Politics

Boris Johnson, Brexit Tactics and a Broken Kingdom

The United Kingdom's new Brexit strategy under Boris Johnson is 'do or die'.

Analysing public opinion, this might look like a fundamental departure from the more conciliatory tactics of Theresa May’s government. Having realised that the UK holds none of the cards, Boris Johnson is adopting brinkmanship tactics that are precipitating the country in a constitutional crisis, as well as burning bridges with its European allies. Boris Johnson is also willing to propose new and radical ideas that challenge the legal status quo. Even though those have mostly been laughable up to this point, the latest item on the list is a proposed  separation between the European Union and Ireland to circumvent the backstop. Johnson is also determined to take the UK out of the EU at any cost, even without a deal.

It’s All About Power

Fundamentally, however, this is no departure at all. Boris Johnson is merely bringing the original Brexit strategy to its logical conclusion, and all elements cited were present and indeed pivotal to what the European Research Group in the Conservative party was calling for in the spring of 2016. This leads us to the single, most overlooked aspect of Brexit. The UK’s departure from the EU is not about economic wealth, opposition to regulation, internal British cohesion, or recovering lost national sovereignty. When polled on the subject, Brexiteers are the first to claim they are ready to sacrifice all of these things (including giving up Northern Ireland) for the sake of seeing the Brexit national project completed. No, the inescapable truth is that Brexit is about power.

Brexit Is A Leadership Challenge Against The EU

Power is a word seldom used in European politics these days. Two world wars, the Cold War and countless totalitarian experiences have made Europeans generally wary of talking about politics in any way that could resemble “the old way” of doing things. And yet, from the very start, London framed the Brexit negotiations as a problem of great power competition, and as a leadership challenge against Brussels.

To this effect, in 2016 and 2017, Britain tried to implement a strategy of divide and conquer. London was adamant that it would bypass the European Commission to sign bilateral deals with individual EU Member States, and particularly with the one Member State they considered to be in charge – Germany. This intention was publicly stated multiple times. In May 2016, David Davis said there would be no need to negotiate with the European Commission, because “the first calling point of the UK’s negotiator immediately after Brexit will not be Brussels, it will be Berlin, to strike a deal”. Later, he also said that “post-Brexit, a UK-German deal would include free access for their cars and industrial goods, in exchange for a deal on everything else.”

Facing a national political headache: Boris Johnson

A “Broken” Kingdom

At first, it might appear stunning that a modern country could stake so much of its national security on a strategy with so little connection with reality. In order to explain it, we have to see the Brexit negotiations through the lens of British political leadership, which has long lived in an embattled mental universe where old, unimaginative strategies of great power competition are dusted off again to secure British power against a changing world. Confronted with the Great Recession and the rise of new powers, the UK lashed out against its close ally, and devised a singularly suicidal strategy whose main purpose was to destroy the European Union.

This is no hyperbole. The British strategy of “cherry-picking” was meant specifically to “blow up” the legal coherence of the European Union. After all, if each Member State broke rank to sign its own deal with the UK, the logic underpinning the four freedoms would be fatally undermined. To paint a stark picture of the scope of the challenge: should the EU wish to retaliate in kind, it could offer Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland immediate EU membership if they secede from the UK. It hasn’t, so far. However, that is the level of aggression the UK brought to the table in 2016, and that aggression has, so far, backfired. This could also cause the UK to splinter: if Scotland and Northern Ireland do secede, it will be karmic justice and they will only have themselves to blame.

Everything On The Line

Once we have accepted the startling fact that the UK began the Brexit negotiations in the worst possible faith – that is, with the open objective of ending the EU – let us look at what the UK has lost, or stand to lose, as a result of this act of diplomatic aggression. The damage done by Brexit to every aspect of British life, politics, and economy is monumental enough as to make a complete survey impossible with a single article, but the cliff notes alone make the whole phenomenon beggar belief.

