This week in Brexitland, September 2nd, 2022

1. Brexit shuts down Britons’ direct path to Disneyland - one of those perfect metaphors Brexit specialises in

One thing Brexit has been great at is creating perfect metaphors for itself, of the type that often seem to come from the pen of a master satirist. In other words, Brexit is weirdly great at taking the piss out of itself, albeit unintentionally. We’ve had the island of Britain swimming in its own faeces this summer already, so to get one just as good seems like Brexit is truly spoiling us. For Britain’s departure from the European Union has now caused Britons to be cut off from a direct route to Euro Disneyland; our train to the place of fun and sunlit uplands being torn down by Brexit.

The actual story is more prosaic; like all Brexit stories are in the end, it’s mostly about process. From June 6th, 2023, Eurostar will no longer be running trains between London St Pancras and Marne-la-Vallée, the station right outside of the European Magic Kingdom. And Brexit is to blame, whatever those of the Brexit faith say. You see, the route will be shut just ahead of stricter rules for UK citizens entering the EU coming into play. In other words, Eurostar seem to think the complications brought in by Brexit depriving British people of European citizenship will just make the whole thing too much of a headache. Trying to process all those people from a third country will be too much admin to handle. It’s that old Brexit red tape, coming up to bite once again.

To which I can hear the Brexiters saying in reply: so what? It’s one minor disadvantage (maybe even couched as an advantage to some weirdos) in amongst all of the upsides of Brexit. To which it would be fair to ask: what upsides are they exactly? If being able to travel to the rest of Europe had become much more difficult, but let’s say, in exchange, travel to the US was now way simpler and indeed, visas to work temporarily in America had become much easier for Brits to get, that would indeed be a Brexit bonus (provided it was only given to the UK and not the EU). But that hasn’t happened and is extremely unlikely to ever happen.

The next argument along in the Brexit mindset is the one about the wonderful British vaccine programme - arguable now in retrospect and besides, a one off which does not justify ongoing, self-imposed trade sanctions against the United Kingdom amongst all of the other downsides to Brexit.

Then the conversation winds down until all we’re left with is, you guessed it, sovereignty. Which is a). not a good argument in and of itself since giving more power to the British government is far from a good thing in terms of individual freedom for the average British citizen, something you’d think the centre-right would be head of the queue to comprehend and b). certainly does not make up for the loss of individual rights Brexit has caused British citizens, i.e. the right to live and work throughout the single market, by any stretch of the imagination. What makes this worse is the way Brexit is framed as being pro-individualist versus the collectivist, socialist left who want to take us back into the EU for, I don’t know, Eurocommunism or some other imaginary thing, when in fact the truth is the exact opposite: Brexit is a nationalist, collectivist project that directly put more power into the hands of Westminster politicians while taking it away from ordinary British citizens.

But hey, you can still get to Euro Disneyland from Britain, don’t worry. You just have to travel all the way to Lille and then dick around a bit. It’s like everything else Brexity - it just makes your life harder for no actual gain.

2. A reflection on the the premiership that never was - what would have happened to Brexit had Michael Gove become PM in 2016?

There have been rumours this week that Gove is thinking of stepping down as a Member of Parliament. The Lib Dems certainly think it’s a going possibility, rushing the candidate selection process in Surrey Heath, Gove’s seat, in anticipation of a by election some time soon. For what it’s worth, Gove has now said he’s going to stay. Whatever happens, I think it’s worth reflecting on whether Gove could or even should have become prime minister back in 2016 and then examine a). that idea from a pro-Brexit perspective and b). speculate on what might have happened had he succeeded and become leader of the Conservative party.

I remember clearly the day that Gove pulled the rug out from under Johnson’s leadership bid in the summer of 2016. It was a move so fatal, Johnson stood down immediately, fearing that without Gove’s support, he couldn’t make it all the way to the final two. I recall very clearly thinking “Gove is going to be the next prime minister now”. I thought this because it was the only thing that made any sense whatsoever, particularly from a pro-Brexit perspective. With Johnson out, Gove was the only solid, senior Brexiter left in the race and indeed, the only contender remaining who could conceivably be up to the job at all. If it wasn’t going to be Gove, it would be Andrea Leadsom, which would clearly be a catastrophe from every conceivable viewpoint including a pro-Brexit one, or Theresa May, a Remainer whose heart would never truly be in delivering a Brexit that the hardcore Brexiters could live with. No, the only sensible choice left was Gove.

