Brexit: a historic blunder or a strategic realignment?

Watching a recent documentary about the events of 1066, I was reminded how pivotal the Norman Conquest was in changing the face of England.
Prior to William the Conqueror's victory over Harold (Godwinson), England had been ruled by an Anglo-Saxon nobility. For much of the previous two hundred years, England had been a victim to the privations of Viking raids, culminating in a thirty-year period of direct Viking rule, that had only ended around twenty years before the events of 1066.
The overall effect of this was that Anglo-Saxon England, prior to the Norman Conquest, had its geopolitical interests drawn from the influence of Scandinavia, with continental Europe to the south less of an immediate concern. This was evident even in the Battle Of Hastings, where the Anglo-Saxon army used battle tactics honed from centuries of fighting the Vikings, and the Norman army's use of cavalry in battle was something unfamiliar to the English; yet equally, the Normans were unfamiliar with the Anglo-Saxons' battle tactics as well. In this way, 1066 really was a clash of cultures: Anglo-Saxon England and Norman France.

The Norman Conquest thus totally reshaped England, both in terms of its society (where the Normans completely replaced the Anglo-Saxon nobility) and in terms of geopolitics, where Norman England's interests lay on consolidating on its holdings in France as well as in Britain. In this way, Norman England was a "continental power" in a way that Anglo-Saxon England never could be.
This historic link that the Normans had created between England and the continent became something that was built on over the centuries. The successors to the Normans, the "Angevins" (later called the "Plantagenets"), had even more extensive French lands, effectively creating a a joint "empire" across both sides of the channel. While these French lands declined in scope over time (with John "Lackland" being the most at fault), the existence of a still-residual English foothold in France by the time of Henry VIII's coming to power had a strong effect on Henry's perception of the country's strategic interests and alliances in Europe.
The Norman and Angevin legacy of English lands in France meant that an alliance against the French king was essential. This had resulted in alliances through marriage to the rising power of Spain to the south, and an accord with the Hapsburg Holy Roman Empire to France's east. However, by the time of Elizabeth's reign, the Reformation and England's break from Rome had seen both of those alliances collapse, leaving England diplomatically-isolated from all of the major European powers. By the 17th century, the reign of the Stuarts saw a change of tack, and England sought an "understanding" with both Spain and France. As time progressed, some in England saw the Stuarts as seeming more inspired by the autocratic rulers of France and Spain, resulting the bloody interregnum of the "Commonwealth". While England's French domains were now a memory, its interests in European affairs didn't prevent it from intervening with mutual allies like the Germans to limit French designs, like during the War Of Spanish Succession. Outside of Europe, such as in North America and India, England's interests began to prosper, and when the Stuart dynasty was replaced by the House Of Hanover in the early 18th century, England's continental interests re-emerged once more in a different guise.
Like with the early Norman rulers of England, the first Hanoverians seemed at times more interested in their German lands than in Britain. These new "English" monarchs now having a sizable tract of territory in the heart of Europe also gave them a different perspective. While the later generations of the House of Hanover became increasingly "British", they all took German wives, with Victoria taking a German prince as her husband. Thus up to the last decade of the nineteenth century, England and Germany were closely-linked, with Victoria's daughter married to the German Emperor Frederick, and - for different reasons - both powers had a mutual antagonist in France. By contrast, Britain's alliance with France against Russia that existed during the Crimean War had been a rare piece of strategic joint-interest; an example of Britain's alignments with the different European powers to achieve its interests at any one moment in time. During that conflict with Russia, Britain's and France's aims had been temporarily aligned to protect Turkey. Afterwards, the former rivalry resumed.

The fact that, by 1914, Britain had been in alliance with both France and Russia - hitherto its two historic rivals - was a quirk of fate that was largely the fault of German Emperor Wilhelm II, Frederick's son (and Victoria's nephew), which has been expanded on elsewhere. In part, this was just another chapter in the merry-go-round of England's relations with Europe, that had ensured that, since 1066, England had rarely been without one ally or another on the continent.
And yet, it was true to say that by 1914, Britain's relations with Europe had become more semi-detached; its involvement in the Crimean War was Britain's last major European involvement, while its later alliance with France and Russia was more of global than European interest to them (and in fact, calling it an "alliance" on Britain's part was overstating the country's own view of its obligations to European affairs; Britain saw it more as an "understanding" that allowed it to feign a more ambiguous approach). Britain's strategic imperative was to its empire rather than continental allegiances. The physical barrier of the channel was still a strong psychological barrier, too. Today, the same "moral ambiguity" about its commitments has been seen in the current government's Brexit negotiations.

The system of European alliances collapsed with the fall of the different European monarchies at the end of the First World War. Henceforth, it would be "ideology" (either economic or political) that would be the main drive for strategic alliances. As the two main "victors" of the war, Britain and France sought to emasculate Germany (which planted the seeds for the next war) and also (failing) to destroy Bolshevik Russia. In doing so, both these strategic blunders set up the eventual collapse of both their empires in the future.
France and Britain declared war on Germany in 1939. With France overrun the following year, by 1941 Britain was forced into being kept alive by convoys from the USA. In this way, Britain effectively surrendered it strategic independence to the USA in 1941 to prevent it being starved into submission by Germany. The price of American vassalage was the dismantling of the empire after the war. And with the gradual dismantling of the empire after the war, there came a realization that Britain needed to reacquire its historic bonds with Europe. It was this that led to the eventual accession of the UK in the EEC.


Blunder or realignment?

This is the lengthy context that places "Brexit". As we have seen, Britain has almost always had some kind of relationship with Europe that has involved allegiances, often to defend strategic interests if not physical territory. It is true that for much of the nineteenth century, Britain's involvement with European affairs was often at arm's length. After the Treaty of Vienna after the war with Napoleon,  Britain took little interest in the continent - the notable exception being the Crimean War. Before 1870, Germany didn't exist, and Britain's concern about France and Russia was about their global spheres of influence rather than in Europe.
But Britain today in 2018 has no empire, and, on leaving the EU in the antagonistic manner it is taking, can rely on no European powers to back up its strategic interests. In short, everything that it could do wrong, it is doing wrong. This leaves Britain in arguably the weakest strategic position it has known in living memory, a potential blunder of historic proportions. Parts of the government who pursue "Brexit" from an ideological position see it as taking Britain out of alignment with Europe, and into an alignment with the USA, both economically and politically. Seen in this light, these ideologues pursue their path as "righting a wrong" of Britain's accession to the EU, and putting Britain back into a position of virtual vassalage to the USA, like in 1941. The "empire" might be long gone, but there are those that still have a nostalgia for the days when totalitarian Europe was seen as the antagonist and the USA was seen as holding Britain together in the face of enemy attacks.

The Conservative Party can in many ways be called the "aristocratic party", as it was created (as the "Tories") in the late 17th century to defend aristocratic and monarchical interests. This deference towards the establishment is matched with a deference for wealth and power. Looking at England's history, we see that it was the Normans who became the establishment in 1066, and their successors have remained in place ever since. Indeed, many aristocratic families can trace their roots back nearly a thousand years for that very reason. This also may explain why some of them behave like an occupying power and treat their fellow citizens as "serfs".
They have remained in place thanks to a combination of guile and adaptability. War in 1914 came close to bringing down the whole show, while after declaring war on Germany in 1939 led by 1941 to Churchill having to accept American vassalage to keep Britain alive, at the price of the empire. With the collapse of the empire after the Second World War, a broken and defeated Europe saw in the USA a strong power, stronger than the doddering empires had even been at the height of their power. It would seem that the British establishment then became seduced by the power and wealth across the Atlantic, and many of them became "Libertarians".
It is this ideological postwar movement that explains "Brexit": a historic realignment of Britain away from the European "social democratic" model that had been adapted to Britain as the "postwar consensus. The ideological movements that first swept through Europe in the aftermath of the First World War are now reaching their evolutionary next phase; where once ideology was about dismantling empire, now Libertarian ideologues seek to dismantle the apparatus of the state itself. "Brexit" can be seen in this light as a "fire-sale" of the British nation-state, its assets prepared for dissolution to the highest bidder after a period of post-Brexit "national renewal".

The antagonistic approach of the government's relations with Europe today may well be part of that Libertarian agenda: to isolate Britain from Europe by making Europe seem as the enemy. That way, there will seem no other choice to the British people than to go along with the realignment to American vassalage (e.g. by eventual entrance into NAFTA).
Such a strategy can only see Britain's emasculation. As with what happened to Germany after the First World War, the same  - in a contemporary manner - could happen to Britain.

