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".
Sunday, March 25, 2018
Sunday, March 18, 2018
Austerity, Brexit and the Conservative Party: An undeclared "war" on British society?
Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) was famous for his "war on poverty", designed to eradicate the conditions that led to destitution. At times, it feels like the Conservative Party have an undeclared "war" on Britain's poor, designed to punish those segments of society that they feel are unworthy.
"Fakers"
Perhaps the easiest way to explain the mindset that seems to exist in parts of the Conservative Party is this: their contempt for those unworthy of their pity comes from the belief that they believe that most people who are homeless, unemployed, disabled, or just poor are lazy "fakers". In this mindset, there are very few people who are "really" homeless, or "really" can't get a job, or a "really" disabled, or are "really" poor.
This is the most rational explanation behind the government's longstanding policy of austerity and welfare reform. Those in government simply refuse to believe there is a "problem" that needs their attention; the only "problem" as far as they're concerned is the lazy fakers who have been stealing the government's money (and, it is implied, added to the myth of the Labour government's self-inflicted fiscal crisis). This is the pervasive attitude that has permeated the media for years, matched by the government's own rhetoric on benefit fraud.
This rhetoric has extended out to the whole gamut of social policy. Basically, anyone who wants any money or help from the government is a source of instant suspicion, whose motives are assumed to be suspect. From the degrading treatment that many disabled people must endure to get government help, to those simply trying to claim financial support while unemployed, the system is now designed to find any way possible to withdraw help. Part of this comes from the long legacy of "austerity", where saving money in any way possible, regardless of how inhumane it is, is the first priority. If it means that disabled people are left to fend for themselves, well it's just one of those things. If it means unemployed people having to skip meals to stay alive, well, so be it. If it means people being evicted and left homeless, it can't be helped.
In this way, it could be argued that homelessness is a form of government-sanctioned punishment on those who are unable to look after themselves, either mentally or financially. Psychological weakness is the worst crime of all, as far as the government is concerned. As the government refuses to accept that the reasons for homelessness often come from genuine social and familial problems, the government therefore sees homelessness as a "lifestyle choice". This view was shared by a local policeman in the town of Ely, Cambridgeshire, who stated that there were no "real" homeless people in the town; those on the street were all "fakers".
"Trained indifference"
This attitude of those in the lowest rungs of society being there through either psychological weakness or by choice is prevalent throughout the Conservative Party. Once this view is accepted, it follows that those who are "weak" or "lazy" must be either punished or cut off from access to official channels, as this is seen as the only effective way to alter their behaviour. Those at the sharp end of this inhumane policy are seen on the streets, with the soaring numbers of rough sleepers in the UK (by some estimates at ten thousand) making them look like modern-day "refugees" of the government's undeclared "war" on the lazy and weak-willed.
The "war" is always in an officially-undeclared state because the government would never openly admit that its actions are designed to "punish"; it simply cuts off government help whenever possible and lets nature take its course. That way, the victim's fate whether to "sink or swim" can be pinned on the individual, and not the government. As far its concerned, the government's own hands remain clean. If the homeless person froze to death in the winter cold, it was because he refused to take responsibility for his own poor decisions. Officially, of course, such situations would always be a "tragedy", but a tragedy of the person's own making. That way, the government can keep its hands clean.
The government's policy towards those deprived and vulnerable segments of society is officially one of help; it could hardly publicly claim otherwise and still be considered to be maintaining civilised society. But that "official" policy of help comes with the huge caveat that the government only believes a small fraction of those deprived and vulnerable people in society are in genuine need; the rest are liars who are there by choice.
The austerity agenda is also part of a wider aim to fundamentally change the relationship between government and the people: namely, to remove the idea from people's minds that government is there to help you. By cutting funding to social care services, and by the simultaneous "welfare reforms", the government is making the idea of getting help from them seem more and more onerous, to the point that people stop trying. To a Conservative, this idea seems entirely natural, as an encouragement towards greater self-sufficiency and individual responsibility. But this idea of course forgets the social reality, that no-one is ever completely responsible for their own fate from cradle to grave. No man is an island.
Austerity can therefore be seen as a tool of social transformation; a form of social engineering and psychological manipulation. It is about changing how British people think. One wonders if the government's indifference to, for example, the very visible rise in rough sleeping isn't implicitly a kind of psychological "shock therapy" on the British public; Britain's streets being turned into a kind of open-air laboratory for social engineering, where the sheer frequency of rough sleepers gradually creates a muted indifference in people minds, rather like how long exposure to pornography has allegedly changed the way that young men think about sex. This "trained indifference" would then be part of the agenda of "psychological manipulation", bringing public acquiescence to the Conservative Party's "war" on the weaker elements of society. It doesn't take a great leap of imagination to see what the logical conclusion of this strategy would be.
Psychological preparation?
With the streets of "austerity" Britain sometimes bearing the atmosphere of an open-air theatre of the grotesque, there's a case to be made that this might also be a kind of psychological preparation for the real austerity to come after Brexit. If people think that "austerity" is bad now, this may just be the beginning, after Britain leaves the EU and the single market.
All the reasoned voices (including the EU itself) declare that leaving the single market would be disastrous for Britain's economy. The reason why is because Britain simply doesn't have the infrastructure or know-how to efficiently deal with the sheer amount of bureaucracy involved in trading with the EU as a country outside the single market; in short, when all the costs of the extra bureaucracy involved are added up, businesses may well find it no longer financially viable to trade with the EU. The logistical nightmare of crossing to and from the single market is only one aspect of this that could quickly see the economy seize up in a matter of days.
I've gone into some of the details about who could benefit from this chaos before, but as with "austerity", the ones who will be the victims first in this kind of Brexit scenario would be the vulnerable and deprived. The kind of "shock therapy" from austerity since 2010 has been more a "slow-burner", where social problems have accumulated only gradually, until the issue reaches public awareness on the streets in the form of mass rough sleeping, and in local councils going bankrupt through a combination of mismanagement and lack of funding. A "Hard Brexit" scenario would be sudden and on a scale hard to comprehend, given its lack of precedent.
This is a situation that has the hallmarks of a government willing to preside over a society where some parts of it almost resemble a "failed state". Except this is one where the government seems to want to fail.
"Fakers"
Perhaps the easiest way to explain the mindset that seems to exist in parts of the Conservative Party is this: their contempt for those unworthy of their pity comes from the belief that they believe that most people who are homeless, unemployed, disabled, or just poor are lazy "fakers". In this mindset, there are very few people who are "really" homeless, or "really" can't get a job, or a "really" disabled, or are "really" poor.
This is the most rational explanation behind the government's longstanding policy of austerity and welfare reform. Those in government simply refuse to believe there is a "problem" that needs their attention; the only "problem" as far as they're concerned is the lazy fakers who have been stealing the government's money (and, it is implied, added to the myth of the Labour government's self-inflicted fiscal crisis). This is the pervasive attitude that has permeated the media for years, matched by the government's own rhetoric on benefit fraud.
This rhetoric has extended out to the whole gamut of social policy. Basically, anyone who wants any money or help from the government is a source of instant suspicion, whose motives are assumed to be suspect. From the degrading treatment that many disabled people must endure to get government help, to those simply trying to claim financial support while unemployed, the system is now designed to find any way possible to withdraw help. Part of this comes from the long legacy of "austerity", where saving money in any way possible, regardless of how inhumane it is, is the first priority. If it means that disabled people are left to fend for themselves, well it's just one of those things. If it means unemployed people having to skip meals to stay alive, well, so be it. If it means people being evicted and left homeless, it can't be helped.
In this way, it could be argued that homelessness is a form of government-sanctioned punishment on those who are unable to look after themselves, either mentally or financially. Psychological weakness is the worst crime of all, as far as the government is concerned. As the government refuses to accept that the reasons for homelessness often come from genuine social and familial problems, the government therefore sees homelessness as a "lifestyle choice". This view was shared by a local policeman in the town of Ely, Cambridgeshire, who stated that there were no "real" homeless people in the town; those on the street were all "fakers".
"Trained indifference"
This attitude of those in the lowest rungs of society being there through either psychological weakness or by choice is prevalent throughout the Conservative Party. Once this view is accepted, it follows that those who are "weak" or "lazy" must be either punished or cut off from access to official channels, as this is seen as the only effective way to alter their behaviour. Those at the sharp end of this inhumane policy are seen on the streets, with the soaring numbers of rough sleepers in the UK (by some estimates at ten thousand) making them look like modern-day "refugees" of the government's undeclared "war" on the lazy and weak-willed.
The "war" is always in an officially-undeclared state because the government would never openly admit that its actions are designed to "punish"; it simply cuts off government help whenever possible and lets nature take its course. That way, the victim's fate whether to "sink or swim" can be pinned on the individual, and not the government. As far its concerned, the government's own hands remain clean. If the homeless person froze to death in the winter cold, it was because he refused to take responsibility for his own poor decisions. Officially, of course, such situations would always be a "tragedy", but a tragedy of the person's own making. That way, the government can keep its hands clean.
The government's policy towards those deprived and vulnerable segments of society is officially one of help; it could hardly publicly claim otherwise and still be considered to be maintaining civilised society. But that "official" policy of help comes with the huge caveat that the government only believes a small fraction of those deprived and vulnerable people in society are in genuine need; the rest are liars who are there by choice.
The austerity agenda is also part of a wider aim to fundamentally change the relationship between government and the people: namely, to remove the idea from people's minds that government is there to help you. By cutting funding to social care services, and by the simultaneous "welfare reforms", the government is making the idea of getting help from them seem more and more onerous, to the point that people stop trying. To a Conservative, this idea seems entirely natural, as an encouragement towards greater self-sufficiency and individual responsibility. But this idea of course forgets the social reality, that no-one is ever completely responsible for their own fate from cradle to grave. No man is an island.
Austerity can therefore be seen as a tool of social transformation; a form of social engineering and psychological manipulation. It is about changing how British people think. One wonders if the government's indifference to, for example, the very visible rise in rough sleeping isn't implicitly a kind of psychological "shock therapy" on the British public; Britain's streets being turned into a kind of open-air laboratory for social engineering, where the sheer frequency of rough sleepers gradually creates a muted indifference in people minds, rather like how long exposure to pornography has allegedly changed the way that young men think about sex. This "trained indifference" would then be part of the agenda of "psychological manipulation", bringing public acquiescence to the Conservative Party's "war" on the weaker elements of society. It doesn't take a great leap of imagination to see what the logical conclusion of this strategy would be.
Psychological preparation?
With the streets of "austerity" Britain sometimes bearing the atmosphere of an open-air theatre of the grotesque, there's a case to be made that this might also be a kind of psychological preparation for the real austerity to come after Brexit. If people think that "austerity" is bad now, this may just be the beginning, after Britain leaves the EU and the single market.
All the reasoned voices (including the EU itself) declare that leaving the single market would be disastrous for Britain's economy. The reason why is because Britain simply doesn't have the infrastructure or know-how to efficiently deal with the sheer amount of bureaucracy involved in trading with the EU as a country outside the single market; in short, when all the costs of the extra bureaucracy involved are added up, businesses may well find it no longer financially viable to trade with the EU. The logistical nightmare of crossing to and from the single market is only one aspect of this that could quickly see the economy seize up in a matter of days.
I've gone into some of the details about who could benefit from this chaos before, but as with "austerity", the ones who will be the victims first in this kind of Brexit scenario would be the vulnerable and deprived. The kind of "shock therapy" from austerity since 2010 has been more a "slow-burner", where social problems have accumulated only gradually, until the issue reaches public awareness on the streets in the form of mass rough sleeping, and in local councils going bankrupt through a combination of mismanagement and lack of funding. A "Hard Brexit" scenario would be sudden and on a scale hard to comprehend, given its lack of precedent.
This is a situation that has the hallmarks of a government willing to preside over a society where some parts of it almost resemble a "failed state". Except this is one where the government seems to want to fail.
Monday, March 12, 2018
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.
"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.
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