Boris Johnson knows Brussels better than anyone. He’s not bluffing about no-deal
Boris isn’t bluffing. Every action, every appointment, every word since he entered No 10 signals the same thing: Britain is leaving the EU on October 31. Among Brussels officials, there is still a lazy assumption that the new Prime Minister will be, as they see it, chastened by reality. The United Kingdom, Eurocrats believe, will not leave without a deal, however harsh and unreasonable its terms. Three years of dealing with Theresa May have convinced them that Brits always back down in the end.
The new PM, fonctionnaires tell one another, faces the same constraints as the old one. He, too, will be boxed in by a Europhile Parliament and a civil service that is dead set against rupture. Boris is also, they believe, frivolous. Sure, he made all sorts of statements to get himself elected; but, now that he is in office, the theory goes, he will have to listen to the serious men, the experts, the mandarins. Au contraire, messieurs. There is nothing unserious about Britain’s new leader. I have known Boris for 25 years and he is the cleverest man I have worked with. Sure, he is well-mannered enough to keep his sharpness under wraps, but don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that his Falstaffian persona implies intellectual levity.
He knows exactly what he is doing, especially when it comes to Brussels – the place he went to school, and to which he returned in 1989 as The
Daily Telegraph’s correspondent. No British politician has a keener appreciation of how the EU works, how its policies are made, how its deals are brokered. Where Mrs May deferred instinctively to her civil servants, Boris understands this subject better than they do.
Mrs May liked to promote ministers in her own image – ministers, that is, who followed official advice and rarely rocked the boat. Even in normal times, this would have been a mistake: the primary task of a minister, after all, is to make the civil service work for the general public, rather than for itself. But at a time when Britain is embarked on a course that its standing bureaucracy detests, cautious ministers are a disaster.
The thoroughness with which Boris has cleared out the ministerial ranks is the clearest indicator that he means business. Any lingering doubt is dispelled by his readiness to bring in Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings – the two men who, more than any others, have made it their mission to bring our administrative state under democratic control.
What happens next? There is a small possibility that the EU might compromise. Plenty of its leaders concede, in private, that there is a logical case for dropping the Irish backstop. The choice, after all, is between losing the backstop and keeping everything else (the money, citizens’ rights, etc) and losing the whole lot. But, as Boris is well aware, the EU’s attitude has as much to do with face as with logic. The backstop has taken on symbolic importance in Brussels. A scheme originally devised to keep the UK permanently subject to EU trade policy has been publicly presented as a guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement, and some Eurocrats have talked themselves into half-believing it.
In Dublin, where the issue is better understood, no one seriously thinks that there will be a physical border, deal or no deal. The trouble is that the backstop has now become a matter of national pride. Although every estimate suggests that a no-deal outcome would hit Ireland worse than the UK, Leo Varadkar’s interests do not overlap with those of his country. Leading a slightly poorer Ireland, but being hailed as a tough-minded patriot, must seem more appealing than leading a slightly richer Ireland (for which he would get no credit) while being howled down as a West Brit.
So let’s consider the likelier scenario, namely that the EU sticks to its guns. “[Boris] seems to have made a deliberate decision to set Britain on a collision course with the European Union and Ireland in relation to the Brexit negotiations,” said Simon Coveney, Ireland’s foreign minister, rather huffily. What will happen at the moment of actual collision?
There are two possibilities. Either Britain leaves with no trade deal, or Parliament blocks that option, triggering a general election. I say “no trade deal” rather than “no deal” because I have voted as an MEP on more than a dozen measures providing for continuity in aviation, road haulage and so on. Still, tariffs and other trade barriers are a challenge. Although, in theory, the EU and the UK could agree a simple “zero-for-zero” tariff deal pending talks on a more ambitious treaty, in practice we must be ready for a more vindictive attitude. At every stage so far, Brussels has put politics before economics, making it clear that it is prepared to see all sides suffer if necessary.
So how would Britain respond to an EU that, following no deal, made good on its threat to make commerce conditional on the backstop? In such a situation, we would have no choice. Rather than negotiate under duress, we would need to pivot to the Anglosphere, prioritising trade deals with the United States and the Commonwealth.
If an intervening election has to be fought on that basis, so be it. I have little doubt that the country would vote for Boris and Brexit over Corbyn and communism.
As one of the thousand-and-more biographers of Winston Churchill, Boris will remember how his private secretary, Jock Colville, recalled the beginning of the great man’s premiership: “Seldom can a prime minister have taken office with the establishment so dubious of the choice and so prepared to find its doubts justified.”
Colville added that the mood had changed within a fortnight. While the stakes this time are (thank heaven) vastly lower, I have no doubt that a similar optimism will quickly overtake the country. The Conservatives will soon start rising in the polls – which might, paradoxically, mean that Labour MPs baulk at an early election, and that Boris gets his Brexit on time.
Either way, it’s morning again in Britain.
There is a small possibility the EU might compromise. But its attitude has as much to do with face as with logic