Suffocating unreality

An air of sticky and suffocating unreality has pervaded British politics this week, quite as much as it has the weather. The ongoing contest to replace Boris Johnson seems completely detached from the realities of a country enduring a sharp lesson in the what climate change is going to mean, still gripped by a pandemic that with “dangerous complacency” is treated as being over, suffering the misery of record NHS waiting lists, and facing multiple economic crises. And, as always, though no candidate to be Prime Minister can admit it, there is the ongoing, dragging undertow of Brexit, which has ripped up fifty years of economic and foreign policy strategy whilst its advocates are still unable to identify a viable alternative. Against this background, the leadership contest has come down to the absurdly narrow canvas of whether there should be tax cuts now or next year. It’s beyond pitiful.

Johnson’s squalid departure

That unreality is compounded by the fact that whilst Johnson’s shameful premiership is in one sense over, it still lingers on, like those apocryphal guillotined heads which continue to speak after being severed. In his case, that speech consists not of repentance for the crimes that led to his execution, but is more like a foul-mouthed reminder of why the court passed sentence. For, unsurprisingly, he is not passing his final weeks as a dignified caretaker of the nation. Rather, he skips vital meetings to host parties in his taxpayer-funded mansion, cadges outings in RAF fighter planes, makes spiteful boasts about his previous illegal actions, and hatches tawdry schemes to reward his cronies with seats in the House of Lords. Nothing so vividly illustrates the many reasons, at once banal and corrupt, that he was unfit to hold office as the squalid manner of his departure from it.

Perhaps most dangerous in the long-term, whilst bragging emptily of having ‘got Brexit done’, Johnson speaks, Trump-like, of plots by the “deep State” and Labour to undo Brexit. Having done so much to saddle the country with Brexit, and in a particularly damaging form, his words can only contribute to making it still harder for any future government even to ameliorate it. They set the stage for him to continue to exert a malign influence on British politics for, as Rafael Behr, consistently Britain’s best political columnist, perfectly puts it, “the role of former Prime Minister will suit his taste for elevated status without any burden of responsibility”.

At the same time, the very fact that Johnson and so many other Brexiters warn of the possibility of Brexit being ‘undone’ is a vivid testimony to their and its abject failure. Brexiters envisaged themselves as having ‘liberated the nation’ and they promised a great future, not at some distant time but immediately. Yet, over six years since the vote, the number of people who think Brexit was a mistake is now at a “record high”. Even so, audaciously, Brexiters like Reform Party leader Richard Tice implore them to “put their shoulder behind making [Brexit] a huge success”. That’s pretty rich given that not only have the advice and warnings of remainers been treated with contempt, but that Brexiters assured everyone that there would be no wheel to put any shoulders behind: the success was guaranteed.

Instead, Brexit has, on any reasonable reckoning of its effects and its popularity, failed as a project of national liberation and renewal. But, as outlined in last week’s post, it has been barely discussed in the leadership election. As Annette Dittert, the outstanding foreign correspondent who heads the London Bureau of German broadcaster ARD, observes in her fine, wide-ranging essay on the coming post-Johnson era, “none of the would-be successors has the courage to question the founding myth behind all this chaos: Brexit. None of them will admit that the latter is little more than a mirage”.

In that respect, there is little to choose between the final two candidates, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, but it is still (just about) worth considering each of them in relation to Brexit.

Rishi’s reheated Brexit

Sunak has produced a peculiar black and white video, in the style of an old-fashioned public information film entitled ‘Rishi and Brexit’. It introduces the slogan ‘keep Brexit safe’, which itself panders to the paranoid idea that it is under threat, without remotely acknowledging why it is so lacking in support. To the extent that he provides any detail on what his Brexit policy is, it has nothing to do with demonstrating its virtues to those who don’t support it, and is entirely to do with trying to satisfy the fantasies of those who do.

As a consequence, his plans are also startlingly unoriginal because, like Johnson’s government, he faces exactly the same constraints. The only things which might ‘improve’ Brexit would involve, at the very least, a wholesale renegotiation of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement. Since that is inadmissible within the Tory Party, all he can offer is to make the most of the new opportunities provided by Brexit. But, as the government has already found, Brexit provides no worthwhile new opportunities at all.

Thus in his Sunday Telegraph article Sunak propounds as ‘his’ Brexit policy the same old things that have been floating around since Johnson came to power. There are freeports (already under way, but as I’ve discussed before, they were possible without Brexit, albeit with different rules, and of dubious advantage). There’s reforming Solvency II regulation (already under way, but as I’ve discussed before there’s no consensus in the insurance industry that this is desirable and, anyway, the EU is considering similar plans). There’s removing GDPR (already under way, and likely to be extremely disadvantageous for British businesses). There’s speeding up clinical trials approvals (a policy announced in 2020, but the UK is now falling behind the EU in the approval of ‘novel medicines’ (£) because Brexit means the UK is too small a market for companies to bother with separate British approval processes, which is also indicative of the more general weakness of the case for bespoke national regulation. And last year the regulatory agency had budgets and staffing slashed, partly because of loss of EU funds following … Brexit).

Additionally, Sunak promises a ‘bonfire’ of retained EU laws and regulation, a promise already made by Jacob Rees-Mogg although Sunak proposes to act even more quickly (yet leaked documents show that just a few weeks ago, when Chancellor, he had warned against moving even at Rees-Mogg’s slower speed and also sought specific exemptions from it). More generally, as a recent National Audit Office report has shown, the moves to independent national regulation are fraught with problems of access to EU data and of staffing. Finally, Sunak proposes yet another “new Brexit delivery department” to be created, as if, somehow, this will achieve what the Brexit Opportunities Unit and Rees-Mogg, the Brexit Opportunities Minister have thus far failed to.

In short, this is all re-heated stuff, none of which constitutes benefits of Brexit, and most of which is founded on the delusion of sovereignty in regulation. The constant refrain that Brexit will allow red tape to be cut for businesses is simply nonsense. Just this week, the Cabinet Office was publicising its recent video showing exactly how difficult it now is to export to the EU as a result of the hard Brexit Johnson negotiated, whilst an all-party group of MPs called for the red tape for musicians touring the EU to be cut – but vainly, since that is not in Britain’s power having turned down an agreement with the EU that would allow it. Sunak isn’t a liar in the way that Johnson is, and he undoubtedly engages with and understands technical detail far better, but he is trapped by the lies of the Johnson Brexit that he proposes to keep safe.

Moreover, on what, as I said last week, will be the immediate Brexit issue facing the new PM, namely the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill (NIPB), Sunak has said he will persist with it without saying much more, including, crucially, how far he would push its demands. Allies of Johnson have warned that the former Chancellor would, in their terms, take a “soft line” over the Protocol, whilst some Northern Irish unionists have already called him “an appeaser”. It may indeed be that if he wins he will be minded to be more pragmatic than he has so far indicated. If so, he will face an immediate crisis within his party. If not, he will fairly soon face one with the EU.

Support for Truss

The most widely discussed thing about Liz Truss is – ought to be - the least important thing, namely that she campaigned for remain in the referendum but has now so fully embraced hard Brexit. Within that discussion, the idea that this is some sort of ‘gotcha’ moment demonstrating hypocrisy is naïve. Plenty of politicians have shifted in similar ways – old school Tories who became ardent Thatcherites, or those, sometimes very far to the left, who became enthusiastic New Labourites. Opportunistic? Maybe, but I doubt many experience any inner conflict or embarrassment. Such journeys are easily, and not necessarily dishonestly, rationalised as ‘pragmatism’.

