Karl Marx had made a much-quoted remark about history repeating itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. But British Prime Minister Theresa May’s government is turning Marx on his head in its European policy. In its handling of Brexit, it is starting with the farce. Only later will we get to the tragedy. The farce is being provided courtesy British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. In some ways, Johnson is the Leaver in whom pro-Europeans should have most hope. He is not a diehard anti-European. Unlike many Brexiteers he does not dislike foreigners. As a former London mayor, he knows perfectly well that the capital city is what it is because it is open and diverse. Johnson’s problem — and Britain’s too — is that he is fundamentally unserious. As the referendum showed, his political thinking reflects the general indiscipline of his personality. Everything is always all about him.
Public life is a jape. Jokes are never off limits. And he is steeped in English upper-class snobbery. Some people can’t get enough of this. Others, me among them, can never find the off-switch quickly enough.
Brexit would be difficult enough even with George Canning or Charles Maurice de Talleyrand as foreign secretary, but Johnson’s flippancy threatens to make it impossible. He is doing real damage. British voters did something on June 23 that others see as immensely and irredeemably destructive and Britain has sent a narcissist to tell the world what it now stands for. It’s hardly surprising that serious-minded Europeans — and yes, of course, some of them lack even a grain of self-awareness — find this intolerable and that some want to punish Britons and him as a result. The May government’s Brexit policy is, as the prime minister put it again last week, to have “the best possible trading deal with the European Union (EU) once we have left”.
Yet, Johnson only gets in the way of this effort. Telling Europeans not to worry about United States’ President-elect Donald Trump is patronising. Describing free movement as “bollocks” is insulting. Talking as if Italy’s only export is prosecco is infantile. Telling his opposite number that the United Kingdom will leave the customs union and still be part of the single market is stupid or a lie or both. These things may seem trivial in themselves — though leaving the customs union is hardly that; think about the effect on the Irish border. But in context, these Johnsonisms are cumulatively harmful. I yield to few people in my exasperation at the EU’s failure to contemplate serious reshaping of the European project. The need for Europe to rethink fundamental pillars of unification is urgent. But Britain has a Brexit deal to strike with this Europe, not some other Europe. It is not a jape. The country’s future is on the table. That’s where the tragedy looms ever larger behind the current farce. If Britain is to proceed with Brexit, which some of us still hope may be avoided, it needs a deal with the EU that is as good for the British people as possible.
That means, in reality, a system of controls on the movement of people into the UK that preserves as much of the economic benefit of the single market as possible. That’s not unachievable, though it is hugely complex and difficult to negotiate with an EU of 27 nations. But it is absurd that the government refuses to even say publicly that a trade-off is needed. This refusal is entirely political. Ministers are silent not because there is no solution possible. They are silent because they can’t agree about what that solution might be. They can’t agree about it because the Conservative party is too split and ungovernable to coalesce around any practical proposal. Into that vacuum comes Johnson.
May’s speech to the lord mayor’s banquet last week contained an illustration of how deeply trapped she is by this failure. As she made her case, correctly, for governments to intervene to redress economic inequalities, May pointed out that government should support and boost universities in less prosperous regions. Yet, the greatest uncertainty in the universities today comes from Brexit’s effect on their staff, students, research potential and finance. The immobilising effect of Brexit extends everywhere. In theory, that would change if there were a general election that spelled out the government’s terms and in which May won a mandate for them.
That’s why, with the Tories enjoying robust poll leads over Labour, there is recurrent talk about an early election. But the Conservatives face an insurmountable problem. Even if there were no other impediments to an early election, such as the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, they cannot call one without an agreement on Brexit terms over which they are split. So, no election.
The government is increasingly paralysed about Brexit. There aren’t hundreds of Tory backbench zealots who want to turn their backs completely on an EU deal. But there are enough to make any such deal too divisive to risk, even with the support of the Democratic Unionists.
And the anti-EU press, with its profound collective self-interest in preventing any form of effective government, will do everything it can to frighten more of them into that backs-turned camp. Until now, most of the frustrations in the progress of the government’s Brexit strategy have not been directly political. They have been bureaucratic: The need to get new departments up and running. They have been legal: The need to sort out Article 50, which currently awaits the judgement of the Supreme Court. And they have been intellectual: The sheer complexity of the process and timetable, extending into every corner of the British state — including the devolution settlements — for years to come is truly daunting.
It is now increasingly clear that parliamentary politics also now stands across the route of the Brexit process too, whatever the outcome of the Article 50 process. There are between 40 and 60 liberal and progressive Tories who are now focused on ensuring that the UK gets a soft Brexit deal. They are increasingly well organised and they can stop a hard Brexit if they have the discipline to see it through. The deal they want is extremely unlikely to be a deal that the outright anti-Europeans could accept. It is not surprising that the government has just backed off from its David Cameron-era plan to clip the wings of the House of Lords. This government needs all the votes it can get, in both houses. The EU referendum didn’t end the European question in British political life. On the contrary. Increasingly, it seems to have given it a whole new lease of possibly a very long life.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Martin Kettle writes on British, European and American politics, as well as the media, law and music.