"No Deal" Brexit, "emergency powers" and blaming the EU: Britain's "Reichstag Fire" moment?

With the negotiations with the EU heading in ever more certainty towards a "no deal" situation, talk is now how Britain would be governed after leaving the EU in this event. All the evidence points towards an unprecedented situation where legal barriers would automatically be raised to Britain after its government deciding to leave the single market and customs union. Britain would be an island of itself, in a very literal sense, in large part cut off from the legal connections to its neighbours.

What this would mean in practical terms has been discussed in great detail elsewhere (see eureferendum.com for example). The day-to-day running of the country's industry and services would be hugely affected, akin to a time of war. 

The fact that Theresa May assembled what has been termed a "war cabinet" tells us a lot about the mentality of those in government; to instinctively see the EU as an adversary now that we're leaving. And the government's behaviour during the negotiations has been nothing less than mendacious; from recently going back on previous commitments agreed last December (like over Northern Ireland, and now even threatening to go back on its previous commitment over the "divorce bill"), to now demanding that the EU show more "flexibility" when it has been the UK with its "red lines" that has been the one causing all the hold-ups. What should also not be forgotten is that the December agreement was put in place to avoid a collapse of talks completely at such an early stage; the EU was compromising where possible in order to prevent the potential unseating of May in London. And now, six months on, they realise that she is an untrustworthy figure, who goes back on agreements when it suits her. What does that say about Britain's status as a reliable power?

 From the start, the EU was clear and transparent about what was and wasn't possible through the negotiations and as a potential end-state between the two sides, given the legal consequences (and impossibility of the UK's "magical thinking"). By contrast, the UK government's strategy has been opaque and involved obfuscation at every turn in order to mask the chaos behind the scenes at home.

And now, the chaos of a potential "no deal" outcome is, as predicted, being blamed on the EU. In the UK, the only side that is promoting the feasibility (or even desirability) of "no deal" are the "Brextremists"; the hard-right Libertarians that make up perhaps 20% of the parliamentary Conservative Party.

It's telling that British politics is being guided by a faction of one party; a faction whose views represent not much more than perhaps 10% of the entire electorate, if that. The "Brexit Agenda" has long been a Libertarian project, dismissed for years as the wild fantasy of a bunch of cranks. The Maastricht Treaty was the moment that brought that to the surface, with then-Prime Minister John Major calling them the "bastards".

Major's view, looked at in the current situation, can only be even more true today. As their views were only ever really held by a small faction of their party, and even less well-represented in the electorate, where could their mandate come from? It was the work of UKIP, who were always a Libertarian party at heart - in spite of purposely-misleading talk otherwise - that allowed the "Brexit Agenda" real oxygen in the public sphere. A combination of the financial crisis, exploited worries of immigration, and a peculiar political situation after 2010 that made UKIP seem like an unofficial "opposition", gave that party the space to promote their agenda, with the charisma of Nigel Farage helping the project along. It was David Cameron's combination of insecurity and arrogance that was the final factor in the EU referendum taking place.

Extremist views, such as those held by the Libertarian faction guiding "no deal" Brexit, could only ever come to dominate the political sphere in unusual times. What we are seeing in Britain is, under the circumstances, little better than a quiet "coup" by a group of political extremists. Using "legitimate" means by usurping parliament and blackmailing the government, they are the ones in charge. Any voices of dissent at their actions are dismissed as against the "will of the people", as these Libertarians choose to dictate how Britain should be transformed into a Libertarian "utopia" after leaving the EU. By holding key government ministries, and holding influential positions outside government as "independent advisers", Libertarians maintain their grip on power over a paralyzed government. Thus they ensure that there is no way to reverse their agenda.

Meanwhile, they also ensure that any government attempts at negotiation with the EU are sabotaged from their own side, by submitting proposals to the EU that are bound to be rejected. This is then followed up by them blaming the EU for the lack of progress in the talks, claiming that the EU are untrustworthy, intransigent, and had an agenda designed to "punish" Britain into leaving without a deal.

"Emergency Powers"

It is at this point that we can see how any chaos in Britain after Brexit next year will be blamed on the EU. And, given a compliant (and supportive) media, many in Britain would accept it. 

Using a dark historical parallel, this could be Britain's "Reichstag Fire" moment - when a calamity instigated by one side is blamed on the other, in order to create a specific controlled narrative. While the EU would in that situation be accused of "stabbing Britain in the back" for its behaviour, those Brits still be in favour of rejoining the EU might well be branded "traitors" for siding with a foreign power. Foreigners themselves in Britain during this chaotic time might well (justifiably) fear for their safety. In the meantime, given the potential for widespread disruption to infrastructure and so on in the case of "no deal", the government might well be forced to use "emergency powers" to keep the country running, as in a time of war. Being effectively cut off from much of the rest of the world (even if for only a short while) would make this even easier to implement. Such self-imposed isolation would then allow those in power to take control of the narrative even more completely.

This is the kind of "creative destruction" that Libertarians talk about, where they hope to make a killing on the carcass of Britain's anarchic economy as vulture capitalists. In times of chaos, people look to order and authority, and are willing to suspend their usual common values like democracy and free speech. While Libertarians might look to make a mint in the meantime, deals could well be sought with more unscrupulous far-right authoritarians to create a kind of cultural "revivalism" to bring the nation together, where long-repressed ideas of power and identity are re-invented, at the expense of the "other", and at the expense of diversity.

Such talk has already been seen in Britain and America, with the rise of the unashamed bigotry of the far-right. In a "No Deal" Brexit, Britain could quickly descend; first into chaos, and afterwards, into a kind of "dark alliance" between opportunistic Libertarian vulture capitalists and the neo-Fascism of the alt-right. 

It could happen.

Brexit and the transition: the "vassal state", JRM's "purgatory", and its political consequences

The mutual agreement of the EU and the UK over the terms of the transitional phase of Britain's relationship with the EU provoked a surprisingly muted reaction from most of the Brexiteer fanatics, except for the farcical "Ealing comedy" that occurred on the Thames, symbolising everything wrong about Brexit in a microcosm.
The acquiescence of the fanatics was explained by Jacob Rees-Mogg in typically esoteric terms. Britain's status as a "vassal state" of the EU was the "purgatory" before the rise to heaven; a comparison that confirmed the quasi-religious belief (and state of mind) prevalent in this ideological sect that is in effect single-handedly deciding Britain's future, when not having to repeatedly cave in to the EU. So we go from "Ealing Comedy" to "A Comedy Of Errors". But this is what happens when Britain is ran by complete incompetents.

As the EU reminds us, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, and so the agreement on the transitional phase is provisional; provisional on Theresa May being able to offer a solution over the Irish border by June. This uncertainty is what is driving businesses to despair, for although the agreement reached last week seems to give more hope to business (and more time to prepare), it still lacks enough certainty to provide any real confidence. For argument's sake, we could say the agreement reached last week increased "certainty" over a transitional deal from, say 60% to 90%  (as the remaining uncertainty over the Irish border is still very much a "killer" to the deal). But if businesses are able to relocate to the EU, where there is zero uncertainty, why would they bother to take the risk of even that 10% uncertainty by staying in Britain? What would be the point? This is something Britain's government seems to not have considered, like lots of other things about Brexit.
By June though, we should all know, one way or the other, if a transitional deal will truly happen, as the decision by the EU can be delayed no more than that.

As the EU also reminds us, Brexit is an unprecedented situation in the modern world. The EU and Britain are agreeing a treaty that, for the first time, diminishes links rather than strengthens them. In the same way, the EU's offer of the transitional agreement is equally unprecedented. To British eyes, what the EU proposes may indeed look a lot like a form of temporary "vassalage" (and legally-speaking, it is); but this was inevitable once Theresa May decided that Britain's future lay outside of the single market. As mentioned earlier this month, the EU's position was always going to be one of self-preservation once Britain's government declared its intentions to leave the single market and diverge from the EU's orbit. In this sense, Britain effectively declared itself as a large, economically-hostile neighbour to the EU. What did they think the EU was going to do in response?
The transitional deal (which Britain asked for, it should be remembered), was always going to be a unique proposal that protected the EU's stability as much Britain's. Britain would have to accept a situation of "pay no say" - vassalage - if it wanted to maintain its links with the EU after it formally left the institution (with Britain also refusing aligned membership of the EEA/EFTA).

