The Guardian view on Boris Johnson in Brussels: not to be trusted
Boris Johnson got where he is today by telling lies about Europe. He made stories up as a journalist. He told fibs on an industrial scale in the referendum campaign. Now he is telling whoppers as prime minister too. There was an “oven-ready” EU trade deal. Not true. The chances of no deal were “absolutely zero”. Same again. Britain was prepared for any outcome after 31 December. Utterly false. The prospect of EU tariffs on British goods was “totally and utterly absurd”. Another porkie.
Mr Johnson was again having us on when he gave the impression that he was going to Brussels on Wednesday to get an EU withdrawal trade deal over the line. A good deal is there to be done, he told the Commons. But in the evening it was the very opposite. Mr Johnson arrived in Brussels to tell the EU that Britain was not ready to make a fisheries agreement, would never accept the European court of justice as the arbiter on future disputes, and could not agree to any form of agreement on trading standards that tied Britain’s hands to EU rules. The two sides now remain far apart, the Commons was told on Thursday.
A prime minister who wanted a deal to continue trading with this country’s largest market would not have said any of this. The fishing industry is not so large that its needs should prevent a wider agreement. There is no overriding reason of practice or principle why an arbitration system involving the ECJ cannot be devised. Most important of all, Britain ought to agree that some regulatory alignment with the single market to ensure a level playing field is overwhelmingly in its own economic interest.
The last of these is now the great stumbling block. Mr Johnson and his party affect a false naivety about it. They dress the issue up in terms of Britain’s supposedly inviolable sovereignty.
By doing so, they refuse to accept that the enlightened sharing of sovereignty is involved in every trade deal that Britain or any other nation will ever strike and is fundamental to the working of international relations. And they play dumb when faced with the EU’s concerns about maintaining the single market and preventing Britain from setting itself up as a low regulation Singapore-on-Thames.
Mr Johnson pretends Britain wants no more than Canada or Australia would do. But Britain’s position in relation to the EU is radically different. Britain is on Europe’s doorstep. Our economy and commerce have been deeply integrated with the EU’s for 45 years. Neither of these is true of Canada or Australia. It is entirely right for the EU to make the granting of preferential trade access conditional on at least some form of continuing alignment on subsidies, tax, labour standards, competition rules and environmental safeguards.
Any other approach involves trusting Britain not to break its word. Why should the EU do that, especially in the wake of the UK’s internal market bill which, until this week, contained clauses that allow Britain to ignore international law and its own treaties? Proximity counts in trade. It would not be fair to allow UK companies to externalise their costs through lower regulation and then freely enter an EU market in which European businesses have to bear their true costs.
Moreover, why should a rules-based union like Europe trust Mr Johnson? Telling lies about Europe is one of the few consistent themes in his chaotic life and politics. It would be a foolish leap of faith to suppose he is going to change now. Politics and economics occasionally pull Mr Johnson in opposite directions on Europe. But in the end he mostly puts party politics ahead of the national economic interest. So it is again now. Because of him and his catastrophic cause of regaining some imaginary lost British greatness, this country now stands on the brink of rupture with Europe. There are only three weeks to go before it happens. It would be a desperate emergency for this country to face at the best of times. It is all the more tragic that it is happening when, amid the pandemic, it is so badly led and thus so ill-prepared to deal with it.