National Post (National Edition)
How Boris Johnson — and Britain — came to this place
The long nightmare of Britain’s relations with the European Union, the greatest failing of British government since the American Revolution, is finally coming to a climax. The flamboyant former mayor of London, Boris Johnson, is almost certain to be the next leader of the British Conservative Party and prime minister. The crisis began when former prime minister David Cameron promised “full-on treaty change” and came back from Brussels with less than Neville Chamberlain brought back from Munich. He had promised a referendum offering his almost imperceptibly altered treaty or a complete break, Brexit it is called, certain that his countrymen could not possibly vote to leave Europe. If he had brought back May’s eventual proposal, voters would have approved it.
As it became clear that the referendum campaign was closer than had been anticipated, Cameron and his chancellor, George Osborne, and the governor of the Bank of England, Canadian Mark Carney, produced “Project Fear” — a shameful and ludicrous attempt to frighten the country into voting to remain in the EU with blood-curdling predictions of economic ruin in the event of Brexit. Cameron went the day after the narrow referendum defeat. May was the almost-certain successor, as home secretary, as Osborne went with Cameron, and the foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, was new on the job. Johnson declined to run against May and instead accepted the Foreign Office as Hammond became chancellor. It is doubtful
that May ever wanted to leave the EU.
May faced a Remain parliament and caucus, and a proLeave electorate. She responded to her challenging task with four successive catastrophic blunders: she gambled that she could get a majority in parliament with a compromise with Brussels that was neither leave nor remain. Then she pulled the trigger on leaving Europe with no plan in place for the compromise she was seeking. Next she called an election she did not need, to try to elect more Conservatives, and lost her majority, leaving her government dependent on the supporters of the late Northern Irish Protestant firebrand, Ian Paisley. And then she made the supreme error of any negotiation and made it clear that Britain had to have a deal with Brussels, which encouraged the sclerotic bureaucracy in the EU to put Britain to the wall.
The European Union is one of those rare issues in modern British history that overrides party loyalty, like the repeal of the Corn Laws in the 1840s — Robert Peel and Benjamin Disraeli split the Conservative party for nearly 30 years, and imperial free trade, which split the Conservatives again for 20 years at the beginning of the past century between Arthur Balfour and Joseph Chamberlain. May always had more than a hundred of her Conservative MPs against her attempts at accommodation, and was in constant peril of tumbling into an election, which angry polls indicated could have been won by the Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn, an anti-Semitic Marxist boob.
The Conservative Party grandees and caucus leaders finally pulled the plug on the floundering prime minister and she announced her resignation with dignity. Johnson, always a Leaver, led the polls among members of parliament from the start and all indications are that he will also win easily enough in the second stage of the British Conservative leadership process, a postal ballot among the 160,000 members of the Conservative constituency associations, which is in progress now. Parliament will then take its summer recess and return on Sept. 3. Johnson, who evicted the far-left from the government of London, is an electrifying public personality and with a purposeful and logical approach to Brexit, he can be relied upon to open a substantial public approval lead over the unfeasible Corbyn.
While the Leave victory in the referendum was just 52-48, almost two-thirds of Britain’s parliamentary constituencies voted to leave, so Johnson has in his back pocket the ability to win an election on the issue, even if he has to form an alliance with the original Brexit leader, Nigel Farage, who swept the anachronistic Euro-elections in May. Johnson has astutely pledged to attempt to gain a satisfactory compromise with Brussels on a genuine departure from the EU, but unlike Theresa May, he has made it clear he would rather leave without an arrangement with Brussels, “crash out” as the Project Fear leaders call it, than make a pretend exit as May pursued.
This is precisely the formula that should have been used from the beginning. Brussels should finally realize that the departure of Britain would be like the departure of Texas from the United States, and when Project Fear is exposed as the fraud that it is (and Carney’s role here has been discreditable), other countries will defect from Europe also; it is not really democratic government. Britain is Europe’s second economy after Germany, and by far its most respected nationality, given its immense contribution to Western civilization and heroic role as a pioneer and principal defender of democracy in the world. Where British political institutions have evolved in a generally continuous manner for 950 years and in a thoroughly law-abiding devolution of events since the return of Charles II in 1660, no other large European country has had the same governmental system for more than 75 years and some of them are in rickety condition now. The correlation of forces between a tottering Brussels and a purposefully led United Kingdom never justified the pompous complacency of Brussels, and of the feckless German and French leaders, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron.
Nor was there ever any rationale for Britain to sacrifice its institutions and foreign policy that served it well for centuries with whatever might emerge from the confusion of Europe. The dream was that Europe had ruled the world prior to the First World War in 1914 and although it had produced communism and fascism and Nazism, it could, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of international communism, dispense with its American liberators and guardians and stand on each other’s shoulders and regain the leadership of the world. It was a romantic but an absurd notion. And within it is the perverse authoritarianism of the Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourg Brussels leadership, avenging the frustrations of centuries of condescension from the Great Powers of Europe.
As its empire dissolved, Britain achieved in moving from the top tier of the world’s powers to the second echelon, the most elegant such descent of any country forced to make one (i.e. France, Russia, Germany or Japan). Since then Britain has been in search of a role. The last attempt at independent great power initiative was the Suez fiasco of 1956. After 15 years of muddling through, Britain put Canada and Australia over the side and plunged headlong into Europe in the early ’70s. (Canada and Australia have performed better than Europe has.) This was reversed a decade later by Margaret Thatcher’s revival with Ronald Reagan of the Churchill-Roosevelt Anglo-American alliance. The earlier arrangement led to victory in the Second World War and the reprise gained victory in the Cold War. Unfortunately, this arrangement ended with the departure from office of its two leaders, and there was an uncertain return to Europe followed by the pellmell deluge of events of the past three years. (To speak of a Johnson-Trump relationship may only be premature by a few weeks.)
Every civilized person rejoices in the good relations that now exist between all of the western and central European countries. But the possibility of those countries coalescing into a functioning confederation appears to have been a mirage, as many of Europe’s greatest leaders, including Charles de Gaulle and Margaret Thatcher, predicted.
Boris Johnson believes he can hold his party together with a firm stance with Brussels, and, if necessary, with a hard exit, even if he needs to join forces with Nigel Farage and return to the country on this vexed issue one more time. He should prove a capable and agile leader who can cause Britain to find its way again after decades of wandering between options. In any arrangement to enliven the relationship between the advanced Commonwealth countries or the English-speaking countries generally, there is room for Canada to play an important role.
THE EUROPEAN UNION IS ONE OF THOSE RARE ISSUES IN MODERN BRITISH HISTORY THAT OVERRIDES PARTY LOYALTY, LIKE THE REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS IN THE 1840s.
THE LAST ATTEMPT AT INDEPENDENT GREAT POWER INITIATIVE WAS THE SUEZ FIASCO OF 1956.