Historically, this kind of  transitional "vassalage" has few close precedents, and the only ones that come close are ones that Britain would find humiliating to be compared with. As it stands, Britain's status during the transition would legally be one of the "worst of both worlds": having EU law and its remit fully applying to a non-EU member, but without Britain having any voice in the EU; meanwhile, Britain would no longer be signed up to the dozens of trade agreements that it enjoyed for years while being in the EU, leaving its trade status with most countries outside of the EU in a state of legal limbo. To use a colourful analogy, Britain becomes the EU's "gimp".


Hurt pride

While historical comparisons are not always fully applicable, the spirit of the comparison may well ring true for critics of Britain's emasculated position. The status of an emasculated power that was in many ways "managed" from outside was also the fate that befell Weimar Germany in the years immediately following World War One, and more recently Russia in the years immediately following the collapse of Communism. In both cases, the fate of their economies was tied to decisions made outside the country, due to either (in Germany's case) massive debts burdened on them by the victorious allies, or (in Russia's case) a collapse in the real value of the economy's assets leading to Western opportunism/exploitation.
I'm not suggesting that the EU is in the business of Britain's "exploitation"; as said earlier, its stance comes from self-preservation due to the British government's own self-defeating strategy. My wider point is what effect "vassalage" could have on British "pride" and its effect on British politics in particular. Hint: not a good one.

As we know from the examples of Germany and Russia, their experiences of economic emasculation led to political extremism. The fact that Jacob Rees-Mogg is so accepting of the transitional deal makes me wonder if people like him are playing "the long game" (and have been for quite some time). Knowing how humiliating the terms of the transition would be for Britain, his group in parliament (the ERG) quietly allow Theresa May and her close associates to dig their own political graves through their supine "surrender" to Brussels (in a modern-day "Versailles" treaty), meanwhile quietly waiting for the tide to turn against them and in their favour. The mood in Britain is already febrile from the emotive rhetoric used by the Brexiteers. It wouldn't be surprising if some of them would use Britain's uniquely-emasculated status during the transition (a "humiliation") for their own ends, using the selfsame emotive rhetoric as before to better bring about a Hard Brexit afterwards, free from Europe's "dastardly" hands. As said before, the situation is unprecedented in modern British history, so equally it makes sense that some might seek to exploit that unique position for their ends. Evoking the myths of British history and identity, it wouldn't be difficult to foresee a strong reaction to modern Britain's enfeebled status, manipulated by those who seek to benefit from it.
This narrative sees the Brexiteers, far from their agenda turned over by the EU in the Brexit negotiations, see the negotiations as actually a "win-win", so long as Theresa May is kept to her word of Britain leaving the single market. If Britain leaves with no deal by June, they win next year. If Britain gets a transitional deal, they could use the interim "humiliation" for their own political ends - blaming the EU (and, if necessary, the "collaborationists" in the government) - to ensure their extremist agenda is realised at the start of 2021.
In this sense, the transition would become a tool for destroying Britain's pride - a kind of purge of its collective psyche - with the EU both as the instrument and the scapegoat. This "psychological purge" of British identity thus provides a kind of "shock therapy" that would numb Britain to the vision that the "Brextremists" wished to implement - the logical conclusion of their "austerity agenda", a form of social engineering. They could then manipulate the situation to create support for their "bargain basement" vision for post-Brexit Britain. It would hardly be the first time that right-wing Tories have used a strategy that both uses a third party for their own ends, and also becomes their scapegoat.

Put in these terms, Britain's future seems to be in the Brexiteers' hands, come what may. Only time will tell if it goes so far as becoming a contemporary version of "Fascism with a British face".

Britain, the EU and the Brexit negotiations: a clash of cultures?

An article in the Guardian articulated part of the problem the British government has with its negotiations with the EU. Apart from not understand the nature of the EU (in spite of being part of it for over forty years), it doesn't even understand how it is seen itself by others. As the writer in the article explains:
"In Brussels, the British are viewed with suspicion – seen as hiding cunning behind charm, using manners as a cloak for ruthlessness, and, at their core, being strategic, stubborn and mercantile. These stereotypes of character are joined by experience. It is precisely because Britain has so successfully secured its interests as a member of the EU – shaping the evolution of the European project while securing opt-outs from key parts of it – that the other member states understand how ruthlessly it pursues its interests. One of the great ironies of the current impasse is that Britain’s success in the EU stokes fears of its conduct outside it "
Apart from that, it also seems that Brussels has a better understanding of Britain's own culture than even Britain has itself:
" British politics is erratic, unstable, and irrational. British politicians are, therefore, not to be trusted. There is a belief that the British – accustomed to great power for centuries – are simply incapable of accepting any rules. Britons lazily project their domestic political model – where one side wins, the other loses, and the winner dominates the loser – on to a European politics that is very different"

In a nutshell, we have above a cultural explanation of why Britain's government is failing so abysmally in its negotiations with Brussels. Apart from Britain's government having the ingrained culture of seeing politics and diplomacy as a zero-sum game, coming from its long tradition of an adversarial style of statecraft, its ignorance in even its own self-awareness (let alone of the culture of "foreign powers") is dooming its fate.
This is just one example of the cultural disconnect between London and Brussels. The EU cannot fathom, for one thing, how Britain's government can be so ignorant of the rules of an organisation that it has been a member of for more than forty years. It cannot fathom how Britain's government seems to repeatedly set demands for its post-EU relationship that would break the EU's own rules; rules that Britain should have been well aware of for decades.


The buccaneer versus the bureaucrat

One explanation for this is "culture", and that Britain's ruling class has simply become utterly complacent in its relationship to Europe and its own intellectual competence. Britain's cultural default in international relations is the imperial power-play, where it plays off one "Johnny Foreigner" against the other for its own advantage. This is one method that was used to expand and maintain the British Empire, and the same methodology was used in its past European relations.
Brought forward to a post-Imperial setting, Britain joined the then EEC for its own economic necessity, as well as joining the power-play tussle of the major European states within the organisation. This worked well for the first ten years or so inside "the club", but by the late Eighties it was clear that there were elements within the British establishment and the media who saw "Europe" as the enemy, and bristled against the increasing regulation and bureaucratic centralisation. By this time, it was clear to Eurosceptics that the European "project" was turning into something they didn't sign up for, and this was the start of the series of "opt outs" that the British government negotiated with the EU to mollify its critics.
We know how this story ends: with Britain outside the Eurozone, with a Conservative Prime Minister (David Cameron) going so far to mollify the Eurosceptics that we have ended up leaving the EU completely, with the current Prime Minister promising to even leave the single market (EEA/EFTA) as well. The mythic image of Britain as a "trade buccaneer" is what helped it join the single market in the 1970s, and it is that same self-delusion that is leading many in government to believe that Britain can thrive outside of the European single market now.
In this sense, the negotiations have failed because Britain falsely believes in its own self-delusion as a trading goliath, where the EU "needs us more than we need them". This leads to the belief that the EU's stubbornness is merely a negotiation strategy (more on that later) where they will eventually buckle. The British government's fatal misunderstanding of the EU's necessary preservation of its own interests is what we'll look at next. And it is also this British "buccaneer" vision that is fuelling the EU's need for self-preservation: it doesn't want to have a super-sized free-trade tax haven right on its doorstep, without the regulatory means to protect itself.


Short-term versus long-term

Regarding the Brexit negotiations specifically, Theresa May's strategy (if she can be said to have one) seems to be to find a short-term fix to any problem that arises, that kicks the can down the road a little further, until it has to kicked yet further down the road again later.
This classic short-termist strategy is something that has been a part of British politics for decades, arguably centuries. In British government generally (and also often in industry), big issues that need to be tackled are often "fudged", relying on a culture of "muddling through": from in the modern era, things like HS2, Heathrow's new runway, investment, infrastructure planning and the approach to the economy in general (feeding a rapacious financial sector or voracious property bubble, for example) to historical examples like the wasteful use of North Sea oil revenue, selling-off government assets for the short-term boost to the treasury's books, and so on. The tendency within the British system is to find short-term solutions to problems - and if possible, ignoring the problem completely - creating a culture of "make do and mend" that feeds an atmosphere of institutional backwardness.
Theresa May, however, has taken this mentality to new depths. As her main priority seems to be focused on purely self-preservation (of her, and her government's unity), survival is continued by the necessity to "fudge" any issues of disagreement, allowing them to be dealt with later. Regarding the agreement her government made with the EU in December, the semantic "fudge" allowed her to both satisfy the different voices in her government, as well as the DUP who prop her government up in parliament, and also the EU.
With Donald Tusk's recent comments, we know now that the EU has called May out on this clear act of short-term deception. The EU cannot accept any "fudge" that fails to provide clear legal certainty (see the next section below). It is this reason that the negotiations appear stalled. Besides this, and even more importantly, the EU has a cultural aversion to short-termism. In fact, in its very inception, the then EEC marked itself out as a long-term "project" for "ever closer union". While its solution to the Greek crisis several years ago looked like a "kicking the can down the road" exercise, this was also a demonstration of how the EU are risk-averse, taking the longer view that it was better to have Greece under control and inside the club than a potential basket case out of its control on its edges.

