It is not every day that former prime ministers set aside old party feuds to deliver a unified message on a matter of national urgency. When John Major and Tony Blair did so in June 2016, warning that Brexit would threaten the delicate balance of peace in Northern Ireland, it rightly led to the news.
But not for long: the two prime ministers did not decorate a single front page of an English newspaper the next morning. The media caravan continued quickly. In addition, Northern Ireland was exactly the kind of serious, complex and historically complex topic that the referendum avoided. In fact, a study by King’s College London, which analyzed 350,000 articles in print and online during the 10-week referendum campaign, did not register Northern Ireland as a problem at all.
One of the biggest mistakes of the remaining country (one of many) was to campaign, as if the outcome depended on the consequences of the issue in the ballot; it is as if Britain will choose to reject EU membership on the basis of what that decision means. Instead, the leaving country struggles on the basis that the decision can mean anything you want, and that the so-called consequences are scary stories told by a cozy elite with their own interest in the status quo; people like Blair and Major.
Six years later, the structure of the argument has not changed. Only pro-Europeans talk about the consequences, while Brexit supporters fight them as if the rest have won. But with Boris Johnson on Downing Street, they can now write down their delusions.
This is the perverse genesis of the bill, which was published on Monday, ostensibly to amend the Protocol on Northern Ireland from the withdrawal agreement – the treaty that Johnson signed in 2019. The proposed law will give ministers the power to delete and rewrite all parts of the old a deal they don’t like.
We do not need to study the small print to understand how gross a violation this is for the norms of international diplomacy. There are treaties to ensure continuity and stability in relations between countries, so that even capricious leaders can be relied on to deal with neighbors and allies according to fixed parameters. A country that waives this obligation becomes a fraud.
It is also significant that the bill addresses every aspect of the protocol, not just customs procedures, which cause symbolic and constitutional stress to trade unionists by raising barriers between Britain and Northern Ireland. If ministers had been sincere in their claims that they were focused on the border issue, they would not have thrown themselves into the legislative weeds by snatching something that looks like the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice or regulatory alignment.
The pursuit of these goals is a sign that a policy nominally designed for Northern Ireland has been personalized to indulge the obsession of British Eurosceptics. The dictation was taken by Foreign Minister Liz Truss, who acknowledged the impact the hardline European Research Group of MEPs will have on any future decision on Conservative leadership. For the same reason, Johnson could not oppose the ERG, although Downing Street reported that his demands were not fully absorbed.
An even more extreme approach would be to order the immediate destruction of all bridges to Europe. The current version only creates a mechanism for recording them without warning. This capacity is contained in “delegated powers” – legal instruments through which ministers can make laws with almost no parliamentary control. Lawmakers voting on the bill will sign their opinion on any deal Johnson believes he can make to replace the one he is currently sabotaging.
This is an insult to democracy, but also a potential way back to diplomacy. It is the latter reason that makes the British Brexit ultras and the unions in Northern Ireland hesitant to approve a plan that exists only to their satisfaction. They suggest, correctly, in my opinion, that Johnson can still withdraw from the full confrontation with Brussels, which his actions seem courteous. He wants the spectacle of a domestic battle – where his enemies can be portrayed as a residual revenge – but not the economic pain that would result in a total breakdown in relations between the English Channel.
He wants to launch a heroic attack on the mythical dragon “Europe”, stubbornly still breathing fire despite past killings and now holding the girl “sovereignty” captive in Northern Ireland. Of course he does. This is the fable on which his career is built. In the last story, in 2019, he ended with the coronation of Tsar Boris.
In the real world, meanwhile, the prime minister has a chancellor who advises against a trade war with a real Europe in the midst of a real cost of living crisis. In the real world, Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK outside London with a growing economy, thanks to its unique access to the single market – an advantage of the protocol, which has the support of parties representing the majority of voters in last month’s Stormont election. .
Moreover, in the real world, Brussels cannot meaningfully negotiate with a prime minister who deviates from the treaties and who has only a fragile command of a party that also does not trust him and where European politics is decided by MPs who will never be happy. from the deal. They cannot be satisfied because the result they crave is liberation from a world where the single market matters, where the EU is a powerful economic entity and where Britain must compromise in order to restore the privileges it has rejected, believing that they are a burden.
This is the true meaning of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill. This is not, as its defenders claim, a remedy for economic problems caused by customs controls on goods passing through Britain. Nor will it be able to mitigate the crime caused to trade unionists by the existence of a regulatory border in the Irish Sea. This will not shock Brussels in concessions or convince anyone who thinks Johnson is a mad prime minister that it is something else. This is the inevitable degeneration into the absurdity of Brexit-defined governance. This is a doctrine that makes the enemy of reality. If this enemy does not succumb to rhetoric, he must be suppressed by law.
Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist
Add Comment