Brexit Britain: Small, boring and stupid
The UK better get used to being a middling power.
By RYAN HEATH 12/13/18, 2:22 PM CET Updated 12/15/18,
1:01 PM CET
"While many Brits have strong emotions about the EU,
they rarely have a strong understanding" | Leon Neal/AFP via Getty Images
BRUSSELS — So here we are at the supposed Brexit cliff — a
political crisis and diplomatic crisis rolled into one — and I have a
confession. I’m thoroughly bored by it all.
I suspect I’m not alone.
For those beyond Brussels and London, maybe just starting to
tune in, here’s some advice. Let go of any illusions that this drama is about
trade protocols, residency rights or the status of the Irish border. The
histrionics going on in the United Kingdom aren't even really about its
impending departure from the European Union — or about Prime Minister Theresa
May’s tenuous attempts to cling to power.
Brexit is the story of a proud former imperial power
undergoing a mid-life crisis. The rest of the world is left listening to
Britain’s therapy session as they drone on about their ex-spouse, the EU: When
will they stop talking and just move on?
The promise of Brexit at the time it narrowly passed in a
national referendum in June of 2016 was that it was a way for Britain to feel
big again — no longer hectored by the EU bureaucracy in Brussels, no longer
treated as just one of 28 members in an unwieldy confederacy.
The U.K. simply doesn’t seem to know how to play the game of
give and take needed to negotiate with a far larger partner.
"Britain is special," the Brexiteers assured
British voters, who cast their ballots accordingly.
The last two years have revealed something different: For
the first time in modern history, Britain is small. Having sailed into the 20th
century as an empire, the U.K. spent the second half of the century shedding
nearly all of its colonies — and as a result much of its economic and military
might.
But that was ok, in part because the U.K. — a permanent
member of the U.N. Security Council and a nuclear power — had a close ally in
the United States. But even more importantly, it was alright because, just as
decolonization was drawing to an end, the U.K. joined an emerging economic and
political power: the EU.
The U.K. finally overcame French objections and joined the
bloc in 1973, seven years before it lowered the Union Jack in its last African
colony and more than a decade before it struck an agreement with China to hand
over Hong Kong.
Ignorant about its leverage and ignorant about the EU, the
U.K. is coming across as clumsy and caddish.
Britain’s imperial history and 45 years of membership in the
EU — where London was a dominant voice — is why it is struggling to conduct
diplomacy as the middling power it is now becoming. Accustomed to issuing
colonial diktats or throwing its medium-sized weight around a medium-sized
pond, the U.K. simply doesn’t seem to know how to play the game of give and
take needed to negotiate with a far larger partner.
It is perhaps because of this history that many people in
the U.K. are so awfully uninformed about the EU. Its political and journalistic
classes are simply unused to having to consider the opinions of others.
I can’t say I’m surprised. From various perspectives — now
as a journalist, formerly an adviser to both the U.K. government and the EU,
and always a citizen of the Commonwealth — I’ve been immersed in Brexit and
Britain’s identity complex for years.
While many Brits have strong emotions about the EU, they
rarely have a strong understanding. I feel like a kindergarten teacher every
time I speak on the issue.
It is fashionable to blame an irresponsible U.K. media
(including the country’s most famous sometime-journalist, now leading Brexiteer
MP Boris Johnson) for stoking misunderstanding about the EU for decades. Long
before Macedonian troll factories and Russian bots there were the editors of
the Sun tabloid newspaper.
But what about the millions of people who consumed those
fibs and the spineless politicians who avoided the hassle of correcting them?
We blame Greeks for blowing up their economy and hold accountable big-spending
governments for saddling future generations with excessive debts. Britons don’t
deserve a free pass: It’s time they reckoned with what they sowed through 45 years
of shallow EU debate.
It is Britain’s unique ignorance that makes Britain so
boring. Ignorant about its leverage and ignorant about the EU, the U.K. is
coming across as clumsy and caddish.
Nothing tells the story better than the sad stop-start
diplomacy of Theresa May. The prime minister is an appropriate leader for a
shrinking Britain — one without a clear or consistent vision, whose efforts at
both navigating Brexit and her own political survival seem driven by awkward
improvisation.
London’s demands are simply unrealistic, as anybody with
more than a passing familiarity with the EU can tell you.
Her frequent mad dashes across Europe underline how the U.K.
lost the negotiation before it had begun. May flies across the Continent with
fanfare, but her trips are always driven by domestic pressures — not a desire
to find common ground with those on the other side of the table.
Meanwhile, EU negotiators have laboriously and quietly
toured every capital, building up their united front before the talks started.
Chief negotiator Michel Barnier could find himself locked in a thousand black
cars, and it wouldn’t matter: He’d step out smiling every time.
Britain’s political contortions are symptoms of an almost
willful lack of understanding: The U.K. doesn’t know what it wants from the EU,
and doesn’t really know what it wants from getting out.
