1. The end of Johnson and Brexit
Finally, after a 24-hour period like nothing ever previously experienced in British politics, Boris Johnson resigned as prime minister. Sort of. The “end” was unedifying, both for him and the country, as it was always destined to be.
I’ll be brief on this one since you can read about the prime minister handing in his notice in loads of other places. All I want to say is this: the defence used by those trying to save Boris Johnson’s premiership as it was fading was a logical extension of what came out of the EU referendum. This notion of Johnson’s “personal mandate” of 14 million, a claim which is deeply unconstitutional, runs parallel with the idea that the referendum we had in 2016 is eternal, never to be challenged even slightly, and to even question the government’s very broad interpretation of the result is to act in an “undemocratic” fashion.
This is what will eventually kill Brexit: it’s weirdly unBritish, and keeping it going as a project in the face of everything that reality has thrown at it has caused the keepers of the flame to act in ways that are shockingly anathema to the classical British viewpoint of both the world and politics. Yes, Brexit tugged on something intrinsically British in that it tapped into our desire to be bigger than the continent of Europe and be a world power all on our own - yet once it happened and the lies behind the project were exposed, it required the assertion of an emperor in Number 10, battling against the “enemies of the people”, someone who should have been allowed to do whatever was “necessary” based on an imaginary personal mandate.
In other words, it ironically took Brexit to happen for Britain to ape the very worst elements of continental politics. I don’t see how this can continue forever and now that Caesar is on life-support, it may unravel quicker than any of us think.
2. A full breakdown of Keir Starmer’s five point plan on Brexit and why Remainers should (reluctantly) support it
This week, the leader of the official opposition, Sir Keir Starmer, laid down Labour’s vision for how it would handle Brexit should it form the next government. It was presented in a speech in which he extrapolated on Labour’s five-point plan for dealing with Britain’s relationship with the European Union.
The five points are:
Sort Out The Northern Ireland Protocol
Tear Down Unnecessary Trade Barriers
Support Our World Leading Services And Scientists
Keep Britain Safe
Invest In Britain
In my view, the first three are substantive, the last two mostly there for campaigning purposes. The first pledge means that instead of taking the antagonistic approach the Johnson government had to the NI Protocol, essentially acting like they had no idea what they signed in the first place, a Starmer-led government would try and come to terms with the fact that it exists and that the majority of people in Northern Ireland support it, at least over any other solution being outside of the EU offers. This flows into the second pledge, that being to make trade as easy as possible with everyone, including the EU. So, there will be an attempt to come to a lot of equivalency agreements with the EU in order to lower trade friction as much as possible between GB-NI and GB-EU while still being outside of the single market and/or customs union.
The third pledge is sort of more of the same but an important point to isolate - a Labour government would bring to an end the idea that GDPR and other equivalence agreements with the EU will be scrapped, massively damaging the British tech sector in the process. Given the Johnson government’s often confusing and contradictory sabre-rattling on this, clarity should help the UK tech sector massively.
As I say, the final two are basically built around anticipating Tory attack lines on Brexit and how to respond. Labour will try and work with the EU on military matters as much as possible, which is already happening under the NATO umbrella anyhow, but the Johnson government always tried to pretend that wasn’t happening and Britain was a lone wolf leading the world or something like that, so I get it.
The final point of the plan is basically to say, ‘The Tories don’t know what to do with Brexit but we do and we’ll make it all work.’ It’s vague but that’s on purpose, I reckon - the idea is simply to nail down the idea that the Conservative party under Johnson badly bungled Brexit as an opportunity, an attack that if done well could be electorally brutal.
Is Keir Starmer being dishonest about his Brexit position?
No. I think he absolutely means it when he says that he won’t countenance taking the country back into the single market, the customs union, any of it. I don’t think he’s being dishonest with the five-point plan either. Why then do I support his position if I don’t think that, if he wins, it will mean a return even to the single market or customs union? If Labour aren’t going to reverse Brexit in any fashion, why should I as a non-socialist who’s probably a little bit One Nation Toryish, if such a thing still actually existed, want to support a Labour party that won’t even change that much regarding our relationship with Europe? In other words, if I care so much about rejoining the EU, why am I not shouting at Starmer like so many other leading Remainers?
It’s mostly down to how I see Brexit and what I believe its key structural weaknesses are.
I know it’s easy to look at the most hardcore Brexiters and see their constant need to find enemies and insist that real Brexit hasn’t been tried yet as totally mad. Except that there is a reason behind it all - once they stop with the hardcore zeal and take a more rational approach to Brexit, they will be left staring into the abyss, the realisation of the horrible thing they have cheered on (or worse) hitting them with full force.
It’s like a rocket ship trying to escape the Earth’s atmosphere. It has to maintain velocity of seven miles per second because once it slows down, even a little, gravity kicks in and that rocket is inevitably going to get pulled back to Earth where it will crash and burn. The Brexiters have to maintain the same kind of speed, done via attacks on imaginary enemies, the insistence that eventually Brexit will pay off in some utopia that can never be described, and in the fantasy trade deals that will change everything, or else it will begin to fall to Earth where it will be crushed by gravity.
Whatever Labour’s intentions - and again, I believe Starmer is being truthful when he says he doesn’t want to take Britain back into the EU or its institutions - simply by approaching Brexit in a more rational manner, one that eschews the mania and just tries to make the best of a bad situation, it will be like the rocket ship going six miles a second as opposed to seven - to the casual observer, it won’t look like anything much has changed, but gravity has now set in and inevitably, that rocket isn’t ending up in space, it’s going to hit the ground eventually, hard.
