Unlike
a divorce, the terms of Brexit aren’t up for discussion
Joris Luyendijk
What
is being negotiated between Britain and the European Union is not the
end of a marriage. It’s a self-inflicted downgrade
Donald Tusk
Thursday 30 March
2017 09.09 BST First published on Thursday 30 March 2017 08.30 BST
As Britain formally
notifies the EU of its intention to leave it is essential for Brits
and Europeans alike to be aware of what is about to start. Both sides
tend to speak of a “divorce”, while some British commentators
compare the coming negotiations to a “game of chicken”.
These figures of
speech are deeply misleading as they feed into a narrative that the
UK is still a world power able to shape the circumstances it finds
itself in – if not to dictate its terms outright. To see how much
this line of thought is still alive, consider how Britain spent the
past nine months discussing whether it preferred a “soft” or a
“hard” Brexit. The implication was that Britain had a choice –
in truth the EU has made it clear from the outset that there are two
options only: hard Brexit or no Brexit.
A divorce is between
two equal partners. But the UK is to the EU what Belgium, Austria or
Portugal are to Germany: an entity eight times as small. If the EU
informs the UK that “no soft Brexit means no soft Brexit” then
that is what it is.
For the same reason
the analogy of a “game of chicken” for the coming negotiations
should be cast aside. The UK and the EU may be driving at furious
speed into one another, each expecting the other to swerve. But if
the UK is a Mini then the EU is a truck.
Except that it is
not, because this too is a misleading analogy. Angela Merkel runs the
EU’s most important and powerful country but she does not determine
what happens in the EU, if only because Germany comprises a mere 20%
of the EU economy and only 16% of its population. As much as the
Brexiteers like to talk of a European superstate the fact is that no
such thing exists. The European commission, the European parliament
and the EU member states share power without a single overriding body
or office to coordinate events or impose its will. To return to the
“game of chicken” analogy: the EU truck has no driver.
And to add even more
to Britain’s isolation and vulnerability, the declaration by EU
leaders in Rome last week made clear that member states have more
important things on their minds than Brexit. Think of terrorism,
refugees, eurozone architecture, populist parties, economic
stagnation in southern Europe and Russia, to name the top six.
Were one to use an
analogy for the EU the best one is probably that of a club of almost
30 vessels sailing together in the belief that this serves their
interests. It is not a prison and as is its right, Britain has now
voted to leave this club. It is therefore being asked to pay its
outstanding bills and get out as soon as possible.
The idea that
Britain could cancel its membership yet continue to use the
facilities is ludicrous, and yet another example of British
self-centrism. Equally ludicrous is the idea that barring Britain
from the club’s facilities after its departure amounts to
“punishment”. Suppose I cancel my subscription to a newspaper and
that newspaper stops being sent to me. Am I now being “made an
example of” in order to deter others from cancelling their
subscription?
The best
characterisation, then, of what is about to come is probably
something like “settlement”, “unwinding”, “disentanglement”
or “removal”.
In any case the
coming negotiations are extremely serious as they will affect the
lives of millions of people for years. This is not a game and what is
being negotiated is not a divorce. If anything, it is a
self-inflicted downgrade.
May
and Sturgeon have set a wheel of fire rolling, and both will struggle
to stop it
Martin Kettle
One
needs a deal she can sell in Scotland; the other is being dragged
towards a new referendum. For both, the odds of success are slim
Friday 31 March 2017
07.00 BST
In the pivotal scene
of Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, the heroine Tatyana writes a
disastrously counterproductive love letter to the aloof hero.
Mistaking Onegin’s reserve for nobility of character, Tatyana
throws herself upon him. The scene that follows is one of the most
touching in all of European opera.
Britain leaving the
European Union, set out in a letter from Theresa May to Donald Tusk
this week, can hardly be described as touching. Yet, like Pushkin’s
Tatyana, Theresa May is both an optimist and an idealist. Like
Tatyana, she is prone to misread evidence and to prefer hope over
experience. This is true of her approach to European. It is also true
of the way she is trying to shape post-Brexit Britain.
Which of us, for
instance, would not want Britain to be a more united country than it
is today? Unity was a key rhetorical element in May’s Commons
speech on Wednesday. Two days before she sent her fateful letter to
the EU, the prime minister made a speech in Scotland that spelled
this out even more explicitly. The words are worth noting because
they are very ambitious. The government’s post-Brexit plan for
Britain, she said in East Kilbride, “has at its heart one
overarching goal: to build a more united nation”.
It is important to
do May the credit of understanding that she really means this. She
thinks, as she put it in Scotland, that she can get a good deal for
Britain in the European negotiations while at the same time
delivering for “ordinary working people at home”. She thinks she
can bring people and communities together through measures that offer
“integration and social cohesion”, while also strengthening the
United Kingdom.