The British economy is already suffering contraction and the forecasts are so grim as to only be comparable with what would happen during a war. The value of the Pound has deteriorated and, as starkly outlined by the Bank of England, British finance has irrevocably tied itself to the Chinese Communist Party. The threats to British territorial integrity, as well as to the steady delivery of foodstuffs and medicine, are openly acknowledged. Furthermore, the three years it took to negotiate the Withdrawal Agreement are just the beginning. Even if Boris Johnson does lead the UK out on October 31st without a deal, Brexit will absorb the country’s administrative and political preoccupations for the next ten or fifteen years, while the rest of the world marches on.

A devaluating currency

A (Trade) Deal or Not?

Trade is a policy area where the catastrophic consequences of Brexit become readily apparent. After leaving the Union, the UK will have to renegotiate all of the free trade agreements it is currently a part of thanks to the EU (a number estimated to be at least 759). Last year, London asked its international partners to keep the current trade agreements in place when it leaves the EU – meaning that the UK would still be considered part of the EU for trading purposes. This only makes sense, since there is no way you can renegotiate hundreds of trade agreements in mere weeks. However, things are not quite so simple: the UK’s trading partners are salivating at the opportunity to impose new, lopsided trade deals on London, which will, after all, be forced to renegotiate them from a position of weakness.

Japan, which has since set up the largest free trade agreement in recorded history together with the European Union, expressed their willingness to renegotiate a trade agreement with the UK only after their gigantic deal with the EU has undergone full implementation. A government spokesmen in Tokyo specifically claimed that the EU would receive priority because they are the bigger market, and that negotiations with the UK would have to reflect its diminished status as a lone trading partner. A British-Indian trade deal has also been put on the back-burner while the emerging economy negotiates with the EU. Moreover, Indian authorities have informed the UK that if it wants a separate deal, it will have to include migration clauses to allow more Indian immigrants on British soil. One wonders how Brexiteers will react to that particular clause.

The View from America

In an exquisite display of ‘just desserts’, however, the country in the best position to exploit the UK after Brexit is none other than Trump’s United States, the very partner on which Boris Johnson is counting to get the Brexit he wants and draw a fault line in the middle of the Atlantic that more and more resembles an economic cold war. American candor on the matter is startling. Former US treasury secretary Larry Summers made the headlines when he claimed that the United States would dominate London, since “Britain has no leverage. Britain is desperate. Britain has nothing else.” And yet this very trade deal is precisely what pro Brexit MPs claim is going to be one of the greatest benefits of leaving the EU.

A Case of Chronic Political Myopia

This, more than ever, dispels the argument that Brexit is about sovereignty. When they operate alone, European countries are the plaything of globally relevant empires. Stuck between American trade and Chinese finance, British sovereignty will be forsaken more permanently and more surely than it ever could have in the sovereignty-pooling environment that is the EU. When one factors in the extensive economic damage and the openly acknowledged possibility that Northern Ireland and Scotland could go their own ways, the economic factor and national cohesion are also ruled out.

Only one possibility is left: Brexit is, indeed, about power politics. Britain is willing to wreck itself for a generation or more, all for the sake of destroying the EU, in a deranged hope that this will somehow save the UK from international irrelevance. This is the story of a former empire reacting with anger to the Great Recession and globalisation by lashing out against its closest allies, even if it costs everything.

The essence of power politics is to propose bold strategies that go beyond the existing status quo: trying to break the legal foundations of the adversary. The British attack on the legalistic coherence of the four freedoms was this. It failed because Member States consider the EU a primary security institution, because their trust of a partner that just walked out on them is minimal, and because the European Commission refused to be sidelined, but the British intent was unmistakable. So far, the EU has not openly considered retaliation. But with Britain racing off the cliff, it might be time to reconsider that option, offer Scotland and Northern Ireland immediate EU membership upon secession, and show London, including Boris Johnson, that in power politics, acts of aggression have consequences.

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Tullio Pontecorvo

Student of political science and international relations, co-founder of My Country? Europe. Aspiring sci-fi author. Believes shooting aliens in the face to be the ultimate form of gaming.

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