OPINION
VICTORIAHATTERSLEY
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Unpalatable truths Chicken lasagne and backstage plotting – and uncertain times for the UK’s relationship with Europe.
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t’s meant as a symbolic statement, of course – UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s choice of Florence as the venue for a speech on 22 September that will, according to her spokesman, “underline the government’s wish for a deep and special partnership with the European Union once the UK leaves the EU. “The UK has deep cultural and economic ties spanning centuries with Florence... As the UK leaves the EU, we will retain those ties.” Fine words, but at the time of writing the speech has yet to be made and the UK and the rest of Europe are waiting, if not exactly with bated breath, then with interest to learn the stance Theresa May will be taking. Given the disastrous way her election gamble backfired in June this year, she is in a far weaker position than she was at the time of her Lancaster House speech in January. Back then the message was loud and clear: leaving the EU meant leaving the single market. Unsurprisingly, since the election there has been a softening of this approach. Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond has said there is now ‘general agreement’ at the top of government that a transitional period will be called for, meaning in effect the UK would still be operating within the single market for some time to come. Such an ‘interim period’ would no doubt be good news to many UK business leaders: the uncertainty of the UK’s position has already, says Charlie Mayfield, chair of the retailer John Lewis, had a detrimental effect on the economy. Many no doubt fearful the UK will end up with some kind of horribly bastardised Frankenstein’s monster of a deal – the worst of both worlds: second-best, associate EU membership for which a high price would need to be paid. (Indeed, the already-infamous chicken lasagne served up by Mrs May at Chequers – not something a real Italian would ever dream of producing – could be seen as a chilling portent of the future. How’s that for symbolism? Is she going to serve up a terrible
gastronomic insult of a deal – something that, quite simply, just doesn’t work?)
Back-seat driver So much for the main action – but wait, who is that lurking in the wings? Why, it’s UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. The internet has been reeling at his 4000-word editorial in The Telegraph, timed neatly to fall a week before the speech, attacking the idea of a soft Brexit. All the talk of a transitional period will of course be anathema to Johnson. “Before the referendum,” he wrote, “we all agreed on what leaving the EU must logically entail.” But did we, and who is ‘we’ anyway? If memory serves, there was a great deal of ‘Cry God for Harry, England and Saint George’-type bombast and hollow promises from sections of the Leave campaign, meaning that on polling day many people really didn’t know what they were voting for at all. Speaking of hollow promises: the aspect of Johnson’s article that has caused most controversy is his resurrection of the Leave’s ‘£350m extra a week for the NHS’ promise. Sir David Norgrove, the head of the UK Statistics Authority, was ‘surprised and disappointed’ that the foreign secretary would revive these claims – a ‘clear misuse’ of official statistics. “This confuses gross and net contributions. It also assumes that payments currently made to the UK by the EU... will not be paid by the UK government when we leave.” Disappointing, perhaps; surprising, no. There have been plenty of mutterings that the timing of the article, and its content, signal a genuine challenge to Theresa May’s already fragile leadership. (One Cabinet colleague even ventured to accuse Johnson of putting ‘personal ambition before the interests of the country’. Imagine.) But for anyone who has been paying even the slightest attention to his antics over the past two decades, this is simply par for the course. Since he first stood, unsuccessfully, as a Conservative
candidate in Clwyd South, Johnson’s plotting and scheming would have put Machiavelli to shame. Consider how quick he was to throw his lot in with the Leave campaign against old Bullingdon chum David Cameron when there was political capital to be gained. But perhaps it is more noble than that: after all, in the past he has likened himself to Cincinnatus – the farmer and retired Roman statesman called upon to save Rome from invaders in 458 BC, who then calmly resumed ploughing when his job was done. Only of course one gets the impression Johnson would not be quite so keen to return to the field when he’d rescued the UK from those pesky foreigners. The EU is not perfect – we all know this – but so far there has been no real alternative offered and it is doubtful whether a Prime Minister Boris Johnson would be able to provide this. And yet....Even after the events of the past year there are still plenty who would ask whether this prospect is so terrible. Look how he clowns for us, with his bumbling manner and his willingness to suspend himself on a wire for our amusement. It couldn’t possibly be an act, could it? We laughed at Donald Trump though, didn’t we? And he laughed back at us. The image of him and then-UKIP leader Nigel Farage – remember him? – braying at us from in front of a gilded elevator after Trump’s election to the US presidency is one that lingers. Will we one day be treated to the sight of Johnson laughing at us in simlilar fashion as the door to No.10 swings shut on him? Suddenly even a weakened Theresa May in bed with the DUP doesn’t look so bad after all. Then again, another alternative being mooted is Jacob Rees-Mogg, the new clown in town – the Eurosceptic ‘man of the people’ who was obliged to apologise for speaking at a black-tie dinner hosted by the far-right Traditional Britain Group, which advocated for the repatriation of ‘non-indigenous’ Britons. Would n we still be laughing then? Industry Europe 1