It may even go deeper than that. I recently described Truss as a “born-again Ultra”, and there’s certainly no reason to assume that new or late converts to any cause are lacking in devotion to it; more often they are the most excessive in their zealotry. The people least likely to realise that will be the original Brexit Ultras who, like Alte Kameraden suspecting the motives of March Violets, will be especially attuned to seeing any sign of heresy. So for all that Truss is now their preferred candidate, with her ‘journey’ lauded by Steve Baker, that means that she will have very little room for manoeuvre if she is to avoid Theresa May’s fate of being first feted and then disowned by the Ultras. Indeed on the wilder fringes of Conservative opinion she is already regarded with suspicion and ominous comparisons are being drawn with May. Truss’s downfall will come, like May, not because she is a closet remainer but because she will try to turn their fantasies into realities.

For now, she owes her position as the darling of the Brexiters in parliament and the party to the sustenance she has given those fantasies. It wasn’t just by espousing Brexit and indulging in Thatcher-themed photo shoots. It began when, as International Trade Secretary, she began to oversee the development of an independent trade policy. That process had been started by Liam Fox, but she inherited and continued the programme of rolled over and new trade deals, earning breathless plaudits from both the tabloid and broadsheet (£) press.

For Brexiters, new trade deals are one of the few things that they can truthfully say would not have been possible without Brexit. Although they typically conflate the two, and over-state their value, rolled over trade deals are different, in that they wouldn’t have been necessary but for Brexit. But it’s also the case that this is one area that has proved many critics – including me – wrong, in that we doubted it would be possible to achieve the rollover of so many of the EU deals as happened (even if not always on quite such good terms, but sometimes, as in the case of Japan, on very slightly better ones). So whilst the rolled over deals weren’t a benefit of Brexit they were something about which ‘Project Fear’ could legitimately be said to have been largely discredited.

As for the new trade deals, that is a very different matter. No one doubted that it would be possible for the UK to reach some Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) on its own, the question was always about their quality and their value. What Truss did, as is becoming clearer by the day, for example in relation to the much-trumpeted Australia deal which is now just about to be ratified, was to accept any terms, no matter how disadvantageous to British farmers and the environment or to animal welfare standards, and regardless of how small the benefit and how great the cost, out of desperation to achieve a quick deal. Even more dishonest was her pretence that straightforward commercial deals, such as that with India, of the sort that the UK could and did enter into whilst an EU member, were only possible because of Brexit with the implication that they were also FTAs.

So her approach was purely performative but, more than anyone or anything else, she and these trade deals have given Brexiters something to crow about when the rest of their project is so manifestly failing. In particular, despite their constant assertion that Brexit was ‘never about economics’, it has enabled them to fabricate an economic case for Brexit. This is the main reason why Truss is in the position she is, a position she is now building on with her tax-cutting mantra, and why she is the currently the favourite to win the grassroots vote.

Subsequently, as Foreign Secretary, she inherited responsibility from David Frost for managing post-Brexit relations with the EU, including the ongoing disputes over the Northern Ireland Protocol. Initially, she seemed to offer a change of tone, but that was quickly abandoned and she became the architect of the NIPB. Some speculate this was because she was already preparing the ground for a leadership bid, or it may reflect a genuine shift in her position. Either way it means that, whilst the EU is likely to take a similarly firm line on the Protocol whoever becomes PM (£), it is already reported by knowledgeable experts such as Mujtaba Rahman of Eurasia Group and Anton Spisak of the Tony Blair Institute that a Truss premiership would face deep distrust from the EU. I imagine that the Irish Tea Sock would be similarly unenthusiastic.

I have not seen anything that Truss has said to suggest that her ideas about what to do with Brexit are any different to the boilerplate stuff that Sunak and others regurgitate about regulatory divergence and so on. It may be that, as her performative approach to trade deals shows, she would be (even) more likely than him to champion purely symbolic changes, regardless of their damage. Maybe that will be enough to sustain her support amongst Brexiters, even if it drags the country further into the economic mire.

There may also be no difference in practice in how Sunak and Truss approach the immediate test of the NIPB which has now passed through the Commons, despite the ongoing contest, although it won’t reach the Lords until after the Summer Recess, by which time the new leader will be chosen. Truss, of course, is the Bill’s sponsor, so she would seem even less likely to seek any kind of rapprochement with the EU than Sunak, and to have even less political leeway to do so. So if she wins she is unlikely to face an immediate crisis within her party, but seems certain to face one with the EU before the year is out. That, too, would endear her to the Brexiters, but there will be a high political price to pay in other ways.

Brexit is too big for either of them

Whilst the candidates chunter on about how soon to cut taxes, and vie with each other to persuade the airless echo chamber of the decrepit party membership which of them is the most ‘Thatcherite’, and as Johnson sees out his last few weeks of malevolent indolence, the realities of Brexit are ignored as if they are too boring, or simply settled. The truth is that Brexit is just too big for either of the would-be leaders, or the ones who they defeated in the earlier rounds, to face up to. Too big for the Labour leadership, for that matter (on which, more is planned to come in next week’s post). We’ve become a country which is too scared of itself to talk about what it’s doing to itself.

But Brexit won’t go away. It may indeed be tedious, it may be too frightening to discuss, but it is very far from settled. Whoever becomes the next Prime Minister will be doing so just as, to quote Rafael Behr again, but this time from his recent Prospect essay, “the peak of the [Brexit] illusion has faded” and “the great illusionist [Johnson] has been unmasked”. Yet observing the leadership contest, Annette Dittert, in her New Statesman essay, concludes that “after having banged their heads into the brick wall of Brexit reality, the new Tory strategy seems to be to just keep on banging, only this time with a longer run-up”. And, indeed, that is exactly what the Brexit Ultras are currently demanding.

If the new administration pursues that line, then more and more failure and damage will accrue. Or, if it takes an even slightly more ‘pragmatic’ approach, it will once again, this time with Johnson egging the fight on, be torn apart by the never-ending Tory war on Europe. We are in for a long, hot summer before we know which of Sunak and Truss will prevail. It probably won’t tell us much more about what will happen afterwards as regards Brexit, but a great deal of that is predictable. For unreal as the present political debate may be, the realities of Brexit are all too clear, and just as resistant to Brexiter fantasies as they have ever been.

The leadership campaign is mired in Brexit dishonesty

As the dust begins to settle on Boris Johnson’s downfall, it’s worth emphasizing that it was inextricably bound up with Brexit even though Brexit wasn’t its direct cause. Unusually and fittingly, it was his character and conduct rather than any particular policy which ended his premiership. Not, I think, because the Tory Party had some collective outbreak of moral rectitude – they all knew what Johnson was like from the outset – but more because the thumping loss of two by-elections demonstrated that the voters were finally starting to see through him, in large part because of ‘partygate’.

In some ways that’s a good thing. It arguably shows that, eventually and creakingly, the British polity still has some kind of moral compass. But it also means that, even though it ought to be, this is not a moment of reckoning for the Brexit he did so much to promote and shape. From abroad, things look different. Writing in the Washington Post, Stryker McGuire observes that “viewed from afar, Johnson’s greatest failing is liable to be what he hoped would be his glorious legacy: Brexit”. I’m sure that will eventually be the generally accepted view here, too, but it isn’t yet remotely sayable amongst Tory politicians and commentators, who invariably chalk Brexit up to his credit, perhaps as his only credit, and set against the debits of his conduct in office.

Brexit and Johnson’s character are inseparable

Yet in truth, Johnson’s deficiencies of character are inseparable from Brexit. He was far from the only liar in 2016, but the casual and brazen dishonesty with which he fronted Vote Leave certainly embodied and perhaps swung its campaign. He even embodied many of the particular hues of that dishonesty, in his insistence not just that facts don’t matter but that belief matters more, in his endless sense of his own victimhood, still on display in his resignation announcement and mirroring that of the Brexiters generally, in his refusal to take responsibility for his choices even to the extent of denying choices have to be made, and in his constant bogus and half-baked invocations of the Second World War.

