“Where are you heading?” The “you” in this context is Britain. The question is one I hear over and again each time I venture beyond its shores. Much as the convulsions over Brexit have paralysed Westminster politics and poisoned the national discourse, they are cause for confusion and sorrow among friends and allies. How could such a sane, stable democracy so lose its way? I always struggle for an answer.
Boris Johnson takes a different view. Let’s get Brexit done, the prime minister booms. He has bet the bank — his own premiership anyway — on this glib general election slogan. All that’s required is that the voters back the deal he struck with the EU and, hey presto, the nation will be reborn. Goodbye craven fealty to Brussels, welcome Global Britain.
A charitable interpretation says this is simply plain nonsense. The one certain thing about the election is that, whatever the outcome, it will not settle Brexit. Mr Johnson’s so-called deal is no more than a jumping off point for years of wrangling about the future relationship between Britain and the EU. And it risks another “no-deal” cliff edge at the end of 2020.
The alternative view is that we should not be surprised by the latest in the litany of prime ministerial lies. Nick Boles, one of the former Conservative ministers who has quit the party in protest at its hardline Brexit stance, once worked for Mr Johnson. He calls him “a compulsive liar who has betrayed every single person he has ever had any dealings with”.
Mendacity aside, the Tory assessment of the national mood may be right. Three years of argument and paralysis have left plenty of voters — some on the Remain side — telling pollsters they want nothing more than “closure”. It helps that, in Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour party has a far-left leader seen by many pro-Europeans as unfit for office. Their view, incidentally, is widely shared among Labour candidates.
The demand for a resolution reaches beyond Brexit-leaning voters. Business hates uncertainty. It has investment decisions to take. Britain’s European partners have better things to do than negotiate and renegotiate the terms of its departure. Any deal, however bad, you hear otherwise intelligent people say, must surely be better than the present deadlock.
Brexit has scrambled traditional party allegiances. Mr Corbyn, a hardline 1970s-style socialist, abandoned the centre ground in politics some years ago. More interested in the revolutionary politics of Latin America than in the condition of Britain’s welfare state, he has alienated many traditional Labour voters. An exodus of the moderate-minded has likewise left Mr Johnson leading a party better described as English Nationalists than Conservatives.
He looks comfortable in the role. His pal, US President Donald Trump, has given him some tips, among them that culture counts above economics. Mr Johnson has thrown overboard the Tories’ allegiance to sound finance in favour of a spending splurge targeted at voters in towns and regions denuded by deindustrialisation. More money for the health service sits alongside the promise of tough policies on immigration and law and order. The prime minister seems indifferent to the risk that the hard Brexit he wants would be a perfect launch pad for Scottish independence and the break-up of the UK union.
The irony often missed in all this is that the best chance of settling Brexit would be an election outcome that saw a strong performance by the pro-European Liberal Democrats denying an overall majority to either of the main parties. Another House of Commons deadlock would create an irresistible demand for a second referendum to break the impasse. The ballot papers in the British first-past-the-post electoral system do not include a specific vote for a hung parliament. They do allow for tactical choices to maximise the possibility.
The pollsters think a Conservative majority more likely. If they are right, Britain will leave the EU at the end of January 2020 and then spend the next several years trying to decide what that means. The argument will be about much more than the technical terms under which it trades with the EU. It will ask instead what sort of the nation Britain has become and how it can prosper in a disorderly world without a voice on its home continent.
Mr Johnson and his fellow Brexiters do not have any sort of answer. Some — usually the ones who have never been there — talk about a European “Singapore”. Others assume naively that Mr Trump would be keen to revive an imagined “Anglosphere” of English speaking democracies. Others still, have no interest in internationalism — the votes being sought by Mr Johnson in Britain’s poorest areas belong to those who want to throw up barricades against foreign competition and migrants.
During the 2016 referendum the Brexiters avoided these contradictions simply by refusing to discuss Britain’s future outside of the EU. Mr Johnson’s silly construct of a “global Britain” is intended to serve the same purpose — it means whatever anyone wants it to mean. More than three years later, they still refuse to engage in the debate. If Mr Johnson wins the election, however, they will be forced to answer the question asked by its friends abroad. Where is Britain heading? As far as one can see, they have no idea.
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November 14, 2019 at 12:01PM
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One thing is certain: Britain’s election will not settle Brexit - Financial Times
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