For decades, as one of the EU’s larger — and more
troublesome — members, London secured itself special deals inside the EU. It
won rebates from its budget contributions and opted out of the euro and
Schengen rules governing border checks. It now feels entitled to similar
treatments as it leaves.
Today Britain wants things it already has (frictionless
trade with the EU), without continuing to pay the price other EU members pay to
have it (the legal, economic and political constraints that come with EU
membership).
London’s demands are simply unrealistic, as anybody with
more than a passing familiarity with the EU can tell you.
Balancing competing interests is difficult enough for
individual countries. Look at U.S. Congress, the German federal system, or even
the mighty French presidency trying to cope with the yellow vest street protest
movement. Doing the same across 27 countries is even harder. Negotiations take
time, and any sudden sharp policy change has the potential to disrupt the EU’s
equilibrium.
The deal on offer is the best London is going to get —
simply because it is the best Brussels is going to be able to offer.
And yet, cheered on by two ex-U.K. Brexit negotiators who
barely bothered to show up in Brussels and negotiate, British politicians are
lining up like whiny children to demand the remaining 27 EU countries make
amendments to the Brexit deal.
Britain has a lesson to learn. What a global power can pass
off as “exceptionalism,” for a medium-sized country simply comes across as
ingratitude.
Ryan Heath is POLITICO’s political editor.
The Observer view on why the only sensible option for
Britain is a second vote
Observer editorial
There’s one way out of this morass, but politicians must
rise to the challenge
Sun 16 Dec 2018 06.00 GMT
The long-awaited Brexit crunch has arrived. The prime
minister is wedded to a withdrawal agreement almost nobody supports. Her
authority within the Conservative party was permanently damaged last week.
Parliament is hopelessly split over all the possible alternatives. These
divisions do not follow party lines, further confusing the situation. The
public is, by turns, baffled, alienated, alarmed – and increasingly angry at
this collective national failure.
The main opposition party offers no clear path forward,
fixated on forcing a general election that is beyond its reach. At this vital
moment, on this issue, Labour lacks bold, imaginative leadership.
In Brussels, the EU 27 are adamant, and united, in insisting
they have gone as far as they can. There is no more wriggle room, no more space
or appetite for substantive negotiation. Bluntly, the game is up.
What is to be done? In our oft-stated view, the entire
Brexit project was ever misconceived and ill-informed. The Leave campaign
misled a decisive proportion of voters, some of whom now regret their choice.
Theresa May’s subsequent approach to the EU negotiations was fatally skewed by
her need to appease hard Tory Brexiters. She set unrealistic, unnecessarily
inflexible red lines. She over-hastily triggered article 50. If Britain is out
of time, it is because May set the clock ticking.
But all that is water under the bridge. The position today,
with little more than three months left, is that May’s withdrawal deal is the
only one on the table. All the rest – Norway, Canada, Canada-plus etc – are
mere talk at this late, jittery juncture, not least because the EU has been
clear that signing up to the withdrawal agreement and the backstop must come
before negotiating any free-trade agreement. On that at least May and EU
leaders were agreed on Friday. May claims binding adjustments could yet be made
to the hated Irish backstop, but this is make-believe. This deal, as written,
is as good as Brexit is going to get, although it represents a course of action
that is very far indeed from being in Britain’s national interest.
Common sense, logic and the national interest thus demand
that May put her deal before the Commons for a full, meaningful vote without
further delay. If, as expected – and as befits it – it is defeated, May should
accept the verdict of parliament. In practice, she would then have three
options: she can resign and let another Tory try where she failed; she can
declare Britain will leave with no deal at all; or she can ask the public to
back her.
Taken by itself, May’s resignation would do nothing to
resolve the Brexit crisis. Labour could call a vote of no confidence in the
government, hoping to trigger an election. But if the Tories agree on anything,
it is that they do not want to face the electorate. Such a motion would almost
certainly fail, changing nothing. All responsible people agree, meanwhile, that
the second option – an off-the-cliff no deal – would be a catastrophe. In fact,
it is not an option at all.
That leaves a second referendum as the only sensible,
logical course offering a path out of the Brexit morass. The choice on the
ballot should be simple, between May’s deal – according to her, the best and
only one available – and the status quo, meaning Brexit would be cancelled.
Article 50 would be suspended while the vote was held. Parliament, which
overwhelmingly endorsed the 2016 referendum result, would be honour-bound to
accept this people’s vote, too.
For Remainers, there is the obvious risk that May and the
Leavers could prevail. But in order to break the stalemate and begin the urgent
process of reunifying the country, as urged this weekend by Church of England
bishops, it is a risk that must be run, a challenge that must be met. A second
referendum would give all those who want to maximise opportunities for our
younger generations, while addressing the economic and social concerns of those
who feel left behind, a chance to make their case – and save the country, at
last gasp, from the Brexit cataclysm.
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