Equally, the rank dishonesty of agreeing the Northern Ireland Protocol without intending to honour it, and of agreeing a limited trade agreement with the EU whilst pretending it lived up to his ‘cakeist’ promises, both contributed hugely to making the calamity of Brexit even worse than it was bound to be. And for all the pearl-clutching now amongst some Tory Brexiters about Johnson’s contempt for established rules and norms, they almost all supported his illegal Prorogation of parliament in 2019, as well as his threat of illegality in the Internal Market Bill (IMB) in 2020. So whilst Johnson’s immorality was built into his character, their support for him reflected their Jacobin-like frenzy whereby Brexit justified ripping up any law or convention that seemed to get in its way, including the very parliamentary sovereignty they claimed to be so central to their cause.

Small wonder, then, that the bludgeoning nonsense that they were enacting the ‘will of the people’ was squeakily echoed in Johnson’s last-ditch attempt to stay in post by invoking the constitutional gibberish that he had been bestowed a personal mandate by 14 million voters in the general election. Small wonder, too, that despite the fact that MPs on all wings of the party, including the ERG, turned him out, some pro-Brexit commentators are insisting he was the victim of a remainer, anti-Brexit plot. Brexit populism has been set back, but not destroyed, by Johnson’s demise.

It's now widely accepted, including, if only superficially, by most of the candidates to succeed him, that Johnson’s legacy is a constitution and political culture horribly damaged by dishonesty and immorality, with accompanying public distrust and cynicism. But simply laying this at the door of his own character, without recognizing its roots in Brexit, means it will not be addressed.

Why Brexit has never been discussed honestly

There’s actually an even wider point to be made. The referendum didn’t just result in leaving the EU. It also created a massive and ongoing destabilization of British politics. It is not coincidence that we have had two general elections and are about to have the fourth Prime Minister in the space of just six years. That is astonishing in itself, but what is far more astonishing is that at each of the pivotal moments – the general elections and the leadership elections – Brexit itself was only discussed in the most cursory of ways.

This may seem a strange thing to say given how dominant an issue Brexit has been since 2016, but my point is that it has rarely, if ever, been talked about in depth, spelling out its actual practical implications and the choices and trade-offs involved. Thus Theresa May was installed following a truncated campaign after which we still, famously or infamously, only knew that ‘Brexit meant Brexit’. That stasis lasted for months until she simply announced in early 2017 that it meant hard Brexit. Then, as I catalogued at the time of the 2017 election and again during that of 2019, the two main parties, at least, refused, in different ways and for different reasons, to set out in detailed ways what their Brexit plans would mean. In-between, the leadership campaign which brought Johnson to power was conducted as a virility test over who would most readily embrace ‘no-deal Brexit’ rather than accept ‘the hated backstop’, but with no substance whatsoever on what lay behind these slogans.

So neither at these decisive points nor in the periods between them has there ever been any sustained, honest, realistic political conversation about the practical realities of Brexit. Instead, throughout the May years there were suggestions of securing ‘frictionless trade’ and the ‘exact same benefits’ of membership and in the Johnson years the claim of cakeism and denial of the coming costs, with Labour all the while just talking vaguely of the ‘better deal’ they would achieve. Equally, throughout these years there was virtually no honesty about the actual choices and problems posed by and for Northern Ireland. Instead there was endless nonsense about non-existent ‘alternative arrangements’ and, ultimately, the creation of an Irish Sea border whilst denying that that was what had been agreed. Thereafter, since the end of the transition the political silence about the damaging effects of Brexit has been deafening, whilst all the denial and dishonesty about Northern Ireland has been re-activated.

The fundamental reason for this, I think, lies precisely with the deadening effect of the ‘will of the people’ bullying, and attendant obscenities about ‘enemies of the people’. Whilst this hasn’t stopped continuing, vociferous opposition to Brexit, it has meant that, especially in the governing Tory Party, realism and honesty about the practicalities, and not just the principle, of Brexit is deemed as betrayal. This is why the civil service, which is bound to be realistic and honest in the sense that it has to deliver Brexit as a policy, rather than simply sell it to voters as an idea, has been so traduced as sabotaging Brexit.

It’s this which marks Brexit out as different to any other political issue, at least in my lifetime. There are plenty of examples of divisive policies but they’ve always been deliverable even when they have been undesirable, and they’ve always been discussable in more or less rational ways. Brexit isn’t like this because it promised impossible or contradictory things, which by definition can’t be delivered. But since even saying this is (still) deemed offensive to the ‘will of the people’, no honest or realistic political conversation has ever been possible within or between the two main parties. That extends from the most general level of Brexit having been enacted as hard Brexit, right down to the multiple and complex trade-offs in decisions about regulatory alignment or divergence in particular sectors. This evisceration of honesty and realism is the “radioactive pollution” that has poisoned the political ground, as I expressed it in last week’s post, and until it is cleansed the instability of the last six years will continue.

Who is a true Brexiter now?

In principle, the Tories now have a chance to change that with their change of leader. Whilst Johnson isn’t the sole or even main cause of the dishonesty of Brexit, he is so entwined with it that replacing him offered the possibility of facing up to that dishonesty. I don’t mean that there was ever the remotest possibility that Johnson’s departure would herald the end of Brexit. It won’t. That fantasy is the province of paranoid Brexiters (£) and, to put it charitably, over-optimistic remainers.

On the contrary, and entirely predictably, only those fully committed to Brexit have even attempted to be candidates. Yet there are now curious contortions in this. Some Brexit Ultras have insisted that Johnson must be replaced by a Brexiter, but this category includes Liz Truss who voted remain but is now deemed by Jacob Rees-Mogg to be a full convert. Indeed David Campbell Bannerman, the Conservative ex-MEP who once called for British people with “extreme EU loyalty” to be tried for treason, insists “only Liz Truss can save Brexit now” (£).

Rishi Sunak, on the other hand, who always supported Brexit, is now treated as not of the faith and even, bizarrely, denounced as a “socialist” by Rees-Mogg. Indeed according to arch-Brexiter Daniel Moylan, not only does Sunak not “care about” Brexit, but the other current front runner, Penny Mordaunt, who was an ERG member before becoming a minister, “doesn’t understand it”. Meanwhile, in a separate and stinging attack on Mordaunt (£), another of Johnson’s placemen in the House of Lords, the self-important would-be kingmaker David Frost, has questioned whether Brexit would be “safe” in her hands.

Yet Mordaunt’s credentials as a Brexiter seem real enough to the extent that, when challenged about her notorious referendum campaign lie that the UK did not have a veto on Turkish accession, opted to double-down on it (note her tone at the end of the clip, which has the muleish obstinacy of one who knows her argument has no logic, but takes perverse pride in clinging to it). Such unrepentant dishonesty is surely the hallmark of a true Brexiter, for all that ERG ‘hard man’ Steve Baker denies that this is what she is, whilst an article on the reliably peculiar Conservative Woman site goes further and denies she’s even a real Conservative.

Until she was knocked out of the contest, the ‘hard man’s’ preference, by the way, was for Suella Braverman, the scourge of ‘cultural marxism’ who wants to take the UK out of the ECHR and apparently believes that the vote for Brexit was also a vote against the expansion of university education and rights litigation (£). Kemi Badenoch, too, seems to think there’s a link between the ‘change’ people voted for in 2016 and her brand of small-state, war on woke conservatism. Perhaps it should be no surprise that it’s so hard to pin down who is a true Brexiter when so much of what has subsequently been claimed to flow the referendum result was unaccountably not written on the ballot paper.

The leadership contest continues to avoid the realities of Brexit

The most striking thing about the struggle between these latter-day Girondins and Montagnards for control of the Committee of Brexit Safety, at least to those who were assured that voting Tory in 2019 would ‘get Brexit done’, is how many are warning that it has not, after all, been done but is still a work in progress, and a fragile one at that. That being so, it might be thought that the candidates would at least have an honest conversation about how Brexit is going, if only because the recent by-election losses suggest that the voter coalition of the 2019 ‘get Brexit done’ election is fraying at both ends.

