View from the EU: Britain 'taken over by
gamblers, liars, clowns and their cheerleaders'
European commentators weigh in on what Britain’s
departure from the EU means
Jon Henley
Jon Henley
Europe correspondent
@jonhenley
Thu 31 Dec
2020 12.21 GMT
Britain
faces an uncertain future as it finally pulls clear of the EU’s orbit, continental
commentators have predicted, its reputation for pragmatism and probity shredded
by a Brexit process most see as profoundly populist and dangerously dishonest.
“For us,
the UK has always been seen as like-minded: economically progressive,
politically stable, respect for the rule of law – a beacon of western liberal
democracy,” said Rem Korteweg, of the Clingendael Institute thinktank in the
Netherlands.
“I’m afraid
that’s been seriously hit by the past four years. The Dutch have seen a country
in a deep identity crisis; it’s been like watching a close friend go through a
really, really difficult time. Brexit is an exercise in emotion, not
rationality; in choosing your own facts. And it’s not clear how it will end.”
Britain’s
long-polished pragmatic image had been “seriously tarnished”, agreed Nicolai
von Ondarza, of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
But trust in the UK, too, had taken a heavy battering on the Brexit
rollercoaster.
“That’s
particularly been the case over the past year,” Von Ondarza said. “Boris
Johnson has always been seen as a bit of a gambler, displaying a certain …
flexibility with the truth. But observing him him as prime minister has only
made that worse.”
Germans
tended to view international politics “very much through the prism of
international law”, Von Ondarza said, so Johnson’s willingness to ignore it –
in the form, particularly, of the internal market bill – was deeply shocking.
“The idea
that you’d willingly violate an international treaty that you’d negotiated and
signed barely eight months previously … That’s just not something you do among
allies,” he said. “That whole episode really damaged Britain’s credibility.”
Others were
more brutal still. In Der Spiegel, Nikolaus Blome said there was “absolutely
nothing good about Brexit … which would never have happened had Conservative
politicians not, to a quite unprecedented degree, deceived and lied to their
people”.
Much of the
British media, Blome said, “were complicit, constantly trampling on fairness
and facts”, leaving Britain “captured by gambling liars, frivolous clowns and
their paid cheerleaders. They have destroyed my Europe, to which the UK
belonged as much as France or Germany.”
But
Johnson’s lies were the biggest of all, he said: “‘Take back control,’ Johnson
lied to his citizens. But all the British government will finally have achieved
is to have taken back control of a little shovel and a little sand castle.”
The
“sovereignty” in whose name Brexit was done remained, essentially, a myth, said
Jean-Dominique Giuliani, of the Robert Schuman Foundation in France. “It is
history, geography, culture, language and traditions that make up the identity
of a people,” Giuliani said, “not their political organisation.”
It is
“wrong to believe peoples and states can permanently free themselves from each
other, or take decisions without considering the consequences for their
citizens and partners. ‘Take back control’ is a nationalist, populist slogan
that ignores the reality of an interdependent world … Our maritime neighbour
will be much weakened.”
The German
historian Helene von Bismarck doubted Brexit would end what she described as a
very British brand of populism. “British populism is a political method, not an
ideology, and it does not become redundant with Brexit,” she said.
Von
Bismarck identified two key elements in this method: an emotionalisation and
over-simplification of highly complex issues, such as Brexit, the Covid
pandemic or migration, and a reliance on bogeymen or enemies at home and
abroad.
“Populists
depend on enemies, real or imagined, to legitimise their actions and deflect
from their own shortcomings,” she said. If the EU has been the “enemy abroad”
since 2016, it will steadily be replaced by “enemies within”: MPs, civil
servants, judges, lawyers, experts, the BBC.
“Individuals
and institutions who dare to limit the power of the executive, even if it is
just by asking questions, are at constant risk of being denounced as
‘activists’” by the Johnson government, Von Bismarck said. “Everyone has
political motives – except for the government, which seeks to define
‘neutrality’.”
Brexit
itself is being framed as “the grand departure, the moment the UK is finally
free and sovereign, when all problems can be solved with common sense and
optimism – justifying a more ‘pragmatic’ approach to rules, constitutional
conventions and institutions” that actually amounts to a “worrying disregard
for the rule of law”.
“British
populism” would continue, she said, especially when the real, hard consequences
of the pandemic and Brexit started to bite.
“It is
naive to expect a political style which ridicules complexity, presents people
with bogeymen to despise, and prides itself on ‘doing what it necessary’ even
if ‘elites’ and institutions get in the way, to lose its appeal in times of
hardship,” she said.
Elvire
Fabry, of France’s Institut Jacques Delors, said the past four years had shown
Europeans and Britons “just how little we really knew each other”. They had
also revealed, she said, the fragility of a parliamentary system seen by many
on the continent as a point of reference.
“It’s been
difficult for us to anticipate, at times even to interpret, what’s happened” in
the UK, Fabry said. “The direction Johnson has taken the Conservative party in
– we didn’t see that coming. The course he’s setting for the country. The
polarisation. And the way MPs have been bypassed since he became prime minister
….”
Most
striking of all, she said, was how the politics prevailing in Britain had
become “detached from geopolitical reality – from the way the world is
developing. It’s a political vision turned towards yesterday’s world.
Ideological. The way the trade deal focused on goods at the expense of services
… It’s not the way the world’s going.”
Painful as
the Brexit process may have been for Europeans, however, it had at least
demonstrated “the reality and value of the single market, its rules and norms,
and of the EU’s basis in law”, Fabry said. “Those are at the heart of the
European identity – and defending them has given the union a new political
maturity.”
It had
also, concluded Korteweg, served as a warning. “I think it’s taught us all just
how vulnerable our political processes are,” he said. “Just eight years ago,
leaving the EU was a seriously fringe proposition in British politics, and now
look where you are. So we’ve seen how fragile it all is, what we’ve built – and
how worth defending.”
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