Britain and its Commonwealth.

If there is a cloud over this, it has to do with Mr. Johnson’s domestic policies. He has been weak and statist, in our view, in an effort to secure his position with voters at home. This led our Brexit diarist, Stephen MacLean, in a wry re-write of Margaret Thatcher, to declare: “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state from Brussels, only to seem them re-imposed at Westminster.”

The need for principled leadership from Mr. Johnson right now is acute, owing to the coincidence — if it is a coincidence — of the American election. The odds-makers are now betting on a Biden presidency, which would mean a presidency that, in sharp contradistinction to the Trump administration, opposes an independent Britain. Mr. Johnson must know that if he doesn’t walk away decisively and promptly, Britain could yet end up at — as President Obama once put it — the back of the queue.