However, yet again, the chance for such honesty has been squandered. All the candidates have been setting out economic plans which barely, if at all, mention Brexit and certainly don’t acknowledge the chilling effects of Brexit on economic growth, trade, sterling and investment, which are now beyond sensible dispute, and are baked into official figures. For even to hint at any negative consequences of Brexit, economic or otherwise, is taboo in this election (the fact that Sunak has done so, even mildly, in the past may partly explain why the Brexiters have turned against him).

Similarly, all the candidates speak airily of capitalising on the ‘opportunities of Brexit’ without any meaningful or serious detail. Even the effects of Brexit and the new trade deals on farmers, a community that used to be close to the heart of Tories, go unmentioned. And even the Express has spotted the Brexit silence, though mistakenly thinking that it’s a failure to foreground Brexit benefits rather than a failure to acknowledge its damage. The consequence is that whoever leads the party will not have a viable plan to lead the country, for they will still be refusing the face the post-Brexit realities the country faces.

The most immediate acid test of whether a more honest and realistic approach to Brexit is in prospect is the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill (NIPB), which continues to work its way through parliament, with all attempts to amend it being rejected this week. For the NIPB arises from a tangle of dishonesties: dishonesty towards the EU with whom the Protocol was signed, towards the MPs who were told the Protocol was temporary, towards the voters who were told it was part of an oven-ready deal, and towards the Northern Ireland peace process which is at the sharp end of it all.

That test has so far been failed. None of the candidates has indicated opposition to the Bill, and the front runners have all said they will continue with it although Sunak apparently had reservations about it in Cabinet (and Braverman, astoundingly, wanted to pursue an even harder set of demands). Whether this commitment comes from conviction or from the realization that to say otherwise would torpedo their chances of winning is irrelevant; either way they are endorsing the dishonesties associated with it.

What isn’t clear is how far the next leader will take the NIPB once in power, and, so far as I know, none of them has been challenged to answer this. The reason it isn’t clear is partly because of the dishonesty of the proposed legislation itself, which has been presented to ‘one nation’ Tories as merely a negotiating tactic rather than something that would be used, and to ERG-types as a non-negotiable set of demands which, if not agreed to by the EU, will be unilaterally implemented. Therefore, the candidates simply saying they will pursue the Bill doesn’t tell us what doing so means.

However, since there’s no way the EU will agree to it in full, the new leader will in fairly short order have to end this ambiguity. This could herald an early crisis, though It’s possible that neither wing would dare rebel at the very start of a new leader’s tenure. But the wider point is what would it say for honesty in politics if the first act of the new leader were to reveal as a key policy – whether that be abandoning the NIPB, making a deal with the EU that fell short of the Bill’s demands, or disapplying the Protocol - something they had not explicitly mentioned in the campaign?

The Brexit cuckoos

It’s depressing that not a single candidate, for all the talk of integrity from all of them, has had the courage to point to any of the problems Brexit has created, even without necessarily disowning Brexit. That could have been the drum that Tom Tugendhat – who I gather used to be a soldier – might have marched to. But apparently there isn’t a single Tory MP who, even knowing they would have had no chance of winning, was willing to at least set down a marker for any kind of honesty or pragmatism about Brexit. That is shaming on those of them, and some still exist, who know the damage Brexit is doing.  But the fundamental responsibility lies fairly and squarely with the Brexiters inside and beyond the Tory Party. They have made honesty all but impossible.

Inside the party, the ERG’s journey from ginger group to virtual control – a partly taxpayer-funded cuckoo party within a party, but which has never stood for election as a party, on its own manifesto – is perhaps the biggest factor. An index of its strength is that in the current leadership contest at least three of the original candidates – Braverman, Javid and Mordaunt - have in the past been reported to be members. The group also insists on having its own one-to-one meetings with all candidates to assess their Brexit credentials (Sunak reportedly ‘stormed out’ of his). This strength, along with the UKIPification of the party membership (£), ensures that no even half-way ‘moderate’ candidate, by any standard but their own, has a chance and, in any case, most such moderate Tory MPs were purged by Johnson in 2019.

However, the current election also reveals that, as so often happens with extremist groups, the ERG is now riven by infighting over ‘purity’. That has been incipient since at least the split between ‘the Spartans’, who voted against Theresa May in all three of the ‘meaningful votes’ on her Withdrawal Agreement in 2018, and the rest of them. Now it has become manifest in the contortions, discussed above, about who is a ‘true Brexiter’, and just last night the group endorsed former remainer Truss as its preferred candidate (although it’s not clear that its members are obliged to vote en bloc). Even so it’s quite possible, because of those contortions, that the ERG will end up with a situation where neither of the final two is “a Brexit purist” (£). To spell it out, that is how some pro-Brexit commentators are describing the scenario if the last two are pro-Brexit Sunak and Mordaunt!

The endless Tory Brexit psycho-drama is set to continue

We are therefore in a potentially extraordinary situation. The dominance of the ERG means that this leadership contest to replace Johnson has continued with his dishonesty about Brexit. That in turn will ensure that for the immediate future British politics will continue to be corrupted by the dishonesty inherent within Brexit. Yet the outcome of that contest may very well leave the ERG still unhappy. And even if that is not true from the start of the new leader’s tenure, it soon will be.

The Times columnist Danny Finkelstein this week made a point (£) very much in keeping with an argument I’ve been making on this blog for years, namely that whoever is elected the Brexiters will end up saying that person has betrayed Brexit because reality always gets the better of their dishonest beliefs. Thus once they embraced May with, it’s easy now to forget, huge enthusiasm but ended up bitterly despising her as ‘Theresa the Remainer’. Johnson, who was never one of their own, they came to see as having lost interest in, and stomach for, ‘unleashing Brexit benefits’. The same will happen to his successor.

Since Finkelstein wrote his article things have already moved on. It has now become abundantly clear that if Sunak wins the Brexiters will disown him from the outset, and the same is very possibly true of Mordaunt. But whoever wins will go the same way, possibly quite soon, as I suggest above in relation to the NIPB, but if not later when, once again, the benefits of Brexit prove imaginary or unsatisfying. Nigel Farage has already said that unless Braverman, who is now out, won it would mean that Brexit would be betrayed. But the reality is that, if she had won, it would not have been long before Farage and other Brexit Ultras were denouncing her as well.

What I would add to Finkelstein’s analysis is that the reason for this isn’t just because the gap between reality and Brexiter fantasy means that Brexit always gets betrayed, it’s that deep in the psychology of Brexit is a desire to be betrayed so as to maintain the purity of insurgency and to preserve the comfort blanket of victimhood. Indeed, the ERG’s endorsement of Truss, given its view of what happened with May, seems almost masochistic. Of course the real victims are those of us who, in the present leadership campaign, are merely onlookers as the tragedy of this perverse political psychology continues to play out before our bruised and bleeding eyes.

 

 

I’ve had reports that some people signed up for email alerts to this blog are no longer receiving them. It doesn’t seem to be a systematic problem, so individual fixes are needed in each case. Anyone affected can email support@follow.it who should be able to easily resolve things.

Making Brexit boring

The dramatic collapse of Boris Johnson’s premiership is inseparable from Brexit. His rise to power was built on Brexit, whilst the spectacular immorality and mendacity that caused his eventual downfall were at the heart of the tawdry campaign he fronted that yielded Brexit. There’s much more to say about that, and I will do so in a future post. But when the dust settles, and Johnson has been replaced by a new Tory leader, there will still be the never-ending consequences of Brexit to deal with. It’s certainly nonsense for anyone, whether pro- or anti-Brexit, to suggest that “if Boris goes, Brexit goes”.

So although it has almost been lost in this week’s political turmoil, I want to focus on an important Brexit development which occurred on Monday, when Sir Keir Starmer finally gave a single, dedicated speech on Labour’s Brexit policy. It may very well be that this policy will be re-calibrated according to who replaces Johnson, as many of the dynamics of politics will change as a result. But, even so, other dynamics will remain the same.