With Brexit, the EU have taken the view that as Britain's government has decided it will leave all associated EU institutions completely, it must act for its own self-preservation and self-integrity. The EU accepts that there would be an economic hit to the single market from Britain's actions, but it cannot compromise its own systems (or its long-term future) for the sake of one non-member, even one the size of Britain. And as the EU has stated, it is precisely Britain's size and close vicinity that make its deregulation strategy potentially so threatening to the EU. In short, (among other things) having such a lax attitude to tax regulation, treating citizens with callous indifference, and its threatening language from its media, has made Britain the "bad guy":

So the EU is prepared for the consequences of Brexit, and takes the longer view. It's only Britain who doesn't.


Amateurs versus technocrats

The EU has often been derided as a technocratic bureaucracy of faceless cogs in the wheel, but it is in the Brexit negotiations that the EU's technocratic system is shown to have its uses. On the side of Brussels you have Michel Barnier and his technical team of legal experts, with supporting roles by Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker. These are people who have an entire legal team of experts to support them, along with their own long experience of EU procedures. On the British side you have David Davis, supported by Theresa May and Boris Johnson. These are people whose grasp of technical detail is hazy at best; for example, you have David Davis not seeming to understand such basics like services not having tariffs, and so talks about removing tariffs from services to get better trade deals, to demonstrate his utter ignorance. There are a thousand and one examples like this.

In this sense, Britain's negotiations are led by figures who are literally amateurs. This is partly the result of how they came to get where they did; not through their expertise but their similar background, the ability to "blag it" and be on the right side at the right moment. They are all hopelessly out of their depth. With their personas formed from a political system that seems to run on the "Dilbert Principle", in this system what matters is having some degree of cunning and charm that masks your incompetence. That way, people lower down in the food chain do all the tricky work, leaving you to lord them around (while they clean up your mess). Related to this is the concept of "Mushroom management" (which Theresa May seems to best embody): giving out as little useful information as possible and keep everyone on their toes.
This system of "amateur governance" has a long tradition in Britain, and is one reason why the civil service was so highly-valued historically by comparison (as satirized so well in the "Yes, Minister" series); it was they who really ran the government on a day-to-day basis. But Brexit seems to be the "reckoning" on this system: most of the government's EU experts work for Brussels, not London, which leaves the few experts on this side of the Channel hopelessly outnumbered by all the special interest groups who see Brexit as nothing more than an opportunity for profiteering. This helps to explain why Theresa May's strategy seems strangely-similar to that of the Legatum Institute: out of her depth, she falls back on the voices of those who seem culturally closest to her, from the same background of elitist amateurs.
Brussels has no time for the kind of "blaggers" seen the the British government; it expects detail backed up by legal argument, while those supposedly "advising" the British government have their own agenda for seeing negotiations break down.


A haggle versus a checklist

Finally, Britain's government has from the start misunderstood what the negotiations are about.

Britain comes from its historical perspective of negotiations being a haggle where getting a deal means having something you can have to wave in exultation when you return home (a la Neville Chamberlain). Therefore, any "win" in the negotiations for Britain would necessitate a "loss" of some kind for the EU; the kind of zero-sum game that was mentioned at the beginning, and carried out every week in Westminster politics.
Brussels sees these talks not as "negotiations" in the traditional sense, but more like Britain deciding which one of several options Brussels offers it. And this latter analogy would be accurate, as it is incumbent on Britain to agree terms with the EU, not vice versa. This should have made it all the more simple in some ways, as it should have been about Britain "checking" which option "on the menu" it wants from the EU, giving both sides time to organise the agreed future relationship.
Because Britain's goverment has been in complete denial about this reality - thinking it can haggle in a "pick and mix" style over which bits it does and doesn't want, in spite of being repeatedly told otherwise, most of the "negotiation" has been about each side talking at cross-purposes. So, nearly a year on from the start of the negotiations, we're really little further on than we were on Day One, with the transitional deal that Britain asked for nowhere near being done, because Britain keeps asking for something that isn't on "the menu".

As far as Brussels is concerned, Britain just doesn't "get it". And on all the above evidence, it looks like it never did.

Brexit and The English Civil War: Populism versus "Papism"?

It could be argued that the seeds of Brexit go back five hundred years.

British Euroscepticism is an old creed which has usually been a mask for English Nationalism, of one sort or another. But at its heart is a paranoia against Europe, and a particular conspiracy theory that centres on an all-powerful, trans-national ("papist") elite.

The paranoiac, Eurosceptic conspiracy theorists of today (i.e. the zealot "Brexiteers") seem to echo with the same kind of dark delusions as those of 16th and 17th century England. The same could well be said of the ancient roots of modern Anti-Semitism, but that's another story.
The Reformation of Martin Luther five hundred years ago was in many ways about "taking back control" from a over-mighty, corrupt and centralizing elite, based in Rome. This movement also crossed the channel to England. It was the personal whims of Henry VIII rather than Martin Luther that eventually brought about the "English Reformation", and he came to see the power of the papacy in England as a direct threat to his own. One direct result of this was the dissolution of the monasteries, an act of barbarous, monarchical thievery masked behind faith. The febrile atmosphere in the country led to Protestant paranoia against Rome and its ally, Hapsburg Spain, and by the reign of Elizabeth, war.

By the time the Stuart kings came to the throne in the first half of the 17th century, Protestant paranoia had to be tamed. "Splendid Isolation" was also self-destructive. This resulted in a more nuanced and pragmatic approach by the Stuarts towards Catholic Spain and the "Papist" threat; it was a period of  English "detente" towards Europe, where relations were improved and connections made. This went so far as leaving some English Protestants into thinking that James, and Charles in particular, were Papists in all but name. Their autocratic actions also fed the view that the Stuart kings were behaving far more like the Papist autocrats on the Continent than the more consensual rulers they had been led to believe in (regardless of the past reality of Henry VIII's reign).
It was this atmosphere of Protestant paranoia over a "Papist", foreign-minded king that led to the English Civil War. The king's forces, the Cavaliers, were seen as foppish, condescending autocrats, while parliament's forces, the Roundheads, were portrayed as sober-minded reformers. The resulting "Commonwealth" of the victorious Roundheads, however, rapidly turned into a virtual Puritan revolution. While the purpose of the Civil war was the restoration of parliament, it actually turned into the autocracy of Oliver Cromwell and his fellow Puritan Protestants where parliament was sidelined; a hard-line faction of parliament had taken control of the country and hijacked its fate. In the end, this situation couldn't last, and we had the Restoration not long after Cromwell's death.


The "new Puritanism"?

We seem to be repeating a variation on the same story centuries later.

Four hundred years ago, while Protestants in England were becoming fed up with James' indulgence of Hapsburg Spain, the seeds were also sown for the Thirty Years' War. This saw Hapsburg (and fellow-Papist) Austria fight against Protestants across the Holy Roman Empire. This Protestant "insurgency" against a centralizing autocracy devastated the heart of Europe.
Ironically, the Hapsburgs also had a part to play in Europe's coming-together after the Second World War. The Treaty Of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War and created a peace in Europe that lasted for generations; The Treaty of Rome created the framework for European peace and co-operation after the Second World war.
The Eurosceptics of today wouldn't have missed the historical irony (or implicit symbolism) of the framework for a centralised, European administration being signed in Rome. For the paranoid conspiracy theorists, the whole thing reeked of centuries-old autocratic "Papism", re-imagined in a modern setting. For the paranoid conspiracy theorists, Hapsburg hands even seemed be on the choice of Brussels (and Strasbourg) as its administrative centres; both cities that once were at the heart of "Papist" Austrian and Spanish Hapsburg lands. Belgium is still staunchly Catholic. Eurosceptics' paranoia that the European Union was simply a reconstituted Holy Roman Empire assailed against "democratizing" Protestantism would have been undimmed.
My point is not to argue if these ideas are based in fact (and regardless of any wider symbolism, European integration is a well-established fact); it is that these ideas have been used by paranoid Eurosceptics for the purpose of their own agenda. That agenda seems to be a form of economic and ideological "Puritanism": a kind of 21st century "Commonwealth", with all the potential upheaval that entails.