British people will see things like travel to the continent getting a little easier and fights with the EU going away. Brexit finally “getting done”. And then there will be that moment of realisation for many - That’s it? This is all we’re getting? The culture war around Brexit will start to die and then look foolish. People will begin to feel had. It is at this point a discussion around rejoining the single market can be started - again, I stress, started - in earnest.
This discussion simply cannot be had while the rocket ship is still going seven miles a second. Too many people will cling to the idea that Brexit must be good in some way, shape or form until they cannot do so any longer. And with a government like the one we’ve just had constantly giving them the rhetoric that the good times are just around the corner, those Brexit benefits kicking in any day now, that might take decades.
We have to slow the rocket down first. The only way to do that is to have a non-Tory government, either a Labour majority or a Labour minority administration after the next election. Unless the Conservatives massively change under their new leader, but that feels unlikely. Otherwise, we are doomed to who knows how long of further Brexit-fuelled insanity.
I want to stress this point here: it isn’t that Brexit is popular or that most people really like it - the polling is consistent in telling us otherwise. It isn’t that Tory attacks on Labour would be effective because of the popularity of Brexit or anything that has come with it but because the vast majority of the electorate are burnt out on talking about Brexit and don’t want to re-open those wounds at the moment. If Labour ran on rejoining the single market, this is how the Tory attack line would roughly go: If there isn’t a Conservative majority after the next election, we’ll have a hung parliament that will be constantly fighting about rejoining the single market or even the EU. They won’t be able to get anything done as a result and the problems will mount up. Then we’ll have another referendum followed by a civil war. Is that what you want? However silly you happen to think that attack line is, it could be brutally effective.
Here’s where I’ll conclude: if you believe, as I firmly do, that there is no such thing as a “good Brexit” and that any version of it that attempts to reconcile Brexit with reality will find that Brexit inevitably loses that battle, then you have nothing to worry about from Starmer’s five-point plan. His government will earnestly attempt to make the best of Brexit - unlike the Tories who at least for the moment can only view Brexit only through fantasy tinged glasses - and then find that there are just certain problems that can never go away until Britain rejoins at the very least some of the institutions or manages to get some sort of bespoke deal, which will take a long time (ten years?) and in the end mean we’re basically back inside a lot of the institutions of the EU anyhow.
In other words, I think the next important step on the road back from the catastrophe of Brexit is we need a government who genuinely approaches it as if it might have merit if done properly, so that everyone can then see that Brexit is actually empty. You might want to skip this step - God knows I do - but I don’t see a way to do that.
Thanks for reading. If you haven’t subscribed, please do so. Here’s the whole site:
nicktyrone.substack.com
I’ll be back next week, as ever, with the worst of Brexit.
"In other words, it ironically took Brexit to happen for Britain to ape the very worst elements of continental politics. "
Um, you do have noticed that it's not 1820 any longer? There are no emperors in EU.
Brexit Britain is aping the very worst elements of British politics and society:
visceral, irrational hatred of anything foreign, even when it's self-damaging
a small elite - very small Eton-bred elite - leading the country because they're "Good old boys" so no written rules are necessary; and people brainwashed by tradition and Sun just go along with it
Battles between parliament and PM, or different groups of powerful elite - because Magna Charta was battle between parliament and monarch, but Brits never got around to seeing the People as sovereign, with guaranteed written constitutional rights, so normal Brits can never go to Court to get their basic (human) rights (unless via EUCHR).
Media stoking both apathy and ignorance about all things political (because of elites responsible), laying the swamp of hate on which populist lies bloom, and directing that hate on to certain groups, coupled with misunderstanding the most basic things about democracies - like: rights for all, not just for proper English people; politics based on facts, not lies or reality-denying ideology; rules binding all, not just low-class people.
To me, in order to take any attempt at rejoin seriously, British people - mostly Remainers - need to start a thorough reform of society and the political system; Labour and LibDems are necessary to get the necessary laws through.
So: stop with two-class education (best abolish all private-paid schools, but at very least, make them all take standard tests, not pass because Daddy paid enough).
Stop newspapers from printing lies
Bring BBC back on fact-based reporting (stop all those talk shows where lies are said without consequences)
education beyond school, at all age and education levels, about how important human rights, written down and taken to court, are for democracy; how facts matter; how rules and consequences apply to everybody
practical education to get qualified, skilled british workers without college degrees, to get your economy out of the slump
this will take a few decades. Then, once your country is stable, reliable, economy working and majority of people are willing to actually cooperate instead of dominate, because they understand that life and running a country is not a zero-sum game where one either rules or is ruled, but a win-win game of cooperation of equals - then rejoining is both a real possibility, and a minor technical matter.
Good luck if Labour ever switches from full socialism (Corbyn) or "Manual workers party" into "Human Rights for all" party and wants to get along with this reform plan.
Interesting analysis. I knew that both you and Chris Grey would have a lot to say about Keir Starmer's speech on Labour's Brexit position - and I'm reassured that you both seem to think it a wise (if, in Chris Grey's analysis, overly cautious) first step. It seems like your word of the week this week is "brutal", especially in regards to election campaigns. you refer to it twice here to describe a potential way of hanging the effects of Brexit on the Tories, and of how the campaign could go the other way if the Brexit Fantasists could manage to convince the British People that a return to the debates and confusion of May's parliament was on the cards under Starmer. I think you are essentially right that most of the country is "We're sick of talking about Brexit to the exclusion of all else", which is why "Get Brexit Done" worked so well for Johnson in 2019.