For example, it’s impossible to imagine the replacement resiling from hard Brexit, and quite likely that in the coming leadership campaign ‘getting rid of the Protocol’ will be a similar virility test to those of ‘getting rid of the hated backstop’ and ‘being prepared for a no-deal Brexit’ during that of 2019 which brought Johnson to power. Equally, the issues for Labour arising from the extent of leave support within its traditional heartlands, along with the extent of remain support amongst its voters overall, will still exist. In any case, whatever happens, any re-calibration of Labour policy on Brexit will now have to occur against the base line of what Starmer said in Monday’s speech. So it’s worth paying attention to it.

Breaking the loud silence

It was an encouraging speech whilst also being hugely disappointing, a paradox which, unsurprisingly, led to it having a distinctly mixed reception.

It was encouraging in marking an important change, that change being the simple fact of having given such a speech. Most of its content had already appeared in bits and pieces from various Labour politicians, but, for the first time, the Labour leader has drawn these together and devoted a whole speech to Brexit. The near silence is over. That is an important moment for Starmer and Labour – whose refusal to talk about Brexit has been criticised for well over a year now, and had become almost absurd in recent weeks as so much of the damage of Brexit has become undeniable.

It is also important for the wider polity because the Tories, too, have had little to say about Brexit other than the hollow boast to have ‘got it done’, overblown claims about post-Brexit trade deals, silly gimmicks like consulting on imperial measures, and the downright lie that the vaccine rollout was a Brexit benefit (on which Jacob Rees-Mogg was neatly skewered by Kirsty Wark this week). So it brings some – some – honesty to the polity because it acknowledges that Brexit is an ongoing and contested process. And it means that, now, Labour can attack the government for its handling of that process whilst having an answer of sorts to the question of what it would do differently.

Yet that answer is a disappointing one, and in some key respects an ambiguous one. It could hardly have given less to erstwhile remainers without being indistinguishable from the government’s policy. It offered the bare minimum of an alternative, and no one could call it an inspiring vision for Britain’s future. But it wasn’t altogether empty, and its critics should be careful not to fall into the age-old political trap of ‘making the perfect the enemy of the good’.

For it’s clear that Labour would adopt a far less confrontational and untrustworthy approach to relationships with the EU than Johnson did. Doing so isn’t a solution to anything in itself, though it would at least offer a respite from the endless, exhausting, shameful drama of this government’s conduct. More importantly, it is a vital pre-requisite to finding some solutions, and its importance shouldn’t be underestimated. It ought to enable a resolution of the Northern Ireland Protocol row, if that is still unresolved by the next election, and thereby unlock access to Horizon, another of Starmer’s goals (though much damage will already have been done if that, too, has not happened before the election).

That is likely to continue to be true if Johnson is replaced by someone like Liz Truss or Suella Braverman. On the other hand it is conceivable, though not very likely, that Johnson’s replacement will seek to re-set relations with the EU, perhaps even to the extent of dropping the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill (which, for now, seems set to continue its legislative passage, but, given expected House of Lords opposition, surely won’t make it through to the statute book before the new Prime Minister is in place).

If so, then Starmer’s promise of a change in tone would lose its distinctiveness. That in turn might prod him towards a more ambitious stance so as to differentiate Labour from the government. I suppose the biggest danger is that if the Tories did elect a ‘pragmatist’ who more or less took the line Starmer has put forward, then Labour might settle for parking Brexit as an issue altogether and a low-grade fudge on UK-EU relations would become the consensus of the two main parties. But it’s highly unlikely that the Tory Party, and especially the ERG, are about to go down such a route, and likely that many in the Labour Party, and outside, will continue to push Starmer towards a stronger position.

Ambiguities and implications

On the substance of his proposals, Starmer’s promise of a veterinary, or sanitary and phyto-sanitary, agreement would, in principle, smooth some of the frictions for British trade generally and would make the Irish Sea border considerably thinner. But here there is an ambiguity, as it’s only workable if it means the Swiss-style ‘dynamic alignment’ agreement that the EU has offered. Last month, Rachel Reeves spoke of having a veterinary agreement but compared it to that between the EU and New Zealand. If that’s really the model Labour have in mind then it is an ‘equivalence’ agreement and was originally sought by the government and rejected by the EU. It’s a non-starter (the differences between regulatory ‘equivalence’ and ‘dynamic alignment’ in relation to a veterinary agreement are explained in a House of Commons Library briefing).

In his speech, Starmer only referred to the veterinary agreements the EU has with “other countries”. However, in an interview, he, too, mentioned New Zealand as an example, but also made reference to how an agreement would reduce checks on the Irish Sea border by 80%. That figure (which some dispute) is the one first provided by Maros Sefcovic when offering the Swiss-style dynamic alignment deal, so using it implied that this was what Starmer meant, although he dodged the key question about what would happen if EU standards change.

It is, to say the least, infuriating that even now, when proposing a very modest measure, Starmer feels it necessary to describe it in such strangulated terms that it’s impossible to be sure what he means. Are we really back to the nods and winks about a vaguely-specified ‘closer relationship’ of the Corbyn years? Nevertheless, given his grasp of Brexit detail, I assume Starmer knows that an equivalence agreement isn’t going to happen and that his proposal is for dynamic alignment.

If that is the idea, then implicit (but, still, only implicit) in it is that Labour will not be doctrinaire in refusing any role for the ECJ. That does seem to be the case, because it is also implicit in what was said about the Protocol and, even more so, in the proposal to create a security pact with the EU, which included a reference to data-sharing. Such data-sharing entails ECJ involvement, and it was Frost-Johnson’s aversion to this that led to the security part of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) being so thin.

So even if Starmer still isn’t willing to spell it out in terms, this does seem to code a real shift away from the red line that Theresa May originally drew (though later softened) on the ECJ, and away from the Frost-Johnson ‘scorched earth’ approach. If that shift is made in the areas he mentioned then that opens the door to deeper cooperation in multiple areas, and perhaps ultimately to something like an Association Agreement or an even more extensive arrangement than that, as was once mooted but swept away in the scorched earth frenzy of Johnson’s administration. For that matter, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Johnson’s own non-binding Political Declaration which accompanied his Withdrawal Agreement promised a far closer future relationship than eventuated in the TCA. Johnson reneged on that, but it could potentially be resurrected and might still appeal to the EU which, of course, also signed up to it.

That’s for the future. For now, clearly Starmer’s current proposals, including his other ideas such as enhanced mutual recognition of professional qualifications, barely touch the surface of repairing the damage of Brexit. That was acknowledged in the speech when he said that “complete frictionless trade” was impossible outside the single market and customs union, though it was implied that the proposed mitigations are much more substantial than they really are. The proposals do, however, suggest avoiding adding to the damage, for example in signalling a desire not to diverge on data protection rules, as the government currently plans to, and, by implication, to minimise regulatory divergence generally.

It remains to be seen if the next Tory leader will outflank Starmer’s proposals, but I think it is highly unlikely. I simply can’t imagine the ERG, or the Tory party membership, allowing the installation of anyone who would accept a dynamically aligned veterinary agreement, more role for the ECJ, or a softer line on regulatory divergence. Indeed I’d expect all the candidates to make a strong pitch on ‘maximising the benefits of Brexit’ (sic) through divergence, and most to take a ‘tough’ line on the Protocol.

Infuriating but astute

Unsurprisingly, the speech has infuriated many, possibly most, erstwhile remainers, many of whom would like Labour to adopt a ‘single market’ policy and some of whom want a ‘rejoin’ policy. Others, equally opposed to Brexit, recognized it as at least the basis for a new and better approach.  There’s no easy or perfect answer for Labour, whose calculation will be that when push comes to shove many or most of those who are infuriated will stick with Labour even so, whilst hoping that this new approach will not alienate and may even appeal to some leave voters. The danger is that it loses swathes of remain voters and is either ignored or disliked by leavers. That’s a risk, just as any way Labour positions itself on Brexit would be a risk, and it remains to be seen if it has been calculated correctly.