As with Protestants' suspicion of the allegiance of the Stuart kings of four hundred years ago, Eurosceptics of today would have had their paranoia fueled by the administrations of Blair and Cameron, who were both innately Euro-phile (and ironically, like James and Charles Stuart, both of Scottish stock). Like how Protestants of four hundred years ago would have yearned back to the times of the staunch Protestantism of Elizabeth, today's Eurosceptics yearn back to the certainties of the Thatcher era; another strong woman, they would say, who did not shy from battling Europe.
Like King James, Blair's fate seems to have been to repair relations with Europe, strained after years of quasi-isolation. He otherwise left a long legacy of mixed fortunes during his time in power. James's successor, Charles, took James' autocratic tendency even further, but with far less tact.
Cameron's political fate as the "heir to Blair", in a manner of speaking, also seemed to have gone the way of Charles'. Some of the historical parallels are striking. Foppish and condescending like Charles, Cameron's career at the top was a series of misjudgments. It was trouble with Scotland that started Charles' troubles with parliament in England; after recklessly thinking he had solved the trouble north of the border, Charles thought his troubles with parliament would as easily be solved. They were not, and neither were his troubles with Scotland. The same could be said of Cameron, when his "victory" over the Scottish referendum led him to think he could as easily solve the problem his own faction had with Europe. By acting in a condescending way towards his enemies and behaving like a reckless autocrat, Cameron's fate came to a messy political end.
After being defeated by the "Puritanical" Eurosceptic faction, Cameron was succeeded by Theresa May. The daughter of a vicar, she seemed to match the Brexit Puritans' demeanor for a mean-spirited, petty-minded form of government. In allowing a hostile political environment for the Eurosceptics' paranoia to grow unchecked, she seems to be continuing this inadvertent "reprise" of the mid-17th century narrative: as a female Cromwell, symbolic head of the Puritan "Brexit" revolution that sought to seek out and destroy the remaining vestiges of "Papist" Pro-Europeanism. For these modern Puritans, "Hard Brexit" is their version of the rapture, with their foreign-minded "Papist" enemies rightly deserving of their fate in the rhetorical flames.

The "Brexiteers" of today share the same paranoia towards the continent that the Protestant Puritans had four hundred years ago. The themes are the same, even if the European institutions they attack are different; once it was Rome that was the enemy, while now it is Brussels. As mentioned earlier, the sharper-eyed (and more conspiratorial) Eurosceptics may point to the symbolic "Papist connection" between Brussels and Rome.
Four hundred years ago, the Puritans' allies in Europe were to be found in the Lutheran states of Northern Europe, as they allied against Rome and its Hapsburg allies in Spain and Austria. Today, the "Brexiteers" find their allies in the Populist anti-European movements. These are ideological descendants to the anti-clerical Lutherans that fought against a centralizing Rome, except now their "centralizing" enemies are based in Brussels, with the support of Berlin and Paris.

This is the narrative that has overtaken Britain's politics. These are the "culture wars" that have been fought in the minds of Britain's population, on behalf of a "Puritan" Brexit agenda. The new "English Civil War" has already been fought in the form of the EU referendum: to continue the analogy, the foppish Pro-European "Cavaliers" lost, and the stern-minded Eurosceptic "Roundheads" won.

For the Brexit "Puritans", a new "Commonwealth" beckons; though what it means for everyone else, only time will tell.

Lazy, Ignorant and Entitled: the real reasons Britain voted for Brexit?

There are a whole host of reasons why Brexit happened. Some commentators focus on the role of David Cameron in allowing the situation to arise in the way it did, and for his handling of the issue as a personal act of political indulgence. Others focus on the economic factors that led to large sections of the "disenfranchised" working class voting Leave almost as a form of protest. Again, others look at the rise of UKIP and the populist tendency since the financial crisis. The second and third points are related, though, and prior to the financial crisis it was the BNP who were also tapping into this previously-ignored segment of society, before being superseded by UKIP.

In some ways, then, Brexit could be called the "triumph of the losers"; those who have "lost out" in the modern world (read; globalisation) and want things back the way they were before (when life was easier for them). It is usually termed as a wish to turn back then clock.
Populism has been on the rise since the financial crisis throughout Europe, and as we have seen with Donald Trump, in the USA. The same could also be said of Turkey, who are soon to have a referendum on turning their country into a quasi-authoritarian presidency. Populism is an ideology in its own right, although often loosely-defined. In another sense, it is also a psychology of its own. It is that "psychology", and the psychology of the Brexit-supporter, that the author wants to focus on.

Lazy?

Many of those who voted "Leave" were unskilled workers, who felt their livelihoods had become jeopardized by Eastern Europeans who have undercut them. This is the claim that many of those voters made, in any case.
It is true that there are agencies that recruit solely non-British workers from abroad, and it is true that many of the Eastern Europeans do work for a lower wage, especially in the unregulated black market. But this is far from the whole story. A recent article (there have been a number like this) spoke of how many sectors of industry recruit large numbers of Europeans simply because so few British workers apply for those jobs. It is true that many of these jobs are not well paid, but they are still legitimate salaries.
A simple - if brutally-frank - conclusion to reach is that low-skilled British workers feel that those kinds of jobs (such as in the hospitality sector, but especially seasonal farming work) are too difficult for them. With anti-social hours ("when can find the time to go out?"; "do I really have to get up a four in the morning?") and often physically demanding ("I'm not getting my hands dirty!"), these jobs compare poorly with the sedentary, generic services sector that many of them may be used to. But the point is that someone has to do these jobs; and if not enough "natives" are willing to apply for them, then employers simply have no other choice. This assessment of the reality reflects poorly on the local labour force, and  makes you wonder what the local employers think of them.

So the complaint of "foreigners taking our jobs" doesn't really ring true; those workers making this complaint simply are making an incoherent argument that - even if their argument was valid - would anyway suggest that foreign workers had greater levels of labour flexibility than them. In which case,  why don't the locals try to do better than the foreigners, rather than try to "fix" the economy into an inefficient model that's more in their favour? But as we have seen, their case falls flat in reality; either way, the locals simply look "lazy".

This might sound like a blunt assessment given that British workers are among the hardest-working employees in the EU (in hours worked per week); but this is also the case because of inefficient working practises, which are likely to get worse outside of EU regulation. So be careful what you wish for!

Many of these workers are victims of the changes that have happened to the British economy over the last thirty years, but the reality is that complaining about it will change nothing; simply, many of these people have failed to react or change to circumstances. It's true that many of them are the "losers" of modern-day globalisation. The easy answer of blaming "Europe" for everything, as was the argument from the Leave camp, explains why this was appealing to low-skilled workers: it required nothing to believe an idea that explains away their own misfortune, while doing nothing to tackle the real issues.
As said earlier, it sounds like they want to turn back the clock. This was why they voted for Brexit. But looking at things objectively, this is simply a set of workers, already shown to be "lazy" and entitled when compared to their foreign counterparts, wanting to "fix" the system yet further in the expectation that they could have control over the supply of the labour force, regardless of the the intellectual incoherence of this idea. In any case, the kind of economy they are supporting by backing Brexit is the type of low-wage economy with fewer workers' rights that would make them even worse-off than they are currently.
This is why "Brexit" was a victory for the lazy anti-intellectualism of the anti-globalisation forces: like in all Populist movements, its supporters want to be "protected" from reality, while being duped into supporting something that actually would work against their interests.

Thirty years ago the comedy series "Auf Weidersehn, Pet" highlighted a serious issue, and showed a simple way to resolve it: move to where the work is, as thousands of other Europeans do every year. Which leads on to another issue that many Brits have...

Ignorant?

