The author had a "lightbulb" moment when thinking about a suitable analogy that sums up the psychology behind Brexit and where it comes from.
Britain has been in the EU for over forty years, during which time its relationship with Europe has been about promoting what can most kindly be described as "British exceptionalism": finding ways to have "opt-outs" on EU policy and strategy, with what can also be described as a "having a cake and eating it" approach. This led to Britain opting out of Schengen, the "Social Chapter", and the Euro, to name just three major examples. By the time This finally led to Conservative Party, led by David Cameron, deciding the best way for his party to resolve its psychological "culture wars" over Europe was for the country to have a referendum about it. And now that Britain voted to leave, the government's strategy seems to be to continue this psychology of "having its cake and eating it".
Britain's "mid-life crisis"
The analogy that came to my mind was this: the mid-life crisis.
Britain is like the long-married husband with the wife and two kids that suddenly, when he reaches middle-age, decided he needs "freedom".
Britain's "exceptional" relationship with the EU has been like the over-bearing husband that is continually bridling against his loyal wife's wishes for them to spend more quality time together, rather than him going to the pub with his mates every other night. His relationship with his children (read as Britain's relationship with EU citizens) at turns fluctuates from loving to resentful. Agreed, his wife can seem too smothering at times (EU regulations!), but she also provides a stability to the man's innately unsettled psyche.
Until, suddenly, the man declares he needs "freedom", and walks out on his wife and children, leaving the question of their combined financial commitments hanging in the air. Will the man continue to contribute to the mortgage? Unclear. Will the man agree to take care of the kids? Unclear. The husband, after then walking out, incredibly claims his wife ought to helping him to sort out the mess he's caused, because "this affects all of the family"; implying the kids's future is at stake, so his wife ought to be as accommodating as possible. In other words, using emotional blackmail to get what he wants. The husband, after all this, still claims to "deep down" love his wife, and wants to have a close and cordial relationship with her; he simply wants his "freedom" to play the field and no longer be tied to their marriage. Yet he still wants her to do everything he asks.
This, at heart, feels a good an analogy for Britain's relationship with the EU. Britain has been the "abusive husband" of the EU; now Britain wants out of the relationship, but, as Theresa May's speech implies, thinks that it is the long-suffering wife (The EU) who should still bend to her husband's (Britain's) abusive demands even after separation. This is government policy masking a psychological "mid-life crisis" of Britain's identity. There is no reason for - and plenty of reasons against - the EU submitting to these demands. Nobody with an ounce of self-respect would do so; indeed, Michel Barnier has already said as much. For the EU to agree to such demands would be to break EU law and its own principles. Yet this is what the British government expects the EU to do.
An abusive relationship
After fifteen months of government dithering and chaos over its Brexit strategy, Boris Johnson preempted May's advertised Florence speech strategy by publishing his own. This then led to the hastily-arranged cabinet meeting the day before the speech, seemingly to try and find some kind of middle ground between the Brexit hard-liners and the moderates, led by Hammond.
So the Florence speech is, by definition, some kind of fudge. It was always bound to be, as Brexit was always about doing what was best for the Conservative Party, rather than what was best for Britain. Cameron's own career was defined and destroyed by that same pathology. In the same way that the EU referendum was just a strategy to keep the party united, the same goes for May's Brexit strategy. It was never about Britain's relationship with Europe; it was about the best interests of the Conservative Party. It might seem odd to understand Britain's biggest foreign policy challenge since the Second World War as an act of Tory navel-gazing, but that's the reality. This Tory navel-gazing, and the myopic misunderstanding of the EU's stance, also explains why the negotiations are more likely to fail than succeed (more on that later).
As we now know, May has managed to (on paper) find a strategy that seems to appease both sides, the moderates and the "Hard Brexiteers": the offer of a two-year transition where things remained pretty much the same, except for formally leaving the EU, followed by a Brexit that leaves the UK outside the single market and customs union, in what appears to be the "hardest" Brexit possible.
Except that this all forgets the details, and the questions over the details are what will prompt a thousand and one questions from the EU. Because May has said, like in the "abusive husband" analogy, that she wants some kind of "bespoke" relationship, unlike anything the EU has currently with a non-member. The UK wants to acts like the "mid-life crisis" husband that wants a divorce, but still wants to share the same house as his ex-wife, able to bring home whoever he likes, and expects to not have to pay towards their shared financial obligations once legally divorced. And expects his ex-wife to help think up "creative" solutions to the many obvious practical problems this entails.
So this is the form of "abusive relationship" that Britain's government hopes to achieve with the EU: one where the EU does all the hard lifting to get the divorce terms the divorcee wants - a divorce that Britain instigated because it demanded its "freedom".
A wrecking-ball strategy?
The negotiation process has been referred to as "stalled", and the strategy that May put out offered no real solutions to the causes of the "stall" - over money, citizens rights and Ireland. In some ways, they represent a "Gordian knot" of epic proportions; no doubt part of the reason the exit terms were written the way they were in the Lisbon Treaty, because no-one would want to leave under such terms. The "Gordian knot" appearance to the negotiations was also written in as part of the terms in the Lisbon Treaty; the EU is simply following its own manual, as previously set out. But before the referendum, the "Brexiteers" were blithely dismissive of such issues, and never mentioned Ireland's complex situation at all.