The flip side is that, just because it is so limited in its appeal to remainers, it is very hard for the Tories to attack. Of course, they will try to do so, and to depict Starmer as an unrepentant remainer. That’s already started and it would happen whatever he did or didn’t say. It says much for Brexiters’ disingenuity in constantly demanding that remainers should accept and get behind Brexit that they immediately greeted his acceptance of it as a dishonest ruse (£).

Some argue that, therefore, Labour might as well have a maximalist anti-Brexit policy since it is going to get attacked in that way anyway. But that is flawed reasoning: the capacity for an attack to gain traction is at least partly reliant on it being accurate, and whilst the pro-Brexit press don’t care about accuracy there will be enough commentators in the media and enough voters able to see through any attempt to depict Starmer as somehow trying to reverse Brexit on the basis of these slender proposals. Only those whose votes are already lost to Labour are likely to buy such an attack.

In one particular way, Starmer’s approach is quite astute. For once I agree with Nigel Farage, whose observation this week that it is a proposal to “make Brexit boring” was an accurate one. In suggesting some limited technical fixes Starmer’s approach neither excites nor repels anyone. And this is exactly the kind of detoxification of Brexit which is needed, because in some ways the entire Brexit saga has been about treating a technocratic question of institutions as a cultural and emotional one of identity. It also enfolds Brexit into the wider critique of Tory incompetence, which, apart from being a potent political tactic, serves to normalise it as part of ongoing political debate rather than treating it as the sacred relic of populist imaginations.

Certainly, whatever the Brexit Ultras may think, very few voters care about ECJ oversight of database sharing or even about the ECJ at all. During the referendum, whenever those planning to vote leave because they objected to the role of ‘European courts’ were asked for examples the things they mentioned were always to do with the ECHR not the ECJ. And I doubt that one in a million people both know and care about the difference between regulatory equivalence and regulatory alignment of sanitary and phyto-sanitary standards. So it’s no criticism of Starmer’s approach to call it dull. Brexit is dull, just as EU membership was dull. The tragedy is that it was made interesting. Making Brexit boring is perhaps the best thing that could happen.

Realistic but over-cautious

It’s also misguided to suggest, as some claimed following the speech, that Starmer’s proposals are ‘cakeist’ (i.e. calling for the benefits of EU membership without belonging). The main ideas of a veterinary agreement (if dynamically aligned) and a security pact have already been offered in principle by the EU, and mutual recognition of professional qualifications is within the scope of the TCA, although in practice may not be so easy to achieve. Other easements are also possible within the five-year review of the TCA. So long as Starmer has understood – and, again, given his immersion in the detail of Brexit, he surely must have done – the implications of what he said for ECJ involvement then it’s simply absurd to call these ideas cakeism. It is in any case odd to do so whilst at the same time decrying them for being so unambitious.

Speaking personally, what Starmer said mostly accorded with what I’ve been arguing recently Labour should be saying, and indeed a year ago I suggested that the pragmatic path for Labour would be to propose “a better Brexit deal for Britain”, so I’d be churlish to criticise it (although I still think my slogan is better than that of ‘make Brexit work’). I certainly agree that he is right to rule out re-joining the EU. For all the passion of the advocates of re-joining, such a policy would be wholly unrealistic for Labour electorally and also unrealistic for the country and for the EU.

For one thing, it would unquestionably involve another referendum. That was conceivable as a confirmatory vote during the leaving process. But does anyone really have the stomach for a whole new referendum in the foreseeable future, or seriously think proposing one could be an election-winning policy? And if such a referendum was held then, unless (unlike that of 2016) it was set up to require a super-majority, and achieved it – and perhaps even in those circumstances – it would be a huge ask of the EU to re-admit the UK after all the pain of the last six years and with the risk of yet another change of heart. Imagine a simple majority vote yielded, say, 52-48 to re-join. It would hardly be a robust basis for the UK to embark on an application, or for the EU to welcome it.

Some argue that ruling out ‘re-join’ as unrealistic becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that ensures it never gets achieved. That’s true as a matter of logic of any policy about anything. But it does not follow that by deeming a policy realistic, and pursuing it on that basis, it then becomes realistic. There may come a time when re-joining becomes a viable strategy, but it is not going to be in the next parliament. It would probably need years of strong and sustained public support for it to be a realistic option for both the UK and the EU. That could happen, given the generational profile of support for re-joining, but it may never happen. Either way the real question is what happens in the immediate future?

In that respect, I think that Starmer is wrong in closing the door so hard against membership of the single market and a customs union. I don’t think he necessarily needs to makes these things Labour policy – though clearly many in his party do (£) – but instead of ruling such memberships out he should propose the establishment of Citizens’ Assemblies, and perhaps other consultations, to discuss the possibility of them in the future. Whereas re-joining isn’t realistic for a very long time, single market membership and/or a customs treaty could become so much more quickly. Both would present challenges for the EU – and it shouldn’t be assumed that they are simply there for the taking if and when Britain wants them – but these aren’t insurmountable and there’s no reason why a fresh referendum would be needed to pursue this path. After all, the Tories insisted no referendum was needed to endorse hard Brexit.

Certainly opinion poll evidence suggests there could be domestic support for a softer Brexit, and an interesting article about this evidence by Sam Bright in Byline Times concludes that:

“Labour’s decision to criticise the outcomes of Johnson’s Brexit, while supporting the thawing of tensions with the EU, therefore seems to be a politically sound one – for now. In the medium term, however, if and when the benefits of Brexit firmly fail to materialise, Labour may be able to offer a stronger policy.”

Labour's interests and anti-Brexit interests are different

I would add two points to this assessment. One is that the ‘medium-term’ is quite elastic, and could be with us sooner than expected. The danger of Starmer’s caution is that Labour could quite quickly find itself well behind the curve of public opinion, especially in the unpredictable post-Johnson climate. The other point is a deeper one. The interests of anti-Brexiters and of Labour strategists are by no means identical, although they overlap at points. The pre-condition of softening Brexit is the removal of the Tory government, which will certainly continue to be led by someone pro-hard Brexit. That’s clear enough, and here the interests overlap. But whereas Labour would, entirely reasonably, like to form a majority government, anti-Brexiters’ best (realistic) hope is for a Labour minority government, supported by the LibDems and perhaps the SNP.

This prospect, perhaps the most likely outcome of the next election, is already being attacked by the Tories using the ‘coalition of chaos’ line of 2015, though I doubt it will have so much purchase next time, given the utter chaos of the present government which, even if it stabilises, won’t be quickly forgotten. For anti-Brexiters, the bigger the LibDem presence, in particular, the better (clearly there is a ceiling on what the SNP can achieve given it only stands in Scotland, and a big question as to whether they and Labour could strike a deal). Indeed from that point of view, Labour’s rather minimalist policy is actually helpful if it pushes some anti-Brexit voters to the LibDems, so long as they also vote tactically with regard to the constituency they happen to live in.

A large LibDem presence should be able to pressure a Labour minority administration to a far more ambitious anti-hard Brexit stance than Starmer has outlined, perhaps even so far as seeking single market membership and/or a customs union. And since, I assume, Starmer would not in those circumstances want to lose the opportunity of leading an administration he is foolish to have so definitively ruled out these possibilities as he may have to backtrack. That’s especially so as it seems probable that he, personally, would welcome this policy. But the key point is that anti-Brexiters shouldn’t get hung up on whether Labour has the policy they want; what matters is getting a coalition (or other arrangement) that will do what they want, or at least the nearest thing to what they want that is in realistic prospect.

Facing the toxic legacy of Brexit

None of this is remotely perfect or gives any reason for pleasure, and I certainly feel no pleasure about it. That it’s not politically viable to simply face the truth that Brexit was a terrible mistake, and has already been proven to be, is part of the price we are paying for Brexit. The frustrations of anti-Brexiters are entirely understandable, but Starmer is the wrong target for their ire.