And yet, what I undervalued - and Gove clearly did as well - is the strange, incomprehensible worship of Boris Johnson most of these turds have. I genuinely think they love Johnson more than Brexit, and considering they view Brexit the way a Catholic views Jesus Christ, this is saying a lot. They killed Gove’s chances because of what he did to BJ, even though in doing so they came close to creating a set of circumstances in which Brexit didn’t happen at all - and have ended up instead in a situation in which it will never last, destined to be reversed slowly over time. I genuinely think that if they had overcome their Johnson worship and stuck with Gove, it would have worked out differently.

This is the allegory: imagine the Conservative parliamentary party are in a plane and all of the pilots have died and the aircraft is headed into the side of a mountain. Boris is like a drunken buffoon on board who insists he can fly the plane, even though he can’t. Gove is the only person there who can actually fly the vehicle, and so he proceeds to push Johnson out of the door. Gove then turns to the remaining passengers and explains that he is the only one who can possibly save them all. However, Boris was so beloved, several of the passengers decide instead to push Gove out the door as well, dooming the plane they are in to crash into the mountain, killing everyone on board.

I feel certain that Gove, if he had become prime minister in 2016, would have taken a very different approach to May on Brexit. May was always at pains to prove her conversion to the faith, whereas Gove, having always being a Brexiter, wouldn’t have had to do this. I think that instead of creating arbitrary deadlines and “no deal is better than a bad deal” rhetoric, Gove would have tried to get an agreement with the EU that would have cemented Brexit forever, or at least would have given this a fighting chance of coming into being. He would have almost certainly emphasised the idea of Brexit as a process, and a long one at that. I can envision him talking about getting us a deal close in some respects to what Switzerland have with the EU, with the quick thing being to withdraw ourselves from as many institutions of the European Union as possible, but with the long term idea being that in five to eight years time, we would have a deal with the EU that would give us a lot of the benefits of membership with as few downsides as logically possible.

I don’t think he would have got a deal that would have done all this, just to be clear - such a deal was never possible. But by framing Brexit in this way, Gove might have been able to keep enough people happy on both sides of the negotiations in order to reach a much more comprehensive deal than Boris Johnson ended up with - albeit, that wouldn’t have been difficult given the thinness of BJ’s terrible deal - and that might have been a lot more solid than the rubbish we ended up with via May and Johnson’s disastrous premierships.

To be clear, it is always difficult to re-run history and propose with any accuracy what would have happened instead, had x occurred. I am also aware most of you will not be the biggest fans of Michael Gove - but I think some of you can overcome your disagreements with the man and your partisan dislike and see that he is exponentially more competent than May or Johnson (to stress again, this isn’t that remarkable given how woefully ill-equipped either of those two individuals were for the job of prime minister). I think he would have got a better deal, but one, like all possible Brexit deals we could have ended up with, would have come with massive downsides and been nowhere near as good as EU membership. But it would have been much better than what we’ve got now, meaning Brexit might have remained popular for a longer period of time. I don’t think we’d see the shift in public opinion against Brexit like we’re witnessing already, had Gove entered No 10 in the summer of 2016.

What I’m basically concluding here is that when the Tory Brexiters decided to forgo the only logical option open to them at that stage and instead pick Theresa May as their leader, they were killing Brexit slowly but surely. She ruined Brexit for good and Boris Johnson just buried its corpse. Liz Truss will be the one who makes it obvious how dead an idea it truly is and after her, God only knows where we’ll be with this mess.

Thanks for reading, as always. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do - and thank you to my latest batch of subscribers, after what was a great week in terms of new subscriptions. As ever, I’ll be back next week with the worst of Brexit.