Saturday 23 June 2018

Boris Johnson's Bog-Roll Brexit

I am sorry to report that Boris Johnson is writing rubbish again. Fitting the receptacle for his trash thoughts is none other than the soaraway, snoreaway Sun. After the rebellions that never were, and with Brexit on the back foot following warnings from Airbus and BMW concerning the future of UK operations, a weekend flurry of bullish media activity was so predictable, even Mystic Meg would have seen it coming. Disgraced serving minister Liam Fox said the PM wasn't bluffing about no deal, and David Davies is on the record for saying the government needs to threaten leave the talks, i.e. amputate the living standards of millions of Britons, to get its own way with the EU. Crazy stuff.

So as the crowds assemble for yet another EU march in London town, what does Johnson have to say about Brexit now. Is there anything new? Apart from an ever-so-hilarious call on Theresa May not to deliver a "bog-roll Brexit", not a lot. Yes, I know, my sides split when he wrote leaving the European Union shouldn't be "soft, yielding and seemingly infinitely long", and we should go for a "full-British Brexit" instead. What is this, apart from a meaningless soundbite? For Johnson, the non-existent Brexit dividend earmarked for the NHS is only part of it. Britain has to be free to make all those lovely trade deals with the fast growing economies, and cast off the bureaucratic shackles arresting British dynamism. Never mind things like facts, which suggest these economies are more interested in dealing with the EU as a whole before coming to terms with Britain, and that other EU economies in the Eurozone are outpacing the UK. What are these against the grand fantasy firing the embers of a limited, but self-aggrandising intellect? He has some words for the critics as well, like Project Fear being wrong and we need to believe in Britain. And that's your lot. I wonder how much Johnson trousered for turning in this ritual chunter?

There are two points of interest here. First, there is little sign of the touch-feely liberal (and socially liberal) Brexit that got a good trailing four months ago. With the meaningful Parliamentary vote now seen off, there is little need to make chummy with remain-leaning Tories, even with yet another vote on the customs union yet to go. They're had their chance and they blew it. Yet, simultaneously, as the bad news piles in, the forecasts get gloomier and, despite everything, a chance of a soft Brexit that would frustrate the hopes of Johnson and the awful European Research Group to transform Britain into a tax haven, the hard Brexiteers resort to fantasyland politics and outright delusion to pretend everything is alright. One thing's for sure. Everything will be alright for them, whatever happens. Less so for many millions who voted to Leave.

Recognising how flaccid Johnson's argument is, The Sun supplement it with a substantial editorial. Here, hardcore remainers are blamed for "a tsunami of hate", as if being annoying on Twitter is up there with rising hate crime statistics. Still, it warns against listening to business (or, "fuck business" as Johnson puts it) and agitates for the clean break, warning their will be "ferocity" and "chaos" if some halfway house is arrived at.

Let's be clear. We're getting a bog-roll Brexit come because we're going to need a pretty substantial one to clear up the mess, and politics now is largely a matter of choosing the least worst from a range of steaming and pungent alternatives. Yet what does this latest intervention say about the state of Brexit? Quite a bit, despite neither Johnson nor The Sun having anything to say. We are offered a fantasy of a great trading nation winning new markets and enriching the folks at home, when the reality is the throwing up of barriers against commerce and a permanent weakening of an already sluggish economy. And because the real falls short of the fantasy, it's not because the project is fundamentally damaging, but because there are wreckers throwing spanners into the works and talking Britain down. It's a pathetic spectacle, all told, and future historians will marvel at how such a thin programme, dripping in cynicism, dishonesty, and the naked self-interest of a backward section of the British ruling class was able to get their way.

4 comments:

Robert said...

Have they got a plan for the Irish border or do they just not care?

Darren said...

It’s a good job we have a socialist party resolutely opposed to the agenda of the backward sections of the ruling class. Imagine the trouble we’d be in if they were in substantial agreement.

Anonymous said...

... Irish reunification and Scottish independence followed by a one party Tory state...

Anonymous said...

Tories didn't win England by enough at the last GE to be anything like confident of that.