The 2016 referendum was like a political atom bomb which didn’t just cause immediate destruction but has also poisoned the ground for years to come. Poisoned not just in the sense of the direct effects of Brexit itself but in terms of the corruption of honest and rational politics (or perhaps we should say the further corruption, for Brexit did not come from nowhere, and pre-Brexit politics was not an idyllic rose garden). Johnson’s fall may extract a little of that poison, but it goes far, far deeper than him. He was as much its symptom as its cause, the depraved salesman not the adulterated product (though his ego allowed him to believe otherwise).

So it will be a very, very long and slow process to reclaim that political ground for cultivation, re-seed it, and harvest the first, no doubt feeble, crop. The blame for that lies solely with the Brexiters, both in 2016 but also now as they attack any and every attempt to cleanse the soil of their radioactive pollution. Taking some of the toxicity out of the Brexit debate by rendering it boring is a step in the right direction.

But I am not even sure that the solution lies in anything that is done about Brexit per se. Rather, as argued by Martin Fletcher in the New Statesman this week, what first needs to happen is a thoroughgoing overhaul of the “broken and discredited” political system of which Brexit is in part the cause and in part the consequence.

Like Starmer’s Brexit proposals, such a programme of institutional reform sounds boring and technical, and would require painstaking attention to detail and follow-through to deliver. That, in itself, would be a welcome contrast to the emotionally exhausting rollercoaster of Johnson’s government recently discussed by Rafael Behr and so plainly in evidence this week. Boring can sometimes be good and, right now, it’s better than good. It’s necessary.

The non-drama that could become a real crisis

Having last week written some thoughts about the next six years of the Brexit process, this week has had a distinctly ‘back to 2019’ feeling about it with the passing of the second reading of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill (NIPB) in the House of Commons on Monday.

On the one hand, this is the legislation which would unilaterally rip up the Protocol that – it is hard to overstate the sick absurdity of this – in 2019 Boris Johnson’s government claimed to be a negotiating triumph that would ‘get Brexit done’, but which it now regards as totally unacceptable.

On the other hand, it is almost as if we were back to the parliamentary dramas of 2019, and all the gripping debates and votes of that extraordinary year. Almost, but not quite. For one thing, the government has a sizeable, albeit surprisingly brittle, majority. For another, the event was fairly low key. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss’s opening speech trotted out the predictable justifications for this unjustifiable Bill, with no glimmer of responsibility let alone contrition for the government having agreed the Protocol in the first place, and for the most part the debate followed equally predictable lines.

Yet, undramatic as the debate generally was, we might once have thought it remarkable that a former Prime Minister – Theresa May – should, with clinical accuracy, tell the government of her own party that its proposed legislation broke international law. Nowadays, though, so debased has the government become that it hardly elicits a passing headline. After all, it’s less than two years ago since the government itself quite openly announced its willingness to act illegally when the Internal Market Bill (IMB) was proposed. And, for all her ire, May herself did not feel sufficiently incensed to vote against the government, merely, along with a handful of other Tory MPs, to abstain.

The current NIPB situation

There are several possible interpretations of the current situation. One is that the second reading of the Bill is not the crucial moment. It has to go through many more stages, including what is likely to be substantial opposition in the House of Lords, before it becomes law. So May and other Tory critics of the Bill will have their chance to strike later. Another view is that, by contrast, when the objection is so fundamental as to regard the legislation as breaching international law it behoves its critics to oppose it wholeheartedly from the outset. It’s not as if any conceivable amendments could make it acceptable when the very principle of the Bill is objectionable.

On this point, it’s worth recalling that, throughout the entire Brexit process, Tory MPs on what might at different times have been variously called remainers, soft Brexiters, pragmatists, One Nationers, or semi-sensibles have been far, far less ruthless and less willing to rebel than their ERG counterparts. It used to be said that ‘loyalty is the Tory Party’s secret weapon’, but in recent years, if that has had any truth at all, it has only applied to the more traditional backbenchers. It hasn’t been true of the ERG, whose loyalty is solely to their own ‘party within a party’ and its priority of an ever more extreme position on Brexit. On this occasion, the ERG’s ludicrous ‘Star Chamber’ has signalled satisfaction (£) with the proposed legislation – as well it might, since it goes well beyond what even David Frost had been considering – but no one can doubt that, were it not satisfied, the ERG would act en bloc to vote against the government without any hesitation. That matters for what may be coming next, which I’ll return to.

A third interpretation is that potential Tory rebels like May will go along with the legislation in the expectation that, during its passage, some deal will be done with the EU so as to obviate the need for it, as happened with the illegal clauses of the IMB. Or, a different version of a similar idea, that they will accept it being passed in the expectation that its powers won’t be used, with a deal being done with the EU post-enactment, or perhaps that they will get it amended to require a further 'meaningful vote' (back to 2019 again!) to be held before its powers can be used.

On any interpretation there’s some way to go, because it may take the rest of the year to pass the legislation. But at some point during or after the passage of the NIPB there is a real possibility of this going very badly wrong, not just for Johnson and his government, but for the country.

As many analysts, including, most eloquently, Anton Spisak of the Tony Blair Institute, have pointed out, several of the proposals in the NIPB – notably those on so-called ‘dual regulation’ (i.e. NI firms choosing whether to produce and/or import goods which conform to either UK or to EU regulations) and on governance (i.e. removing almost all ECJ's role) – are simply unacceptable to the EU (and also opposed by Northern Irish business groups). Moreover, the NIPB mechanism of threatening unilateral changes removes all goodwill, as well as being seen as undermining the international order and the Western alliance at a crucial time. As Maros Sevcovic said in answer to a question this week “we are not going to negotiate when you have a gun on the table”. Indeed there are clear signs that both the EU, and key member states including Germany, have simply run out of patience with Johnson's government.

Thus, although the EU will continue to negotiate on the implementation of the Protocol, the NIPB has made it even less likely that it will agree anything even close to what the UK wants.

Johnson is backing himself into a corner

That would leave Johnson with only two options, neither of them good. If, either during or at the end of the NIPB legislative process, he climbs down with the EU, having incited the expectations of the ERG, his premiership is probably finished. It has to be understood that the Brexit Ultras have never accepted the need for, or legitimacy of, the Protocol or, in some cases, for any Protocol. They believe, I think genuinely, that the Protocol was going to be ditched and will hold Johnson to what he seems to have promised them, or at the very least allowed them to believe, about doing so. For that matter, Truss, now a sort of born-again Ultra, claims that she had only endorsed the original Protocol in the belief it would be changed. However, if Johnson pushes on to both pass and make use of the NIPB, perhaps ultimately leading to a trade war or at least significant EU retaliation, he might also be finished off by the other wing of his party.

What happens following either of those two scenarios is speculative, but would very likely be a leadership contest that could almost certainly only be won by a hard-line candidate promising to continue the battle with the EU to scrap the Protocol. In this sense, it would be wrong for decision-makers in the EU to view the current situation simply in terms of the travails of Johnson’s leadership: these are merely a particular manifestation of the continuing dynamics of the Tory Party and of Brexit itself, albeit given an extra twist by Johnson’s own character and conduct.

Admittedly it’s possible that there is a third scenario in which, as so often with Johnson, he finds some way of clinging on – it’s already notable the extent to which he’s using Ukraine as a life raft – and that he finds some fudges over the Protocol that enable him to keep going. For example, some version of the UK’s red and green lane proposal might conceivably be agreed, as it’s not a million miles from the EU’s ‘express lane’ proposal. But not only does that fall well short of what the NIPB says is vital, and what the ERG will continue to demand, it is also in itself unacceptable to hard line unionists (nor is it seen as workable by business groups).

So what is more probable is that, as has always been incipient in the Brexit process, this will be the point that the force of the Brexit Ultras’ unrelenting demands will finally collide with the unmoveable object of the core needs of the EU. If that is so, then not just the government but the country itself will be in a horrible mess, both economically and politically.

