With courage and leadership, we can bring Brexit home
There was no such high drama on the front line in Afghanistan: the PM should show some military spirit, trust in the people and face her fears to make this a success, writes Johnny Mercer
Iwas in a Special Forces Operations room somewhere in southern Afghanistan watching the situation unfold. A Royal Marines patrol had been hit hard in a follow-up on an IED strike that had severely injured one of their colleagues. They had extracted the casualty at such a pace that his legs were left behind – severed in the blast. The Taliban were dancing, holding the Marine’s legs above their heads – a call had come in to launch our Special Forces Task Group to recover them.
The men were angry – they wanted to go on the job. The Squadron Commander was not convinced.
“I cannot lose a lifter (CH47 Chinook) over a pair of f------ legs,” he kept saying. “You think the lad would want that?”
“I think you’re wrong,” said one of the lads. “I know you do,” he replied.
I had an MQ9 Reaper on station, and was watching over the scene. I wanted to drop one on the whole lot of them and put an end to the macabre scene. “We’re not going. We’re not doing it. Let it go,” said the Squadron Commander.
What happened then was what mattered. There was no harrumphing. No one threatened to resign. We just got on with it.
The following week we had been tracking a target for a couple of months, and the windows to get him were getting ever smaller. One evening there was a small chance we might have him in a bed-down location. The blokes thought he wasn’t there, and it was a dangerous folly.
I was on the fence – I couldn’t definitively say one way or the other. The Squadron Commander made a decision – “We’re going on it.”
Again, there was no high drama. No one threatened to resign. Despite knowing they could be killed on something they thought was a waste of time.
The dynamics at play here were two way – no doubt about it – from the Squadron Commander to the men, and from the men to the Squadron Commander. Officers get a hard time in the military, and rightly so. But ultimately it works because both ends of the spectrum trust each other – the commanded and the commanding.
Values, ethos, judgment, selfsacrifice, classlessness, relentless pursuit of excellence – these are not just soundbites, they make the system work, and are the real reason why we as a country have the most effective and professional fighting forces on earth.
Contrast this with the House of Commons today. At perhaps the moment of greatest political challenge the country has seen for 50 years, we see perhaps the greatest political collapse in 50 years – of leadership on both sides.
It must not be allowed to happen. Everyone knows my views thus far. There is no point repeating them, but safe to say my assessment in November may have been a little optimistic. I voted against the deal because the PM signed us up to different arrangements for Northern Ireland when she promised for so long she wasn’t going to. I think it’s genuinely dangerous – both blundering into being a junior partner in an international relationship we cannot unilaterally leave – and going against what you have said previously. No British PM could ever do, and treat Northern Ireland differently to the rest of the UK. Trust, leadership, values – we must uphold them to the British people. The deal did not.
What is required now is quite simple – we need some of those values back again, particularly courage and leadership, and I would encourage our PM and my colleagues to show it.
Are we brave enough to face down the prospect of leaving the European Union without a deal if that’s what it takes to keep the promise that has
‘Values, ethos, judgment, self-sacrifice, classlessness, relentless pursuit of excellence – these are not just soundbites’
‘People expect us to commit to the task, including risking everything, in order to fulfil their wishes. Serve to lead’
been made to the British people? Do we have the courage to accept that while it is clearly not what we wanted, we must and we will look it in the face and stare it down on behalf of our country?
The European Union clearly think we haven’t the minerals for the fight.
There is no chance of any movement on the ridiculous backstop arrangements in Northern Ireland so long as we cower from no deal. So we must prepare to leave without a deal – like it or not, as we should have done from the beginning.
We owe it to the people who voted for Brexit in numbers not seen in this country before. The hope, the promise of Brexit must not be failed at this critical moment for fear of failure. If ministers feel they are unable to meet this challenge then they should resign – of course. Threatening resignation publicly is never endearing – to the public or your peers. Either do it or keep quiet. It serves no purpose. The weakness of too many of May’s chosen ministerial team has been our Achilles’ heel in constituencies like mine on too many occasions.
Simultaneously, we must put all efforts into removing the backstop arrangements. A deal is far more preferable, of course it is. There was a lot of good in the PM’S deal. Those who say it is awful are being disingenuous. It answers a lot of queries – on qualifications, citizens’ rights and for businesses. But on balance, the view of the House of Commons is that the backstop outweighs these positives – it’s as simple as that.
So now people expect us to live out that good negotiating strategy we laid out at the beginning: that no deal is better than a bad deal. They expect us to actually do what we said we would.
We are politicians – our trade is representing the people. They expect us to commit to the task, including risking everything, in order to fulfil their wishes. Serve to Lead.
And then when the dust settles, if it does go horribly wrong, they will back us anyway. Because at least we tried. We parked self-interest and self-doubt; we learnt from Brexit that the more the establishment tell the British people it won’t work, the more they just don’t believe us. We recognise the seismic change in politics that Brexit represents, where for the first time people voted for politics over economics in the face of severe threat of financial collapse. We can either sneer at it and claim people didn’t know what they voted for.
Or we learn from it.
And you never know – the courage to stare it down, the courage to see it through to the last (the EU don’t want no deal either) – may finally yield the result we all so desperately crave – a better deal. I suspect it actually might, the EU has form on this, but we have to be prepared to see out this brinkmanship. And you never know, we might gain some respect back in to politics in the process, and for Britain on the world stage.
Courage is infectious. If the PM shows it now, she’ll find plenty of support on her back benches.
Supreme challenge requires the best of all of us, leaders and the led.
Time to show it.