The legacy of Boris
By Pete North - December 28, 2020
Regular readers will know we have some sympathy for Theresa May. May was confronted an impossible task of trying to reconcile the realities of modern trade with the delusions of the ERG, forcing her to look for alternative ways to square the circle, and was led to believe by her think tank advisers that she could reinvent the single market without being a formal member of it. The result being a dogs dinner (Chequers) that nobody understood, didn’t trust, and was never going to be acceptable to Brussels anyway.
May repeatedly attempted to subvert the sequencing, unaware that the EU was not legally able to oblige her, which again was a result of her advisers failing to comprehend how the system worked. When she finally came to terms with reality, her options were all hugely suboptimal. She chose the least worst solution, but this wasn’t acceptable to the ERG who ultimately viewed Northern Ireland expendable and an acceptable price for their deregulation delusion, thus installed Johnson to do their bidding.
One can say that May’s performance was indeed lamentable but in the same circumstances with the same fundamental misapprehensions circulating in tory think tankery, it is unlikely any other PM would have fared better. To her credit she at least knew no-deal was not a credible threat. Johnson, on the other hand, completely misread the EU and handed over NI in order to save face when he couldn’t renegotiate the deal and the threat of no-deal didn’t work.
Consequently a part of the UK remains, in effect, part of the EU customs territory and under ECJ jurisdiction, while the rest of the UK is subject to the full array of official controls and customs formalities, while also placing a customs border through the middle of our own territory. By that estimation, however bad May was, Johnson is a magnitude worse.
In a strategic sense, the hardliners played their cards well. They may have thrown Northern Ireland under the bus, but most will quickly forget since NI is so very often an after thought. For this week, Johnson is the conquering hero who brought home a deal in just one year, succeeding where May had failed.
For time being, it doesn’t even particularly matter what is or isn’t in the deal so long as it meets the rudimentary tests of breaking from EU law and ECJ jurisdiction, ending freedom of movement and controlling our own waters.
That, though, creates a whole new reality for us to adapt to. One in which business finds it increasingly difficult to operate in, where European importers of UK goods will soon conclude they don’t want the red tape and commensurate liabilities and will take their business elsewhere.
But of course, this was always a risk inherent to any mode of departure, to one extent or another, and this was always a gamble, in the belief that whatever European trade we sacrificed we could compensate for some other way. To the layman, this is already paying off as Liz Truss boats “new” deals virtually every other day. The propaganda is working, and no doubt “free ports” will be a celebrated component of the “levelling up” agenda, whether they add value or not. To Tories, it doesn’t matter if Brexit is a success just so long as those who voted for them believe it is.
Presently it feels like they’ve got away with it but we are not in consequences territory yet. There’s only so much can be blamed on Covid. Lorry parks fulling up at Dover and Holyhead are solely a consequence of botched negotiations, as are the subsequent price rises. The implications of “hard Brexit” are barely understood by the media, but the stead drips from the crack in the dam will soon become a deluge where the Tory spin machine, even at its best cannot cover for Johnson.
Ultimately Johnson’s legacy will be closer to Lord North than Winston Churchill or Margaret Thatcher. Johnson’s “victory” over Europe is fleeting while longer term consequences, unlike those of Thatcher, cannot be argued as inevitable or necessary. Right now he’s looking like the man who gave away Northern Ireland, drove Scotland to the brink of independence, destroyed millions of jobs and soured relations with our closest natural allies. Only the creative writing of The Spectator could write that up as anything other than a spectacular failure.