We've looked at how many of the sectors in industry are reliant on European workers due to a lazy sense of entitlement from the local workforce. Some could even assign this to a "Post-Imperial" psychology of expecting others to do the "hard" work for them (such as exists in the Arab Gulf States). But there is another form of "laziness" that also afflicts many Brits: intellectual laziness.

As we have seen, many of the lower-skilled native workforce are guilty of blaming Europeans for their problems. What makes this worse is that Britain is singularly-exceptional in the EU. It has a population that consciously denies itself the full advantage of one of the EU's "four freedoms"; the freedom of labour, simply because, unlike other Europeans, British people don't bother to learn a foreign language.

While it is true that English is the lingua franca of the world, it is this willful ignorance that reflects badly on the British compared to other European nations. Britain has been in the EU for more than forty years, but most of its population have used the freedom of movement simply to indulge their holiday plans, and then casually expect to be able to speak their language in another country. Put in another way, many Brits' attitude towards Europe is to treat the EU like Post-Imperial "colonies", where they are expected, as Brits, to be treated in a superior manner.

It is this mentality that has fed a lazy thinking towards Europe and Britain's place in the EU. If "Europe" is seen by many Brits and the place "over there" only to go on holiday, buy "duty free" and make fun of foreigners' funny accents, how does this help to create a constructive attitude? Unlike other EU countries' workers, who are happy to travel to work in other parts of the EU, Brits tend to use their freedom to travel simply for leisure or for the purpose of retirement. Of the Brits who do live in different parts of the EU, the vast majority are retirees in Spain. The unwillingness to learn a foreign language is one of the major factors towards this difference.
It is true that the European continent's history of wars over the centuries - and especially the last century - that helped to engender an atmosphere of co-operation and amity. It is true that Britain's cultural history is separated from that in many ways; it could be argued that Britain's relationship with Europe is too influenced by its cultural failure to come to terms with the loss of Empire, as many seeing the EU somehow as a replacement for it. But this does not excuse intellectual laziness.

The intellectual laziness that comes from not learning a foreign language has limited how British people can fully benefit from being in the EU, creating a huge self-inflicted bias against the institution. As said earlier, other countries do not have this problem (at least, not to Britain's extent. Many criticise the French on the same grounds, but contrary to common misconception, many French people know at least some English: they simply don't like using it in their own country).

Put in these terms, many Brits attitude to being a part of the EU could seen as intellectually lazy and entitled, ignorant of what the EU stands for, and willfully-ignorant of the opportunities that being a member of the EU represents. When you are part of a multi-national, multi-lingual labour market and can't be bothered to learn a foreign language, you're simply limiting your own options, especially when the workers in the other countries are doing the exact opposite.
This is what makes British workers' criticism of Europeans who come to work in the UK especially galling; in learning a foreign language to work in the UK, the Europeans are doing something that Brits are too lazy to bother doing; yet they are criticized for bothering to make full use of the European labour market, unlike the British.

No wonder Europeans have found the British attitude so unfathomable: many Brits seem to have chosen to leave a club they never even tried to make full use of (or bothering to fully understand the rules), while criticising the others who did. It makes "Brexit" supporters sound like the kind of people who join a gym to lose weight, give up after a couple of times, then complain that it's the gym's fault that they haven't lost any weight. The cultural ignorance towards Europe that seems prevalent in many Brexit supporters is a result of intellectual laziness, and a narcissistic expectation of special treatment. But again, this is a tendency that appears throughout Populist movements.
Which brings us to the other main issue....

Entitled?

Since Britain has joined the EU, it has been one of the largest net contributors to the fund. This is a point that many Eurosceptic politicians have made over the years, and was a major factor in Margaret Thatcher getting her famous "rebate" after being in "the club" for ten years.
But the fact that the UK is the second-largest contributor (Germany being the largest) is hardly surprising, given the size of the UK economy and its population. France is a famous beneficiary of  the CAP, but as we have seen, there are other aspects of its EU membership where the UK has been holding itself back, such as treating the EU simply as one big holiday destination rather than a huge potential work-zone.
Britain's relationship with the EU since its membership has always seemed "semi-detached", and that's been part of the problem. Of course, the EU exists as an association of mutual self-interest for those involved, so all countries will fight their own corner. The "apogee" of Britain's engagement with the EU was clearly in the early years of the Blair premiership (until Brown's resistance against joining the Euro); since then, and especially under the Cameron administration, it has simply been a matter of the UK trying to get the EU to see things from their point of view i.e. that "Europe" was an unpopular cause at home. It was Cameron's liking of "feeding the crocodile" of Euroscepticism that Europeans found exasperating, damaging Britain's relations with the EU for cheap political gain, and was the (unsurprising) cause of his resignation.
While Eurosceptics found Britain's membership of the EU to be some kind of debilitating autocracy,  the reality was that Britain was able to get its way almost all of the time on the key issues that mattered: apart from Thatcher getting a rebate, Britain was able to opt out of Schengen, the Euro, and the social chapter. Britain's "semi-detached" status was therefore thanks to the EU indulging British exceptionalism as far as it could reasonably go without breaking its own rules. But, this was still not enough for the Eurosceptics that wanted to have their cake and eat it while in the EU, with that attitude persisting with Brexit. This sense of entitlement is therefore endemic.

When looking at who voted for Brexit, a clear generation gap can be seen. What's telling about this is that it's the generation who already have a "triple lock" pension (and a holiday home in Spain?) who are still yet unsatisfied with their lot; they are the "have their cake and eat it" generation, if you will, who want their lives protected at all costs. A cynic might add that this is the problem with democracy, when it's the older generation who do most of the voting: in a democracy, a politician must satisfy his voters. This is something that the prize Machiavellian George Osborne was all too aware of.

So David Cameron's "feeding the crocodile" may have made some short-term political sense in a way, though it adds up to horrible long-term strategy: after all, Greece got itself into a financial mess by years and years of politicians simply doing what the voters asked of them: giving them more and more money. This is the ultimate route that Populism takes, and why it always ends in tears.
Politicians have to be leaders "ahead of the curve" as well as being responsive to the electorate; this is one reason why many people in the UK bought into the "austerity" agenda, even though it was based on a false narrative of events (that Labour overspending caused the financial crisis, rather than the banks' reckless mismanagement). People believed it because they liked the idea of a politician "taking a lead" on events and telling them what appeared an "unpalatable truth". But Cameron's reasons for backing "austerity" weren't about genuine leadership; it was about opportunistic political "differentiation", making the Conservatives seem forthright compared to the seemingly-evasive Labour party.
And now that Theresa May has inherited that legacy of Brexit, she seems determined to follow the same path, indulging the worst aspects of Populism by turning her party into a re-branded "UKIP" that steals all their clothes. Meanwhile, those who stand against that, it is implied, are "anti-British" and "doing the country down". It is no wonder that the atmosphere in the country has turned uglier towards foreigners, and even countrymen who are worried about their future.

The "Brexit generation", if we can call them that, are those who are also more likely to vote Conservative i.e. the over-50's (who, of course, are more likely to be voters at all): the same people who are concerned about protecting their status, their (paid for) homes (or second homes), and are wistfully looking back to a time of their childhood when "Britannia ruled the waves".
Looking at it rationally, it's hard to know exactly why these people are so anti-European. What has modern-day Europe ever done to them personally? Why do they despise Brussels? The most common complaint, apart from "immigration" (see the points above) is about loss of sovereignty. But as alluded to before, these are the rules by how the club works: you trade in some sovereignty to get greater freedom of movement, trade and labour, not to mention greater employment rights, investment opportunities, and so on. If Brits don't want to take full advantage of that, it's Britain's problem, not Europe's. They simply don't understand the rules of the game, or can't be bothered to do so.

But this is the point: many of these people are driven by emotional prejudice and historical antipathy that pre-dates Britain joining the EU, rather than due to any rational argument. They still hate Germany because of the war, and think that all Europeans are inherently untrustworthy. They want the Britain of their childhood, with their lovely blue passports, and fewer "brown people". Policy made on such fantastical pretensions, and in favour of people who support such nonsensical thinking, is bound to result in disappointment, if not worse.

Britain is about to find out.

Narcissism and politics: David Cameron's resignation and the EU referendum

David Cameron's career is, in many ways, a parable of the ascent and (inevitable) demise of the narcissist as politician.
In a previous article, we've looked at Cameron's rise to party leader and Prime Minister, through the prism of the narcissist. The nature of his fall was as much the result his own personality and narcissism as any other part of his career; in some ways, even more so.