At the moment, what is happening with the NIPB probably doesn’t interest voters very much except in Northern Ireland (and, there, only 38% agree that unilateral action by the UK, as entailed by the NIPB, would be justified*), although as a new post on the LSE British politics blog argues, the Protocol and what happens about it has a direct and significant impact on Wales, and its ports especially. But as the NIPB process develops it may well, and certainly ought, to begin to register with a wider section of the public across the UK that Brexit was not ‘done’ in 2019-2020.

Similarly, whilst the NIPB has already caused the EU to commence/recommence legal actions and, perhaps more seriously, further delayed UK access to the Horizon programme, these things don’t directly impinge on the public. But if the NIPB is passed, and even more if it is used, then the UK is likely to face escalating economic sanctions. And though it’s likely that any significant retaliations from the EU will create a media-stoked bellicose nationalist backlash, it must also be likely that large swathes of  the public will conclude that Britain, whose “battered economy is sliding towards a breaking point” according to a Bloomberg article this week, simply can’t afford year after year of Brexit aggravation solely to satisfy the insatiable desire of the Brexit Ultras.

The government has created an ‘Irish quadrilemma’

The other aspect of the mess that is in prospect relates to the politics of Northern Ireland itself. The Protocol was never acceptable to the DUP and many other unionists, and it is sheer dishonesty on the part of the government to pretend that it did not know this when it created it, or that unionist opposition is some kind of unanticipated peril. But, whether the DUP liked it or not, the Protocol was an international agreement and as such did not require cross-community consent to create it. Nor does the periodic consent mechanism, with a vote in the Northern Ireland Assembly (NIA) on whether to continue with the Protocol, require cross-community consent, only the majority support of its members.

That it involved agreeing something which both he and Theresa May had said no Prime Minister could agree to is one of Johnson’s many shameful acts, the more shameful as it is clear that he never intended to stick to it. But what has happened since is in some ways even worse. For ever since the DUP’s refusal to take part in the power-sharing institutions following the NIA elections, the government has been pretending that cross-community consent to the Protocol is required, as part of an attempt to claim that it violates the Good Friday Belfast Agreement, even though at the time of creating the Protocol in October 2019 Johnson explicitly said the two agreements were "fully compatible" making specific reference to there being no need for cross-community consent.

In consequence of having now done a 180 degree turn on that position, if the UK and the EU don’t now agree something that satisfies the DUP then a continued or renewed boycott of power-sharing has been legitimated. And it’s unlikely that any outcome agreed with the EU will satisfy the DUP, because, whilst the DUP opposes the Protocol in its entirety, it has, as its latest publication on the subject shows, got no proposals for what to put in its place other than “free and unfettered trade within the United Kingdom” which is unachievable under Johnson’s Brexit. Moreover, if only for electoral reasons, the DUP is unlikely to accept any agreement because of pressure from the even more hard-line unionist groups.

The other side of this is that, even if there were any agreement between the UK and the EU which coaxed the DUP back into power-sharing, it would very possibly be unacceptable to the nationalist and non-aligned parties and their communities which, broadly speaking, support the present Protocol or at least a relatively unchanged version of it, and reject the approach of the NIPB. So what if they, and specifically Sinn Fein, then say that they won’t participate in the power-sharing institutions because this agreement, whatever it is, does not have the cross-community consent that the government have now set up as a requirement for it to be acceptable?

Thus the ludicrous – but not funny – situation has been set up whereby, in broad terms, those who don’t want Brexit itself (which of course had no cross-community consent) but who, given it happened, support the Protocol are now pitted against those who did want Brexit but don’t accept the consequences that led to the Protocol – and each side has been handed a veto by virtue of the government having opened up cross-community consent as the necessary condition for the post-Brexit arrangements.

To put it another way, ever since 2017 Brexit has been impaled on the hook of the ‘Irish trilemma’: the fact that, out of the triad of hard Brexit, an all-UK Brexit, and no Irish land border, only two were possible. Johnson’s ‘solution’ was to forgo an all-UK Brexit, by creating an Irish Sea border. It wasn’t a very good solution, but it’s the one the government chose (albeit lying about what that meant). Yet, bizarrely – except from the perspective of those Brexiters who never understood, or accepted, the trilemma – it has ever since tried to undermine it. As a result, through its own folly with the NIPB, the government is now in the process of creating a kind of ‘quadrilemma’ by, effectively, creating a choice between an Irish Sea border and Northern Ireland devolved government.

An emerging crisis

We’re not quite at the point where that choice has to be faced up to. It’s possible that Parliament will avert the folly of the NIPB and, somehow, a way will also be found to bring the DUP back into power-sharing despite this. And it’s conceivable (though barely so) that some kind of version of the Protocol and Irish Sea border will be agreed that satisfies the EU and the ERG, and is acceptable to all sides in Northern Ireland. But there’s no point in denying that the ingredients for multiple and interlocking crises now exist: a crisis in UK-EU relations with consequent crises for the UK economy and for the UK’s international reputation, and a crisis in Northern Irish politics with, very possibly, a crisis in the UK-US relationship as a result.

So the rather undramatic events in parliament this week may well come to be seen as the start of these crises. But, in fact, they started when the hard Brexiters embarked upon their vandalistic project not just in ignorance of what it involved, but proud of that ignorance, and sneeringly dismissive of those who warned them of its dangers. The likely consequences of the NIPB are only one part of the damage now visibly unfolding as a result of this vandalism. Other examples are the growing impetus in calls for Scottish independence (which may or may not be damaging to Scotland, but would certainly be damaging to the UK), and, it should never be forgotten, the continuing pain of EU citizens in the UK.

That’s even without mentioning the economic damage already accrued and still to come, as discussed many times on this blog, for which the latest evidence (£) is the release of official figures showing the worst quarterly balance of payments deficit since such figures were calculated in 1955. That economic damage may become even greater than expected if the government continues on Nadine Dorries’ planned path of divergence from EU GDPR rules, which may well lead to the UK losing EU recognition of the adequacy of its data protection regime, whilst entailing a double regulatory burden for UK firms trading with the EU.

Similar problems may attend other divergences (£) emerging from Jacob Rees-Mogg’s ironically mistitled ‘Brexit benefits’ portfolio, whilst his decision to postpone the introduction of import controls has prompted fresh expert warnings of the “significant risks” to food safety this week (for explanation of the little-understood reasons why this is so risky, see the relevant sections of my post in April). Predictably, Rees-Mogg dismissed these warnings with a flippant tweet. That things so important to the country’s well-being should be in the maladroit but fanatical hands of circus freaks like Dorries and Rees-Mogg, who but for Brexit would surely never have had sight of, let alone got hold of, the levers of power, must itself be counted as one of the costs of leaving the EU.

Overall, as the latest round-up by Yorkshire Bylines’ indefatigable Brexit commentator Anthony Robinson shows, there’s now a growing consensus that Brexit ‘isn’t working’ even if there’s no consensus on why – hard line Brexiters, inevitably, ascribe it to betrayal – or on what to do about it. It seems that the ‘Brexit of small things’, to use the term coined by Tom Hayes, may be beginning to bite, with a new survey showing some 45% thinking Brexit has made daily life worse and just 17% better (34% think no difference). That shows an interesting shift from a year ago when the figures were 30% worse, 10% better and 56% no difference, which might suggest that as people have more experience of Brexit effects, those experiences are twice as likely to be seen as negative as positive.

More generally, the latest polls show that 54% think Brexit is going badly, and just 16% well (20% think neither), and I’m afraid it is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, if indeed it does. As ever, whilst much of the reason for that is inherent to Brexit, some of it is a result of the cack-handed conduct of the Brexit government, with the NIPB being the latest example. In that respect, too, there is little difference between now and 2019.

 

 

*For detail on opinions about the Protocol in Northern Ireland, see the latest (June) ‘Testing the Temperature’ report from Queen’s University Belfast.