The Brexit end-game
Does Boris Johnson have one hand on his heart and the other crossing fingers behind his back?
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As an uncompromising Brexiteer, I believed from the very start that the only true Brexit was a no-deal Brexit.
That’s because iron logic always meant that any deal the UK might strike with the EU would keep the UK tied to it in some way.
The reason for that is the premise upon which the EU is based. In essence, it is a protectionist bloc which, acting as a European super-state subsuming its 27 member countries, will resist anything that puts it at an economic disadvantage.
It is therefore particularly sensitive to competition, particularly since it is itself so vulnerable. That’s because it’s trapped by its regulations, laws and bureaucratic rigidity into a permanent state of economic sclerosis and inability to respond flexibly to any shocks to the system — of which there are plenty. Its internal economic pressures are therefore dire and its long-term future unsustainable. In short, it’s an economic basket-case.
By contrast, the UK is innately nimble and flexible. It has the ability to adjust its financial and monetary levers to respond to shocks to the system. Its deep commitment to true liberty, so poorly understood in continental Europe, means it is far less regulated and therefore more entrepreneurial and potentially dynamic. And it commands the supreme global advantages of the English language, and in the City of London the world’s pre-eminent financial hub.
Without minimising the UK’s undoubted weaknesses, all these advantages mean that, unshackled from the EU, it stands poised to become a supreme competitive threat to its neighbours just across the English Channel — a threat that the EU has explicitly recognised and sworn to negate.
As indeed it must. That’s why it was always the case that the EU would never make any concessions to the UK that would place the EU at a disadvantage. That’s why it was always the case that the terms of any such deal would always be to the UK’s disadvantage.
And that’s why the words that must strike deep dread into the heart of every true Brexiteer are “A deal now looks more likely…”
As someone who regards any pledge by Boris Johnson as a reason to start counting my spoons, I have always feared that he will betray Brexit at the very last minute. Despite all he has said with hand on heart about honouring the red lines of British sovereignty, despite the reports of several areas of deep disagreement that remain in the trade talks between the UK and the EU at this eleventh hour, and despite Johnson’s warning reported today that no-deal now looks more likely, I still fear that a deal will be done whose terms Johnson will describe as a victory for the UK but which will actually amount to surrender.
Nor do I trust the so-called “Spartans” of the European Research Group of Brexiteer MPs, who capitulated over the terms of the dreadful Withdrawal Agreement that Johnson signed with the EU at the end of last year.
Desperate to get the UK through the legal exit from the EU, which was achieved when the UK left it on January 31, ERG members managed to convince themselves that the Withdrawal Agreement didn’t pose the threat to British sovereignty that it actually does. They also chose to believe the government’s sotto voce promise to them that it would negate its worst aspects.
That was the intention behind the Internal Market Bill, which has caused such a row and revolt within Tory ranks over its aim to abandon parts of the Withdrawal Agreement dealing with the protocol on Northern Ireland — which leaves the province tied to EU trading conditions — and thus break international law. Yet earlier this week the British government withdrew the clauses of the bill dealing with the Northern Ireland protocol, declaring that the Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove had reached agreement with the EU “in principle” on this matter.
It’s not yet clear whether Gove has channelled Alexander the Great in cutting the Gordian knot of the NI protocol, or whether this still leaves Northern Ireland divided from the rest of the UK by an invisible border down the middle of the Irish Sea.
In any event, there’s much more than the NI protocol that’s rotten about the Withdrawal Agreement. If the UK is fully to escape from the EU’s shackles, the agreement needs to be scrapped in its entirety. Yet at present that option isn’t on the table at all.
Given all this, is it any wonder that true Brexiteers have their hearts in their mouths this weekend?
