Opinion
Brexit
The German threat to the UK is indifference
Boris Johnson’s government is still obsessed with
Brexit, but its erstwhile EU partners have other priorities
PHILIP
STEPHENS Add to myFT
Philip
Stephens JULY 1 2021
Boris
Johnson’s government is disorientated. Six months after severing its EU ties,
it is struggling to understand why it is no longer afforded privileged
treatment. The prime minister signed a Brexit bargain with Brussels. To his
seeming surprise, the European Commission expects him to honour it.
Lord David
Frost, the minister steering relations with the EU, wears socks emblazoned with
the UK national flag when he meets his European counterparts. Perhaps he
imagines he is making a point. He is forever declaring that he sits at the
Brussels table as spokesperson for a “sovereign equal”. Odd really. The EU is
an international institution rather than a sovereign state.
Frost is
unhappy that Britain is treated as a “third country”. The government, he has
told MPs, has only recently “internalised” the change in dynamics. Securing an
accord on implementation of complex trade arrangements for Northern Ireland had
been more difficult than expected. He thinks Brussels should afford a special
place to “big” neighbours.
It might
have been hoped that, if nothing else, Brexit would put an end to the collision
of neuroses that have too often informed Britain’s relations with its
neighbours. Instead, Frost’s protestations and the dispute over the Northern
Ireland protocol suggest nothing has changed. The ruling emotions in the UK
still veer between bombastic exceptionalism and needy victimhood.
Johnson’s
fantasy of a world-beating “Global Britain” standing above mere “European”
powers jostles with fears that the French, Germans and the rest are forever
conspiring against Britannia. Worse is a suspicion they may be pulling ahead.
The confusion of emotions is at its most acute in relations with Germany. Britain,
Brexiters regularly tell themselves, won the war. Germany’s economy has stolen
the peace.
In her
Bruges speech in 1988, Margaret Thatcher laid out a vision of a Europe of free
democracies stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals. When the Berlin Wall
crumbled a year later, she assured Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that Britain
would do nothing to hasten the dismantlement of the Warsaw Pact.
Anything,
it seemed, was better than a reunited Germany. Decades on, Thatcher’s
Germanophobia remains a powerful strand in the thinking of her party’s
Brexiters. During the 2016 referendum campaign, Johnson was unapologetic about
likening the EU’s supposed ambitions for a “superstate” to Hitler’s attempt to
secure European domination.
This week
England’s footballers are celebrating beating Germany in the Euro 2020
tournament. One hopes that victory will exorcise some of the anti-German demons
summoned up in the past by the tabloids when the two teams have met — not least
because, post-Brexit, Britain badly needs Germany as a friend.
When he
thinks about it, Johnson understands this. While foreign secretary, he once
asked his officials whether Angela Merkel had been involved with East Germany’s
Stasi secret police. This week he will attempt to charm the German chancellor
when she visits his Chequers country house.
Allowing
ideology to rule national interests, Johnson’s government has set its face
against sensible collaboration with the institutions of the EU. What’s left, if
the UK is to retain any sort of voice in what happens on its own continent, are
stronger bilateral relations with its European peers.
Johnson’s
pitch is for a new “special relationship” between London and Berlin. He should
expect short shrift from his guest. Merkel, her officials say, thinks him at
once unserious and untrustworthy. Of course, she will say, the two nations have
shared interests and, in many respects, shared outlooks. Their foreign
ministries have just signed a joint declaration to work together on foreign and
security policy. But to Merkel’s mind there are conditions attached to such
co-operation.
Most
obviously, the UK must keep its word and stop trying to renege on the Northern
Ireland protocol. And if Johnson’s government wants to deepen bilateral ties,
it must be prepared to work with the EU’s institutions. To put it bluntly,
Berlin has neither the time nor inclination to agree one set of arrangements
with its EU partners and then start fresh negotiations with the UK.
This is
something else for Johnson and his ministers to “internalise”. Britain remains
obsessed by the EU even after it has left. Its erstwhile partners have more
pressing things on their minds than their relationship with a “third country”.
Brexiters talk about a German threat. Well, there is one. It goes by the name
of indifference.
philip.stephens@ft.com
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Philip Stephens with myFT and on Twitter
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