Marine Le Pen and the Brexiter fantasy of the EU falling apart
I always thought that Marine Le Pen would either become French president or at least get close enough for the prospect to be genuinely terrifying at some stage - what I never expected was that so much of the British right would be openly cheering her on when that terrifying moment was at hand. This is mostly what you could call “Brexit disease” - what happens when you have to bend all of your ideology around Brexit at the centre, meaning you support people and ideas you would have never previously dreamed of getting behind.
The Brexiter fantasy involving Le Pen was explained beautifully by Sophie Corcoran this week:
“My dream: Le Pen wins - France leaves the EU followed by Italy, the EU collapses then we get a good deal with Le Pen to stop the channel crossings.”
One of the core beliefs of the Brexit cult that they will not let go of is this idea that the EU is going to fall apart at any moment. In one way, this makes sense - if the European Union continues to exist and perhaps even get stronger, it just makes Brexit look like a stupid move. More than Brexiters generally care to admit, one of the central theses of Brexit was that it would cause the EU to fracture and once that happened, new trading arrangements would be required across the west. A post-Brexit UK could lead the way, becoming the hub of a new style of trading across borders, one that would span the globe.
This is why the Daily Express likes to sometimes dig out really old quotes from obscure Swedish academics about how this country or that country is going to leave the European Union, any moment now. The EU falling apart isn’t just important to the idea of Brexit, it is absolutely core. The problem for Brexiters is that facts don’t care about their feelings. The last poll taken on French attitudes to “Frexit” have 58% staying stay in, 21% saying leave, with the rest being I don’t knows or wouldn’t vote. Le Pen’s campaigning over the last few years has reflected this - she went strong on the idea of France leaving the EU in 2017 and clearly came to understand that it was a big factor in her getting buried in the second round. She dropped all talk of that and it has helped her get to where she is now, in with a real shot of winning this time round.
France isn’t going to leave the EU anytime soon, regardless of who wins on April 24th. While France is one of the more Eurosceptic countries in the European Union - approval of staying in is usually over 70% across the bloc - it is clear that Brexit taught them the lesson that leaving does you no favours. Polling on the European question in France was much closer to a Leave position between 2012 and 2016, but post-Brexit, Remain has always had a comfortable lead.
That’s the great irony of Brexit in terms of the Brexiter dream of shattering EU unity - Brexit was the thing, more than anything else, that ensured the future of the bloc is secure. Brexit turned out to be a warning, not an inspiration to leave.
2. On Beetroot
A farmer in Staffordshire has blamed Brexit for £90,000 worth of beetroot he had grown going unsold. This is one of those great stories as it ticks all the boxes - far away from London, obviously rural, and where any objective person would have to admit that Brexit really has caused this poor guy’s business model to collapse.
In a sense, this is a very simple tale to tell. Someone who grows beetroot in the northern Midlands of England used to sell a lot of product to continental buyers. Brexit red tape has now made his produce too much of a headache to import, so his old buyers are looking elsewhere, within the Single Market where there will be no paperwork or other issues. The farmer, unable to sell to his old EU clientele, tried to sell to UK buyers, only to find that they already had all the beetroot they needed from elsewhere.
This is a great example of why Rees-Mogg’s idea of just never putting in the remaining customs controls yet to be implemented on our side is unworkable. While UK importers can still get stuff from within the Single Market without it being a nightmare - again, at least for now, before the full range of Brexit red tape is implemented - UK exporters are put in a terrible position, not being able to sell abroad but then not being able to sell domestically either, directly as a result of this red tape imbalance.
What do we do to correct this issue? The options are narrow. We could try and lessen trade friction and align with the EU again in several areas. This would make all of those imaginary trade deals that are going to happen any time now even more of a distant fantasy than they are already are a result. Perhaps we could sit down with the EU and try and come up with a real trade deal this time round, one that actually addresses Britain’s needs instead of pushing everything to the last second in the foolish hope that the EU caves in on everything. Stranger things have happened.
3. Why does Stanley Johnson think the situation in Ukraine validates Brexit?
We wrap up this week with a light-hearted story involving the prime minister’s father, Stanley Johnson, a man usually up for shits and giggles. After complaining about Germany and its Russian oil imports, BoJo’s dad then said:
"I say to myself, in this particular case, Brexit was probably a good idea, because Boris has been able to lead from the front here."
This is a great example of the genius imbedded within the Johnson family - there is so much bullshit to unwind in so few words, you just get lost in the mess of it all. But I shall endeavour to do so.
For a start, Britain’s reaction to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has almost nothing to do with Brexit whatsoever. As in, there is pretty much nothing we have done that we could not have done as a member of the EU. And I only say “pretty much” and “almost” because we have slightly eased trade restrictions with Ukraine in ways we could not have done as part of the EU, but this is really small change and isn’t the stuff that most Brexiters trumpet when going on about our triumphant, post-Brexit Ukrainian mission. Johnson could still have gone to Kyiv. We could still have sent weapons to Ukraine. Being in the EU would have prevented none of that from happening. Brexit has made no material difference to our Ukraine response.
The next thing to address is this “lead from the front” nonsense. As much as I dislike Johnson and Truss, their rhetoric on Ukraine has been solid. Before you say, “Well, any British prime minister would have said the same things”, look at what Nigel Farage has been putting out to followers since late-February, remember that a lot of the Tory right isn’t that ideologically far removed from Farage, and then imagine what someone of that mentality in Number 10 at present might have been saying in the way of Putin apologia.
Yet the idea that Boris Johnson is the “leader of the free world” is astonishing nonsense. As prime minister of the United Kingdom, he’s an important world figure who has done many good things for Ukraine recently, yes. But the president of America is the leader of the free world. Everyone else follows behind. This is true regardless of who is in the White House at any given time - I loathed Trump as president, but I would never have tried to say that he was not the leader of the free world when he was in office. Trying to imagine that because Biden is a little sleepy and sometimes says things he regrets, that US-British relations have magically reverted back to a pre-Suez arrangement is deep, deep fantasy stuff.
However, that’s what Brexit does to your brain. Unless leaving was going to make Britain the most powerful nation in the world once more, what was the point of it all? Pretending that the United Kingdom has become the largest economy on Earth while also having the largest military is a tricky fantasy to maintain, but so much less bad than having to come to terms with the idea that your project simply hasn’t worked out the way you thought it would.
Thank you again for reading - if you haven’t subscribed, please do so. Here’s the whole site:
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I’ll see you again next week with, as ever, the worst of Brexit.
Breaking up the EU was always at the heart of Brexit fantasies. They regarded it as a certainty and presumably felt the EU did too, hence the "we hold all the cards" negotiating attitude.
Regarding how Brexit facilitated our actions in support of Ukraine, this is all part of the same thinking. For Brexiteers the EU prevents all independent action by member states. Anything we do now is thus claimed as enabled by Brexit. Delusional. Rather like the idea that Johnson is leading the support of Ukraine. He's only leading when it comes to photo opportunities and anything that helps him politically. Sanctioning oligarchs not so much. Refugees seen as possible Russian spies. The idea that his resignation would harm Ukraine's resistance is laughable.
The hard core brexiter is like Wile E Coyote, forever chasing the Roadrunner. He'll never truly achieve his aim. However, should he ever be successful in this endeavour, he'll have no purpose in life and will have to find some other method of wasting his life. Hence, the fact brexiters, thinking they have ''Got brexit Done'', now have to move onto the next target, the breaking up of the EU itself. Something which was never on the ballot paper and was never a stated aim of Vote leave or Leave.eu.
In short, hard core brexiters are now in the toxic position of wanting the EU to fail more than they wish to see the UK succeed.