I’LL let you into a secret – the next few months are going to be rough. I remember the phrase used by the excellent Ian Dunt, editor of Politics.co.uk, when he was speaking to the SNP’s London branch: “The last few years have seen the death of shame.” And he said that before Mr Johnson moved his ample self into Downing Street. The weekend’s G7 summit in Biarritz, aside from raising rather more sharply the “what are these things for again?” question, gave us scenes almost too gruesome for words.
Others have written better on the spectacle of the UK Prime Minister, a proven chancer, fawning over the deeply flawed US President, a man I still double take when he comes on TV with “US President” introducing him, but it really hit home.
Personnel matters, and with all the issues the world faces right now, who is speaking for us and making decisions on our behalf really is important. The contrast with Mrs May is stark. She had many issues, especially with presentation and a visible dislike of the media, but she was diligent and serious.
Neither are words one can associate with the buffoon in residence, now gracing our screens and front pages with wacky stories and flannel. He is aided and abetted by the remarkable extent to which the UK media – to be fair, with a number of exceptions, but the overall impression cannot be denied – is lapping him up.
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The fact is, this emperor has no clothes. He’s not even trying to pretend he does. All the parliamentary arithmetic on May’s hated Brexit deal remains the same, nothing has changed. All the content of May’s deal remains the same, nothing has changed. EU attitudes to the deal – that it is done and dusted, capable of some minor cosmetic changes but nothing else – remain the same, nothing has changed.
Actually, if anything, those attitudes have worsened. There was a respect for May that Johnson assuredly does not have. One of my contacts in Berlin described his meeting with Angela Merkel as “a disaster… he’s wired to the moon”.
Downing Street is now a campaigning organisation, not a government in any meaningful sense. The Cabinet of grotesques is not there for the long haul, it is there to win. Win what? That remains to be seen, but the past few weeks feel more like a campaign than a normal period of politics. This is a problem because while the rest of us are getting on with the day job, answering constituent emails, working on the day to day, they don’t need to. Free from having to worry about such niceties, they can spend their full day concocting headline-grabbing stuff like the Home Secretary’s bizarre and legally incompetent announcement that she would use a statutory instrument to end freedom of movement. Tough on rational debate, tough on the causes of rational debate.
So, what’s to be done? The options remain the same: leave on October 31 with a deal, probably something like May’s text; leave without a deal; extend the timeframe; or revoke the Article 50 period altogether.
May’s deal is nothing of the sort. It tidies up the UK’s leaving, but tells us nothing about the future, merely opening a two-year transition period where they think they’ll sort out the future relationship. I have written before in this column that No Deal is unconscionable. I think it still is, but that presupposes the people in charge of it actually have consciences, and I think that seems a more difficult proposition as time goes on.
We’re also dealing with a chancer – someone who said barely weeks ago that a No Deal was a million-to-one shot, and now says it is “touch and go”. Is it bluster? A huge game of chicken? Is all the bluster being expended on No Deal actually a way to soften up MPs to nod through the deal, rubbish as it still is?
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The tragedy of Brexit is that it has little on a day-to-day basis to do with the EU at all. The EU has been measured, professional, united and remarkably drama free. Westminster, not so much. The battle for Scotland in Europe, much as it pains me and offends everything I have worked the best part of two decades towards, will be won or lost on the floor of the House of Commons. Brussels isn’t the problem, nor Holyrood – it is Westminster where the numbers will count.
There is a majority of MPs against a No Deal, but as I say, I’m more concerned that the prospect of No Deal is being used to soften them up for approving May’s hated text.
Labour is the big worry here. If you want to stop No Deal but aren’t that bothered about stopping Brexit, then there’s a text already done and signed off by the UK Government and the EU. I can well imagine it is a tempting prospect for MPs who just want to make it stop and have deluded themselves that this deal will do it.
It won’t, it will usher in another two years of uncertainty and worry, except we’ll be out. Be in no doubt, once we leave, if we do, then the way back will be harder for the UK. The opt-outs and the rebate will be off the table, and there won’t be any sort of goodwill to find a compromise.
The situation for Scotland on acceding to the EU as an independent country will actually be easier politically, in that we’ll be joining from outwith, not within, the EU, but elements of the logistics will remain unclear precisely because of the chaos the UK will be enduring.
The fact is, there’s no good Brexit, and the best thing we can do is stop it. That will require cross-party working, not silly games and stunts.
I’ve said before I don’t think there’s any good news for independence in Brexit. We have to do our best to stop it.
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