Is the EU plotting to topple the Prime Minister?
It’s the final showdown, and Brussels has chilling form when it comes to suppressing member states
It was like watching a hostage bite at their torturer’s dead grip, before making magnificently to flee. A cornered No 10 got the better of a complacent Brussels this week, leaking details of a phone call in which Angela Merkel exposed the bad faith with which Brussels has negotiated for years. This bolshy move has given Mr Johnson a much-needed upper hand in the “blame game” as talks collapse. It has also sent Brussels into papershuffling paroxysms of pathological fury. The EU will now deploy every instrument of imperial torture in its toolbox to destabilise Boris Johnson, maybe even topple him.
As extreme as this sounds, it is worth remembering that Brussels is in the business of undermining European governments that refuse to toe the line. Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi maintains that he was ousted at the height of the eurozone crisis by conspiring EU officials, and replaced by a government of technocrats led by Mario Monti (a former EU commissioner, no less). During the same period, Brussels forced Ireland to accept a punitive bailout, which precipitated the downfall of the sourly uncooperative Brian Cowen.
Full regime change has not always proved necessary, of course – the EU is talented not so much at tying the hands of democratically elected mavericks as screwing their thumbs. Take the EU debtor colony, Greece, where Left-wing populist Alex Tsipras was tormented with tactics ranging from post-truth information chaos to maddening negotiational “sequencing” In 2015, he accepted astonishing bailout terms despite having a referendum mandate to torpedo them.
Why wouldn’t Brussels apparatchiks seek to abuse the UK Government using similar methods? Although Britain is not economically vulnerable in the same way as Greece, Italy or Ireland to the EU’S financial black magic, it is already waging a war of attrition against the Prime Minister, safe in the knowledge that Remainer MPS are determined to block a general election until at least spring 2020.
Although the French yesterday said that a second referendum or general election might be the conditions of an extension, it is more likely that Brussels will deliberately grant the Prime Minister a fudged and essentially pointless delay. This would be just about tolerable if the PM were to spend this time negotiating a pact with the Brexit Party and ferociously planning for no deal. But government sources are briefing that Mr Johnson wants to fight the eventual election on a confusing “my deal or no deal” platform to appease centrist Tories.
Brussels will seize on this to lure Mr Johnson into another round of talks, which will again swing between controlled detonations of tyrannical silence and painfully circular discussions, barbwired with polite threats. If the EU strategises like Stalin, it speaks like a Google-translated Luxembourgian management book.
The EU may also try to blow up the Government by trashing the idea of a managed no-deal exit. Instead of “side deals” to mitigate against disruption, they could commit to “unilateral contingency measures” which, in theory, invite London to reciprocate on an equal footing but, in practice, utterly shaft Britain (for example, allowing UK flights into the EU, in order to allow EU flights into the UK – but not allowing UK airlines to fly within the EU). It would be selfdestructive for the EU to weaponise no-deal preparations in this way. But EU psycho-bureaucratic logic judges the impact of all things relatively, not objectively. Thus it is fine to sabotage an orderly no deal, because Britain would be worse hit than the EU.
Then there is the open dealing with the Government’s political opponents. The president of the European Parliament admitted yesterday that he had met John Bercow and discussed how to stop a clean-break Brexit. Perhaps the intention is to send a message to British voters that the PM is too extreme to negotiate with, so there is a need for undemocratic back channels with the “adults” in Parliament.
Such collusion might also have helpfully practical consequences. Brussels could explode into confected consternation, and make an immediate demand for clarification, if Mr Johnson signs the letter requesting an extension, but sends a separate communiqué stating that No 10 does not want to stay in the EU. Such gothic global theatre would provide a useful backdrop for the launch of a leaky impeachment case against the Prime Minister (the Establishment will need a lot of black political sequins to cover up all those legal gaping holes).
Rumours are rife that Mr Bercow, a man with a chip on his shoulder and despotism tattooed on his soul, will arrogate to himself the power to choose Britain’s next EU Commissioner, before appointing Amber Rudd. Brussels would then seek to derail Mr Johnson in the chaos of “two-track” Brexit talks.
Such antics are usually the preserve of superpowers seeking to bring about regime change in small states. But this is the frightening self-assessment of the delirious and dangerous EU.