A more united
nation, in other words, means a renewed social union across the
economic divide and a strengthened political union across the home
nations.
There was a time in
Conservative party history when these were not controversial
aspirations. No senior postwar Conservative of the pre-Margaret
Thatcher era, with the important exception of Enoch Powell, would
have hesitated before speaking in such terms. It was what that era
understood by “one nation” conservatism. But Thatcher trashed
these pieties. She preferred possessive individualism to a social
compact, and she wrapped the party in a more Anglocentric version of
Toryism. The party she left behind has struggled with that legacy
ever since. It remains a defining constraint on many of May’s
practical options.
None of these are
potentially more explosive than the union itself. May’s commitment
to the union of the United Kingdom is beyond dispute. She is not a
Tory who flirts with the idea of letting Scotland loose, as a means
of securing Conservative rule more strongly in what remains of the
UK. May talks of the “beloved union”. We should assume she means
it.
May is now committed
to maintaining the union by getting a Brexit deal she can sell in
Scotland. Both parts of this plan are highly ambitious. The two
together is more ambitious still. On the first part, there have been
opaque suggestions this week that May is prepared to compromise more
than previously hinted on single market and customs union access, and
the Brexit secretary, David Davis, has suggested a more open approach
on EU migration. Nevertheless, even if May secured a softer Brexit
than she has yet let on, she also has to sell that deal in Scotland
over the objections of a Scottish parliament that has now voted for a
second independence referendum.
That is a huge ask.
The SNP could hardly have been clearer that it opposes May’s
approach, wants Scotland to have its own special deal with the EU,
and is squeezing the last drop of grievance out of May’s refusal to
make an agreement with the Scottish government before triggering
article 50 this week. Although SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon does not
want to be bounced prematurely into a second referendum she may lose,
she is being inexorably pushed into one, thanks to a combination of
pressure from her party and May’s stubborn determination not to
make early concessions to the Scots’ case. This week’s vote at
Holyrood makes it even harder for Sturgeon to back down, even if she
wants to.
The Tory brand in
Scotland is not as toxic as it once was, at the height of
post-Thatcher anger. Its ecumenical leader, Ruth Davidson, has led
the party back into second place. But English Toryism can still be
lethal in Scotland. With the SNP framing every question as a choice
between “Scotland” (ie the nationalists) and “the Tories” (ie
May and perhaps the English in general), it is hard for an English
Tory prime minister in London to win a hearing – much less an
argument – against Sturgeon and the SNP.
Yet that is
seemingly the course on which May is now embarked. After this week’s
Holyrood vote, the SNP can now only realistically abort the second
referendum if May produces a Brexit deal the SNP can embrace.
Government sources put it graphically but in a way guaranteed to rile
the SNP: “Nicola has climbed a tall tree and got stuck. It’s our
task to find ways to help her down.”
That’s not
inconceivable, because substantial powers on farming and fishing are
about to be repatriated from Brussels, and could then be devolved to
Holyrood. Gordon Brown has recently added environmental regulation to
that list, along with VAT powers and about £800m currently spent by
the EU in Scotland. These are important issues and an SNP that wanted
a reason to postpone a referendum could conceivably parade them as a
prize worth taking as an alternative.
Yet it is hard not
to feel things have already gone too far, that Sturgeon and May have
set a wheel of fire rolling that they couldn’t stop even if they
wanted to. It’s possible that May believes Sturgeon needs to be
drawn into battle on a soft Brexit amid continuing anxieties about
the economic case for independence because, in May’s view, the
sooner the SNP’s bluff is called, the greater the possibility that
a non-nationalist government can take over in Edinburgh after the
2021 Scottish elections.
Which is all fine if
you are convinced, first, that Scots will like a soft Brexit when
they voted for no Brexit at all; second, that May and Davidson have
the reach and tonal command to out-argue Sturgeon and the SNP; third,
that Scots, even though maybe not voting in such large numbers as
they did in 2014, are willing to inflict an immense electoral defeat
on the nationalists; and, fourth, that you have a strategy in place,
perhaps even a federal settlement of the sort Brown now advocates, to
cope with the anger that such a defeat would trigger.
Perhaps May and
Davidson really have got all this worked out. Perhaps May really
loves devolution and federalism more than she, a great centraliser,
has ever hinted. But if they haven’t, the alternative is the
breakup of the “beloved union”. Either way, the stakes could
hardly be higher for the UK. From now on, everything that happens on
article 50 matters not just for the UK in Europe, but for the very
future of the UK itself.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário