Brexit Britain: a rogue state, hostile power, and government of lies

Britain’s government is establishing itself as one that no foreign power in their right mind should trust.

The conditions to Britain leaving the EU with the “withdrawal agreement” (a legal document) included Britain having specific obligations, in particular about Northern Ireland. It has since come to light that, not entirely surprisingly, the government – under Boris Johnson’s tutelage – has been looking at finding ways to “get around” the obligations on Northern Ireland they agreed to with the EU - to ignore them while pretending they haven't. The minutiae of those obligations don’t matter so much here as much as the message that Britain is clearly sending to the EU: “You trust us to do what we agreed to? More fool you”

A "rogue state"

The message this sends to the EU, and to the rest of the world watching, is that post-EU Britain is happy to act as a “rogue state” in terms of its legal obligations. If you sign a treaty with Britain, its government is saying, don’t expect us to honour it; we have no honour.

Britain’s imperial past has many examples of how it has abandoned its obligations, legal or moral. Ireland knows all about that,when the British government allowed a million Irish people to starve to death. But Britain has been masterful over the years in creating a myth of Britain always siding with the “good guy”; of being a beacon for democracy and human rights. It was always much more cynically pragmatic than that in reality, only surrendering its colonies when they no longer became economically viable or worth the military effort to hold on to; it has also been a friend to many loathsome regimes at one time or another.

The British government today seems to believe its own historic myths, which may be one reason why the government is acting in such bad faith with the EU. In falling for its own myth of Britain as an “exceptional” nation, it follows that its politicians think international rules don’t apply to them. The fact that Britain (through its numerous tax havens) is the leading instigator of global tax evasion tells you enough. The EU tolerated this kind of behavior when Britain was a member state (and Luxembourg is likewise culpable in that regard, if on a much smaller scale); but now Britain is outside the EU and is self-evidently set on a strategic path that opposes (or is actively hostile to) the EU’s interests, Britain can only be regarded as a threat. The fact that the British government is happy for it to be known that its promises amount to nothing tells the EU that it is dealing with a hostile power.

The fact that the British government disseminates lies can hardly be surprising either. Even the Prime Minister in his earlier career as a journalist became infamous for creating “fake news”, long before the term was widely-used. Nothing that comes from the government’s mouth should be taken at face value; its signature on a legal document is apparently meaningless as well. It only chooses to abide by agreements when it suits them.

This, then, is the meaning of a “rogue state” when applied to Britain’s government: one that has a selective application of the rule of law. While Britain’s legal system has long been respected around the world, its twisted application of law means that London is the litigation capital of the world. “Brexit Britain” is a country where judges are seen by parts of the media as “enemies of the people”, while the government – and the infamous Home Office in particular – are habitual exploiters of the legal system to overturn judgments that go against them. The fact that these attempts are often expensive failures is just a sign of how the government happily misuses public funds simply on a savage point of principle.

This doesn’t even mention how the government is routinely denying the legal rights of citizens on a daily basis: people like the “Windrush generation”, some of whom have been denied their rights, lost their jobs and deported (or exiled) for just having the wrong skin colour. The same is expected to happen to many Europeans too, given time. 

Then there are the tens of thousands of homeless whose plight is often due to a collapse of the social care system. Britain as a “rogue state” is one where many of the mentally ill and disabled are abandoned by the state to fend for themselves on the street, with a system designed to torment them yet further. Britain today is a country that allows some of its mentally ill and disabled to literally starve to death. It isn’t the government’s active policy; it simply doesn’t care what happens to them.

The “rogue state” that Britain is becoming is an inevitable consequence of the “Brexit Agenda”: not caring about rules; not caring about the consequences of its actions. It is, at its heart, an amoral creed. 

Brexit Britain is a project ran by and headed by shysters and charlatans, crooks and ne’er-do-wells. Its agenda can only appeal to the worst elements of human nature: cranks who see it as an opportunity to pursue their own fringe obsessions; vultures who see Britain as a way to make their fortune at other people’s expense; careerists who see it as the easiest way to advance themselves, no matter how.

This has been true in many other countries as well, of course. Britain is just rediscovering its corrupt heart, with all the other corrupt countries in the world looking on at Britain as another member of their rogue’s gallery.

The irony of Britain’s “rogue status” in the eyes of the rest of the world is that it is a self-defeating cause. Going back to the issue of Northern Ireland, making things more difficult for the Republic of Ireland only makes things harder on relations with the USA as well as the EU; for the US Congress is a huge supporter of Ireland, and no trade deal can be endorsed without its support. So the British government’s “FU” attitude to the EU is also a two fingers to the USA as well. This leaves Britain without the support of both its closest trading bloc and the most powerful country in the world.

Maybe this is why Britain’s government post-EU is cosying up to China and the Gulf States: one-party states and autocratic monarchies might be where Britain’s government sees its future: as "dodgy" banker,  private tutor, luxury goods maker and tech provider to the world’s least democratic states.  

Brexit ideology: the dangerous realm of cranks, crooks and control freaks

Brexit's detractors have never had to look far for evidence that "Brexit" was an idea that consumed the imagination of cranks. Linked to this is the tendency for many of Brexit's most vocal advocates being ideologues whose interests were in a more "flexible" interpretation of the law; such as using loopholes for the purposes of aggressive tax avoidance, and a more general desire to remove state power from the interests of an unregulated private sector wherever possible: "Britannia Unchained".


Cranks

This author has written before about the dangerous attraction that Brexit has to a myriad of ideological extremists and fantastical fanatics. These are people who have their own agenda to pursue through Brexit, and typically fall in to the camp of being either libertarian ideologues, racial nationalists or far left socialists.

We only have to look at the people occupying the most significant offices of the state, and the people whose advice they rely on. Most of the key positions in the British government are occupied by ideological Libertarians (of "Britannia Unchained" fame), or are advised by them.
The main with the most significant (and unchecked) real power is Dominic Cummings (more on him later). His clarion call to attract "weirdos" into the corridors of power tells us everything about what kind of "project" Brexit Britain has become: a vehicle for radical ideological and structural change of the country, of its priorities, and its place in the world.

In a sense this "change" might all sound exciting (and the Prime Minister is a skilled purveyor of the cult of charismatic enthusiasm). A look at the kind of "weirdos" Cummings is attracting to the highest levels of government tells us something much different, however: some of these are people who don't so much think "out of the box" as think the morally unthinkable, and are happy to say it in public as well. In other words, Brexit is an idea that attracts the morally unscrupulous (more on that below), as well as giving fuel to innate prejudices, dark paranoia and loopy fantasies.
Build a bridge across a three-hundred-metre-deep, bomb-strewn stretch of ocean? Sure! Engineering flights of fancy; dreams of Britain as a eugenically-purified nation of super-intelligent go-getters (thanks to a rigorous immigration programme of only the very best and brightest while also breeding out the native degenerates). In this kind of alternative dimension of being, Britain rules the waves, not as an imperial power of old, but as an island race of technologically-advanced geniuses. These cranks have truly become drunk on their own absurd propaganda.
All that has stopped Britain from ruling the waves, apparently, has been its own lack of self-belief. Britain outside the EU can literally reach for the stars.


Crooks

Then there is the attraction that Brexit poses to another plethora of "outside actors"; foreign interests that see Brexit as a corrupt opportunity to peddle their influence at the expense of Britain's own moral standing. Given the ridiculous levels of delusion present in the highest levels of government, it's no surprise that some outside the EU are looking at post-EU Britain as a turkey ready for carving.

Outside of the EU, Britain is already in talks with China and actors in the Middle East, for example. The farrago over Huawei is only a taster of the kind of things to come, as Britain faces a world that sees Britain outside the EU as a pygmy on stilts. Britain has no serious clout to defend its own interests; in this new plane of existence, it only has the power of its own lack of self-awareness, unaware that everyone else sees itself as an emperor with no clothes.

The things that Britain has to offer the global economy are its financial industry, the related  "fintech" industry, and the high regard of its education system. It is also good at making things that kill people, and is one of the world's centres for enabling tax evasion. Based on this, it is easy to see how post-EU Britain will become an ever-more nefarious magnet for providing high-end services to the globe's rogue states and criminally-minded mega-rich.

What else, after all, can Britain offer? It has nothing else that the world really wants. Think of it as Switzerland with a coastline, but one that can't even properly feed and house its own native population.


Control freaks

Presiding over this state of affairs are Boris Johnson and his key adviser, Dominic Cummings.

The "bloodbath" of ministerial restructuring that heralded Johnson's ascent to the premiership (and the more recent one that took place the day before Valentine's Day) demonstrated his ruthless application of power. While Johnson can be charismatic, he is also a control freak; the latter trait he also shares with the chief adviser he brought in with him to Downing Street, Dominic Cummings. Johnson's idea of government is far more absolutist in its internal application than any previous Prime Minister in living memory; a populist tendency he shares with Donald Trump.

The difference to the egoism mania of Trump is that Johnson and Cummings seem to have agreed some kind of mutually-beneficial "pact", where Johnson delegates certain areas of policy and strategic control to Cummings. There had been rumours (such as over the decision over HS2) that Cummings' influence had been on the wane since the election in December, but those must have been well and truly squashed by the manner of forcing the chancellor Sajid Javid's resignation after being barely seven months in the job.
Cummings' malign influence had been responsible for getting Javid's own advisers removed the previous autumn, and it is now clear that both Johnson and Cummings see the Treasury, as well as some other departments, as simply vehicles of the prime minister's own strategy: there to tell him how something can be done, not if it should be done. Ministers that disagree cannot expect to be tolerated for very long. Cummings was already seen to be behind the extraordinary expulsion of more than twenty Conservative MPs from the party whip back in September (at a time when the government was already in a precarious position in parliament).
With Johnson at the helm and Cummings at his side, theirs was a partnership of convenience, with the adviser seemingly happy to play the role of sinister villain sidekick and Johnson as the "lovable rogue". Together, they achieved a lot and ripped up as many precedents in a few short months.
In this way, Johnson has made his premiership much more about a "cult of the charismatic leader" than has been known before in British politics. Theresa May's own attempts at "control freakery" were almost comically-inept by comparison. Johnson, with Cummings' at his side, has destroyed his political adversaries in short order, leaving him as a popular leader, with near-autocratic political inclinations.

Johnson's childhood fascination with ancient Greece, you wonder, might have a large part to play in this, with its chain of famed dictators, philosophers, lunatics and tyrants. Johnson's unstable upbringing and his near-constant necessity for praise and attention, leaves him with an ego that craves a desire for approval, as well as a desire to make his mark on history; to be a "man ahead of his time". This is something that he shares with Cummings, whose own sense of grand sweep of history allows him to indulge his own grandiose view of his own intelligence.
These two men are the ones in control of Britain's immediate future. They have used their skills to seize it, in a way that would have seemed unimaginable only a year ago. There is still an open question about what they will do with their near-unstoppable power, given their low regard for those that get in their way, and what they have done with it so far.
We may soon see.

Brexit psychology: the victory of delusion

"Brexit" is an idea based on delusions, both paranoid and fantastical.

The crowd that gathered in Parliament Square to celebrate "Brexit" at eleven o'clock on the 31st January were celebrating the victory of their own delusions. They were "free". They were free from European oppression.
What "victory" had they won? As summarized brilliantly by Tom Peck in the linked article above "what makes Britain’s independence day different from most, though not all, that have gone before it is that its prize is a freedom nobody else wants". Britain has become "the first country to throw off the yoke of an oppressor whom nobody else considers themselves oppressed by. We have won our freedom from our own imagined nightmares. We have liberated ourselves from the terrors of the monster under the bed that was never there. We are the children that never grew up"

Brexiteers have won freedom from their own imagined nightmares. Britain has freed itself from the invisible monster. St George has slayed the dragon that never existed. England is a country at war with its own shadow, a dog chasing its own tail.
You get the picture.

In Britain leaving the EU, the EU has also lost a valuable member. As Ian Dunt says "Britain joined late, but when it did it brought something unique: a caution which is needed in any grand project. That detachment is now portrayed as a sign that Britain never fitted in. It's nonsense. Any number of European states, except for perhaps Germany, could have succumbed to jingoistic populism. We were just the only ones stupid enough to hold a referendum on it. Britain's careful approach to Europe suited it and provided something valuable to the manner in which the project evolved"

One of the EU's missed opportunities was that Britain's involvement could have been used to rein in the political urge to continually crave for more and more "more Europe", with political decisions based on pragmatisn rather than ideology. Instead, we have had the UK as a EU member whose perspective was too often under-utilized, by itself as well as other member-states. Now Britain has left, its internal politics intoxicated by its own delusions, and the rest of the EU faces a populist insurgency slowly eating itself from the inside out.


Paranoid delusions

Those Brexiteer delusions mentioned earlier have been there for decades. There is a recurring sense that these are people who could only be happy if they have an enemy, even if it is one that is entirely illusory. George Orwell said a thing or two about that in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and it's a psychological trick that politicians have used down the ages. Technological advances have allowed them to refine their techniques, and the rise of populist rhetoric has seen the resurgence of that old chestnut, "the other". It can be any "other", as long as it can be used to take the blame.

What makes it different today is the use of "plausible deniability" by the populist leaders whenever their acolytes use that rhetoric to project harm. There's always the "nod and a wink" about populist rhetoric, from Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and all the others. If far-right violence and hate crimes are increasing, it's because of provocations from the other side, never from theirs ("there was blame on both sides" etc.). They are always "isolated incidents", except when highlighted to show how liberal society is failing. You can never argue against their rationalizing of violence, because they don't use rational arguments. 
The rhetoric of division serves a purpose - to provide an "other" to aim their frusatrations at, whether it be foreign plots (the EU's "agenda") or fear of loss of culture (immigration). With Brexit, the emotive argument used has been that Britain has been "humiliated" countless times over the decades by Europe, and more generally "held back" from fulfilling its greatness. 
While it's true that joining the EEC was originally a decicion based on the changing global strategic situation, the kind of "deal" that Britain has got out of it over the decades has been one that has involved various "opt outs" compared to other member-states (on Schengen, the social chapter, the rebate, the Euro etc.); in fact either proving Britain's more advantageous "exceptional" status with the bloc, or the ability of Britain to get more than should deserve. Either way, to other European countries, Britain's complaint of "bullying" by the EU looks like the complaints of a country with a dire lack of self-awareness.

The British print media have much to blame for this sense of eternal paranoia, or "Europhobia". The culture of pychologically equating "Europe" with the Second World War - also thanks to films and TV series - has led to Britain, and England in particular, with a sense of greivance against "Europe" totally out kilter with reality. The sense of the EU being a co-operative project is lost to them, with "Europe" used by David Cameron when it was necessary to prove his Eurosceptic credentials to the hardliners in his own party. The EU became the "whipping boy" of the British psyche, which ended with Cameron being eaten by the monster he couldn't stop feeding.
By the time of the referendum, the EU was being blamed for almost everything possible: from illegal immigration from the Middle East and Africa, to the closing down of factories in the North-east of England. Nothing was the fault of Britain's own government, if it could be conveniently blamed on the EU. 


Fantastical delusions

Similarly, Brexit supporters often sound like they ought to be sci-fi/fantasy aficionados. The vision they have of Britain outside the EU is one where Britain is able to transcend global rules and norms. 

In the same way that they fantastically blame the EU for holding Britain back for decades, they claim that "Britannia Unchained" can become a 21st century buccaneer: using language more commonly found in sci-fi fandom, they claim that Britain can be a pioneer in the tech industry (as though no other country has thought of it before), or can become a "supercharged" leader in space technology, for example. Why not build a Britain space fleet to colonize other planets, for that matter? Money is no object to them. No ambition seems too fantastical to hold.

Likewise, Brexiteers live in a world of 21st century make-believe; a fantasy realm where borders are frictionless even though there are no agreements in place to allow it. The Britain they imagine is one where the geographical reality of the country's berth right next to Europe is forgotten; instead of it being mere practical, financial and logistical sense to do the bulk of our trade with our neighbours, Britain should be imagined as a country where it is as logistically simple to trade with Australia as it is with Austria. 
Britain, in their eyes, is not tethered to Europe by geography at all, but is in effect a giant floating island, like "Laputa" in Gulliver's Travels, able to move around the world and trade with whom it wishes at will.  

All this is imagined because of emotional ties to the past. If these fantastical delusions are not permitted to happen, then it is the fault of Europe, or a conspiracy to "do down" Britain from within. Then the paranoid delusions take over to cloak the fantastical nature of their imaginations. These people are, emotionally-speaking, mere children in adult bodies. 

Brexit Britain is a country fuelled by the infantile instincts of a nation that has yet to grow up. Boris Johnson is, in this sense, the leader to a cult of age-regression.