The article mentioned looks at how Cameron took control of his party by effectively making the success of the party reliant on the success of the leader; the party became popular because he was popular. In this sense, like many narcissist-politicians, the party became a form of "personality cult". He modernised the party, becoming known as the "heir to Blair" in the process. He took a look at how to make his party popular, recruiting Steve Hilton in the process; this was the "hug a hoodie" period before the financial crisis. These were the positives that Cameron brought to his role; but there were far more negatives in the long run.

Over his career he became known as masterful at tactics, but hopeless at strategy. His superficial charm was noticeable and what gave him an automatic sense of gravitas. The problem with this was that it perhaps too often it gave him an automatic sense of invincibility. We'll look at this in more detail in a moment.
The superficial charm, along with some other more unpleasant characteristics, have seemed to point to a darker aspect of Cameron's personality. While he has plenty of admirers and his circle of supporters are fiercely-defensive of his character and motives, a more distanced look at his career at the pinnacle of politics for six years (plus his four-and-a-half years as leader of the opposition) leads to a less sympathetic assessment. While he himself said that "all careers end in failure", his own failure was one he brought about on himself. It is this seismic failure that will always define him.

Politics as a poker game

Some see politics and power as a game of chess; others see it as a game of poker. A famous example of the former would be the cynical "grand master" of geo-politics in the early 21st century, Vladimir Putin. This is a man who will do whatever he needs to in order to preserve power, exploit weaknesses in his enemies, and grab opportunities to extend influence. Cameron's partner-in-power, George Osborne, is someone who also played politics as a chess game, using his position as chancellor to trap and destroy his enemies.
David Cameron, though, sees it as a game of poker, He would never admit this himself probably, but the evidence is there to see when you look at the judgments and decisions he has made as leader of his party and, more significantly, as Prime Minister.

Cameron is the ultimate "risk-taker" as politician. It is easier, and more instructive, to look at the progress of Cameron's career as a series of decisions and judgments (or "gambles"), and how this affected (or reinforced) the somewhat callous, risk-taking aspect to his character, ultimately resulting in an explosive "ultimate gamble".
This goes back all the way to his initial rise to the leadership of the Conservative Party. His main challenger for the leadership in 2005 was David Davis. As Davis was known as an arch Euro-sceptic, and Cameron's views on Europe were more nuanced, in order to win the support of the party's hard right, he declared that if he became Conservative leader he would take them out of the European People's Party (EPP), the EU's largest group of conservatism in the parliament. This declaration was key to getting the support he needed, and then he carried through with his promise to take his party out of the EPP. This was largely unremarked on in Britain at the time, but it was not in the Europe. It was never forgotten in Europe's major capitals how Cameron played to his party's anti-European instincts for his own personal gain; as would be repeated ten years later.

While this decision might not be a "gamble" as such, it was a judgement that would start a ball rolling and have long implications.

Cameron's relationship with the parliamentary party was almost always unstable, due to the distrust they felt over what they saw as his instinctive "Europeanism". Like during John Major's tenure, he was always having to play a balancing act between doing things to remain popular with the wider electorate (and thus in office), and doing things to stay on the right side of his MPs. His instincts were to the former, with the occasional piece of red meat thrown to the latter when the need arose. It was this strategy of effectively "winging it" with his own MPs (and thus the fate of the country) that would lead to the fateful "Bloomberg Speech" in early 2013.

His parliamentary party were taken aback when he failed to win the 2010 election outright; when Cameron then took the decision (and thus his first real "gamble") to join in a full coalition with the Liberal Democrats, many of them were incensed, and it took all his charm to keep them on his side. But even that was only temporary.
This "gamble" of coalition government led to a further "gamble" the following year, in the form of the AV referendum. This referendum on changing the voting system was one of the LibDems' terms in the Coalition Agreement; Cameron was taking a risk, for if he lost it, his party would have permanently fewer seats in parliament (and he would, one assumes, not be long in his job). Luckily for him, the risk was in fact over-stated, and due to the winning over the support of the Labour party, the "no" side won comfortably. Cameron had taken his first major domestic gamble, and won.

By 2012, though, the LibDems were causing trouble. After accepting austerity and losing the AV referendum, their leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was becoming increasingly unpopular, and so needed something to raise his party's profile than being seen as the Conservatives' "enabler". According to the Coalition Agreement, the AV referendum was tied to changes on constituency boundary reform, which would benefit the Conservatives (at the expense of Labour and the LibDems). However, the LibDems now said that boundary reform was tied to House Of Lords reform; they would not support boundary reform without Lords' reform.
This led to boundary reform can being kicked down the road till after the 2015 election after the LibDems' Lords' reform failed, which infuriated many of Cameron's MPs. They were further infuriated by another decision (read "gamble") that Cameron took, to support gay marriage.

It was partly due to these factors (and the rise of UKIP) that led Cameron to feel the need to give his rebellious MP some "red meat"; the result of this was the fateful "Bloomberg Speech". In other words, his "gambles" in one direction had led to the need to "hedge" in the other.

Meanwhile, Cameron took his first foreign policy "gamble" early in 2011, with the intervention in Libya. The "Arab Spring" affected him quite strongly and, with the support of Nicholas Sarkozy, took the war in Libya to be a kind of personal crusade. It was a largely Anglo-French operation, but what was meant to be an operation that had learned the mistakes of Iraq turned into one that simply repeated them, albeit in a slightly different form. Once Muammar Qaddafi was gone, Cameron's attention rapidly waned; even before that, Cameron's "strategy" in Libya was proving to be almost non-existent. To be blunt, while Cameron may have had good intentions, to outsiders it looked like an exercise in foreign policy "attention seeking". The fact that Libya quickly collapsed into civil war due to a lack of Anglo-French guidance or oversight told its own story. Cameron's "gamble" in Libya is something that Britain seemed to quickly forget; meanwhile, Libyans are living it every day.

That trend of Cameron "taking his eye off the ball" did not get any better with the vote on war in Syria two years later. Again, Cameron's character flaws shown themselves to lead to a blunder of his own making. This was another case of him rolling the dice with high stakes in foreign affairs, and losing.

Raising the stakes

So far, Cameron's "gambles" had either paid off, or (at a superficial level) his "losses" had not critically damaged his position; he would lick his wounds and move on. In this sense, you could see where Cameron might get the impression that he was "getting quite good" at making judgement calls, in spite of the reality. He seemed to be quite good at shrugging off the occasional knock-back as part of a learning curve. The problem with this was that it might lead him to think his judgement was getting better with each "gamble" he made. It wasn't; it was simply that the stakes were getting higher each time.

Cameron has been called an "Essay Crisis" Prime Minister: he would often lack the drive and attention to deal with a problem until the last minute, when he would suddenly bring it all together as if by magic. It also meant that he was liable to panic at the final moment.

This was true of the Scottish Referendum, when during the negotiations with Alex Salmond he gave way on some issues, as long as the vote was an "either-or" and London would decide the timing of the vote. As the polls suggested a comfortable majority for staying part of the UK when the campaign started, Cameron saw this as a way to "lance the boil" of Scottish independence, while also catching Alex Salmond on the back foot.
As we know, the polls narrowed dramatically in the final weeks of the campaign, resulting in Cameron's panicky "vow" with the other major party leaders for more powers for Scotland to stay part of the UK (as an aside here, with Scotland being the only other kingdom in the "United Kingdom", Scotland leaving the UK would effectively mean the name would no longer have any meaning; so Scotland was effectively voting to abolish "the UK").
Again, this was another moment when Cameron was truly "risking it all". But no sooner had the referendum been won that he was again "hedging" with his own troublesome backbenchers by calling for EVEL; currying favour with Scotland one day, and with the English shires the next. No wonder people saw him as untrustworthy.

As we have seen, Cameron had been a "lucky" Prime Minister. The after-shocks of the referendum had huge effects on the politics of Scotland, with horrifying effects for Labour. Come the general election, it meant that Labour had to win dozens of seats in England to stand a chance. Cameron's use of Lynton Crosby, combined with a ruthless assault on the seats of the coalition partners, meant that his party was able to create an almost "perfect victory".
The strategy Cameron used in the election campaign was risky, especially as - in relentlessly attacking the LibDems - they were undermining the very party they thought they would need to form a functioning government. And, indeed, the "perfect victory" was almost too perfect: for it meant that with the LibDems no longer there in government to block an EU referendum, he would have to go through with his promise. This would prove to be a hideous irony.