For all of Theresa May's words in Florence, and how she thinks this strategy offers a fine compromise for Britain, this is irrelevant if the EU simply says "no". And there's plenty of reasons to think they will. This is a negotiation, not simply about Britain saying "this is what we will do". If it expects to be able to do that, then Britain will leave the EU in 2019 with no deal at all, and no transition.
Firstly, this strategy offers no solutions to, for example, Ireland. Britain expects the EU to help to come up with a solution. In fact (and this is where it gets really hilarious) the EU did offer a solution: for Northern Ireland to stay separately in the single market. But the DUP would oppose anything that suggested a difference from the rest of the UK, and because the government needs DUP support to stay in power, the government must say no. This is another example of the "Gordian knot".
Apart from the unresolved questions over other payments (not those that May mentioned), is the sticky issue of citizens' rights. We should remember that in order for negotiations to continue to the next stage (to discuss the future "bespoke" trade relationship), these three issues must first be adequately resolved. And the clock is ticking, as the EU likes to remind Britain. In reality, the more time there is stuck on these three issues, the less time there is to talk about trade. But as Ireland's future trade status is also tied in with its citizens' rights, here we have yet another "Gordian knot": you can't really discuss one without the resolving other, and vice versa.
The clock is still ticking. According to the EU, it would take six months to ratify these terms (more on that in a moment), so the cut-off date to conclude negotiations is in around a year's time. First of all, Britain is expecting the EU to agree to some kind of as-yet unspecified "bespoke" deal in whatever time they have left before this time next year, once they have somehow resolved the three issues mentioned earlier. Britain has offered no solutions to at least one of the three issues (Ireland), and the other two are unclear.
Assuming that - somehow - the complex "bespoke" deal Britain calls for is agreed by this time next year, and the EU is - unbelievably - fine with this, we then have ratification. And this is where it might get really interesting, because all 27 countries have to agree, including the EU parliament. Individual countries could then, quite legitimately, raise all kinds of concerns. Indeed, some already have. Apart from Ireland, there is Spain, who may well wish to raise all kinds of hell with Gibraltar. So it's quite possible that any deal would be vetoed at some point in the ratification process. The word "clusterfuck" comes to mind.
Theresa May's call for a transition might be useful, but this does nothing for the negotiations. A two-year transition does not mean we will have two more years to negotiate our future trade deal. Whatever deal Britain wants must be agreed with the EU by this time next year, or there will be no transition at all, and no deal at all. Any potential extension to negotiations could only be agreed after a consultation, which would require the agreement of all concerned parties. Again, this seems like cloud cuckoo thinking if Britain thinks this is likely.
Theresa May also persisted with the idea that "no deal was better than a bad deal". This implies that the British government seems to think they have the upper hand. She would be willing to leave in 2019 without agreeing terms if she didn't like what the EU offered in return, and thus (it is implied) "call their bluff". But this has the logic the wrong way around. The EU has the upper hand in the negotiations, as it can simply turn down any proposal that doesn't fit to its wishes. It is up to Britain to provide a deal agreeable with the EU, not vice versa. After invoking Article 40, Britain had a two-year time frame to a make a deal with the EU. But Britain seems intent on looking for a deal that the EU would find it impossible to accept. So at this rate, the failure of the talks in the short time frame given seems guaranteed.
Besides, the UK government seems to have put in its excuses early: by asking for the EU's flexibility and creativity over Britain's impossible demands, the government can then blame the EU's "intransigence" over a failure of the talks. But as mentioned earlier, the whole "Europe debate" in the Conservative Party was always about managing how things were at home: as long as the British electorate could be fooled into thinking everything was all Europe's fault, then any problems that occurred post-Brexit would never fall at the government's door.
This is what has this writer thinking that the more intelligent "Brexiteers" have already figured all this out: any "bespoke" deal is practically impossible in the time frame given by the Lisbon Treaty. They are putting forward a negotiation strategy that they know will fail as they want Britain to leave the EU in 2019 with no deal. They want a "Hard Brexit" as soon as possible, and are happy to use a "wrecking-ball" negotiation strategy to get it. May's Florence speech said very little of substance beyond meaningless platitudes. What little substance there was said nothing that was not already known or could not have been easily guessed. On the details, there was almost nothing. On the final status, there was nothing but an unfathomable "Gordian knot" that would set up more negotiation problems for the future, on top of the lack of solutions for the current problems still unresolved.
The odd thing is that some Brexit supporters are currently panicking that Theresa May has "sold out" with her Florence speech. Some have called her position "surrender", or even compared it to "appeasement" by Neville Chamberlain. This is hyperbolic nonsense. On the contrary; while the offering of a transition period pacifies the moderates, in reality the overall strategy seems to make a "Hard Brexit" in 2019 all the more likely, given the complexities of the situation as explained above. If there is any "appeasement" on May's part, it is towards those that favour a "Hard Brexit". And if the "Brexiteers" are incensed by even the thought of a transitional phase, then their pernicious influence on the government will surely ensure that the negotiations fail. And they are bound to provide further caveats and conditions to their support for any EU deal between now and the end of the negotiations, putting Britain's government in an even more impossible position.
What are the "Brexiteers" worried about? Their "Brexit Agenda" seems well on track. It's everyone else that needs to worry.
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