And so Cameron arrived at his biggest gamble of all. As he had won so many other battles, and often played his hand with mastery over the past six years, he thought he had done enough to win the referendum, so he could go on to the final, glorious years of his premiership. In many ways, he used the same strategy ("Project Fear") in the EU referendum as he had in the Scottish referendum. He made many assumptions - mostly false -  about the state of politics in the UK. Forgetting that UKIP were doing to Labour in the Northern England what the SNP had done to them in Scotland was a huge error of judgment on Cameron's part. This meant that Labour could not "rely" on "their" voters to vote the way they wanted, to fateful effect.

It was Cameron's "Essay Crisis" too many. He had looked at his hand of poker, and misjudged the table when he needed his judgment the most, when the stakes could not have been higher - for him or the country. The tendency for Cameron to be the expert of "winging it", of recklessly assuming "everything will be fine", of over-estimating his own judgment, finally came to destroy him.

In the end, also the manner of his resignation was told us something of his character. He was infamously quoted as saying after the result was clear "I'm not here for the hard shit", or words to that effect.

The IDS resignation, the EU referendum, and Cameron: a Conservative crisis of Cameron's making

A week is a long time in politics; a year a lifetime.

Last May the Tories unexpectedly won the general election. After proving all the polls wrong, it left Cameron and Osborne with a definitive mandate to continue their plan of austerity and "reform". Unencumbered by being in a coalition with the LibDems, Cameron's government were free to pursue their aims.
Cameron came to government with a clear agenda to completely restructure how government is done, and also how government is perceived by the public. It was this "agenda" that was so catagorically trashed by Iain Duncan Smith when he resigned.

The roots of the IDS resignation go deep, back to the time when he was Conservative leader, and Cameron and Osborne were advising him on his speeches. The resignation spoke of wounded pride and bitterness at the way the "power duo" were running the government as an exclusive and divisive clique.
Cameron and Osborne had been the "rising stars" of the party in the years after the 2001 election, culminating in Cameron's successful bid to become leader after the failure of the election of 2005. From this point onward, it was Cameron and Osborne, with their neatly dovetailing personalities, that dominated the party's direction. This dominance has been self-evident ever since - up to now.

The spring budget can be called the high-point of the dominance of the "power duo": self-evident from the congratulatory response from Cameron and his intimates at the end of Osborne's budget speech to the look of smug satisfaction on Osborne's face at the end of it.

It was in the hours after this that things quickly began to unravel.









The manner of the IDS resignation was certainly the most high-profile and damning incident of its kind that has been seen since the resignation of Geoffrey Howe more than twenty-five years ago. It is also the first time in more than a generation that a minister has resigned over the budget.

As IDS alluded to, this has been a long time coming, but also has been orchestrated for maximum effect. To Cameron and Osborne, it is clear that politics is something of a "game" to them; Cameron is the superficially-charming, ideology-free careerist, while Osborne is the charisma-free, deviously-smart schemer. This is how their talents have dovetailed so fortuitously for them; equally, it is this opportunistic "dovetailing" of their talents that has ultimately brought about the divine vengeance of IDS.

However sceptically you may view IDS motivations, he has said that the entered politics to make a genuine difference. And as he said in interview, he views Cameron and Osborne's agenda as little more than amoral and divisive politicking, seeking success through a policy of "divide and rule" among the electorate. The "power duo" appear to care little about the disadvantaged because they do not vote Tory; this is what makes it so easy to scapegoat them as "skivers". Equally, this is also what makes it so easy for them to ignore - and even attack - the younger generation in order to indulge the "grey vote": a cynical manipulation (at the expense of the government's actual fortunes) to curry favour with those who are more likely to vote. Last year, this strategy worked to a tee.

In fact, it worked too well. For by cynically destroying their coalition partners the LibDems, it left the Conservatives with an absolute majority - and a headache to actually put their manifesto pledges into practice. As has been alluded to, it was always clear that the Tories were expecting for (at best) a resumption of the coalition, allowing them to dump some of their more fantastical fiscal ideas for the sake of compromise. As this didn't happen, it left Osborne with a lot of "creative accounting", which finally caught up with him in this month's budget. This time, it was "Omnishambles 2: the sequel". And this time, it was personal.

The Conservative Party itself is a coalition of two main flanks, and has been since at least Thatcher's time. Roughly divided between the pro-European "moderates" and Euro-sceptic (for wont of a better word) "hardliners", IDS belonged in the latter camp. The loss of the 2005 election saw "Camborne" rise to the leadership, with their own, 21st century brand of a moderate, "One Nation" Conservativism. They saw that it was the dominance of the Euro-sceptic "head-bangers" who were destroying the Tories' chances of winning power.
With the 2010 election, the chance to form a coalition with the LibDems was therefore a opportunity too good to miss: it would allow Cameron and Osborne a legitimate reason to sideline the Tory right, by making their positioning as a "middle ground" between the centrism of the LibDems and the hard-right "head-bangers" in their own party.

This was clever positioning, but all too clever by half. This was not "conviction politics", but mere "product placement", as IDS clearly saw. At the same time, his department, and his own ideas of welfare reform (whatever your view on them), became a victim to the superficial whims of Osborne in particular. Osborne and Cameron were in favour of austerity, but only really as a trap for Labour and a tool for re-election, rather than a genuine fiscal crusade. This is why austerity in the UK - as awful as it has been for those on the receiving end - is still a drop in the ocean compared to the experience of Ireland or Greece. For those that complained about the highly-unequal application of the policy on government departments, Osborne could either blame their LibDem coalition partners or the need to be firm on austerity, depending on who he was talking to.

Then there was the issue of Europe, which is in fact the true cause of Cameron's hubris and miscalculation in particular. While Europe was not the given reason for IDS' resignation, he also knew - as an arch Euro-sceptic - that he would face the chop in a post-referendum re-shuffle. So he had nothing to lose by resigning now, and it would almost certainly benefit the fortunes of his allies in the Euro-sceptic camp.
The fact that the UK is to have a referendum at all is simply due to the whim - and opportunism - of David Cameron. This in itself tells us everything about the Prime Minister's personality.

In truth, the referendum was talked about at a moment of Cameron's weakness, with the rising spectre of UKIP, from the middle of the last parliament onwards. His pledge to a referendum in the next parliament was therefore a sop to the hard-right of his party, as a tactic to neutralise the threat from UKIP. This is what European leaders find so incredible: that David Cameron would risk the UK's membership of the EU simply as a measure of controlling his party's internal divisions. It is certainly a sign of David Cameron's sense of perspective, or astonishing lack of it.

In this sense, the LibDems in coalition acted as a political buffer or shock absorber to "Camborne" for the internal divisions of the Conservative Party, especially over Europe. Winning the election last year was, in some ways, a disaster for the "power duo", for it left them completely exposed to the right of the party. And by opening up the issue of Europe in as raw a manner as the referendum has, it guaranteed that Tory divisions would come boiling to the surface sooner or later.
Again, Cameron and Osborne's high-handed and autocratic manner of dealing with the referendum has added further evidence of their dismissive and disdainful attitude towards "outsiders". The budget and its immediate fallout were simply a manifestation of all these animosities that have been brooding amongst that wing of the party since the Conservatives gained power in 2010. IDS simply articulated in words the source of those animosities in his resignation. The uproar now among the local party over the planned enforced conversion of all schools to academies (which wasn't even in the party's manifesto last year) is simply another example of how remote from the party the "power duo" have now become.

After the fallout from the budget fiasco and the IDS resignation, many in the party are looking at the time after the referendum, without Osborne and Cameron running the government - and the party - like their own private fiefdom. It's not difficult to imagine this scenario; in fact, it appears more and more likely that Cameron and Osborne will be forced out soon afterwards because they no longer represent the party itself, but simply see the party as a vehicle for their own cack-handed schemes.
In this sense, the referendum may well prove to be Cameron hoisting himself by his own petard. That Cameron did not see this as a real possibility - or was reckless enough to think it worth the risk - is deeply telling.
In trying to out-do Thatcher on Europe, Cameron may well end up out-doing the failure that was John Major. It would be fitting if Cameron were indeed brought down by Europe, for it would symbolise everything about the man: the ego; the superficiality; the hubris.

And then, the UK might have Boris Johnson to look forward to as his successor: replacing one superficial careerist for another...