Without Boris Johnson there would have been no Brexit twice.
The referendum in 2016 was won by Leave only because Boris led the campaign.
There is no question whatsoever that Remain would have won if he had campaigned
for the UK to stay in the EU as he almost did. But that was the essence of the
problem with Boris on this issue. He didn’t really have any conviction one way
or the other. While he could convince others he could not convince himself, because
he didn’t really believe anything or in anything.
It was crucial for Scotland that the UK voted to Leave
the EU. While doing so gave the SNP a grievance, it also gave it nowhere to go.
It was always going to be one thing to leave the UK while the UK was an EU
member, because this would have given Scots the same rights and open borders as
every other EU citizen. It was quite another to leave the UK while the UK was
not an EU member. Then there would be no guarantees about anything, and
Scotland would begin life as a new state with no trade agreements either with
the former UK or the EU and with the potential of a border between Gretna and
Berwick. This scenario was always going to be difficult to defend in an
independence campaign when it came under full scrutiny.
If the UK had voted to Remain in the EU at some point
the SNP would have got a second chance at independence and given the surge in support
post 2014 it probably would have won. Independence with both the former UK and
Scotland in the EU is intrinsically no worse than Austria and Germany. Therefore,
Boris’s decision to back Leave is an historically vital part of the implosion
of the SNP that we are at present witnessing.
But Boris’s lack of belief and lack of competence
meant that he had no plan and no strategy at all when he surprised himself upon
winning the referendum in 2016. It was this that led to Michael Gove abandoning
him and to the disaster of Theresa May becoming Prime Minister. Boris should
have made a deal with Gove. I will do the vision thing, you do the planning and
strategy. If Johnson had become Prime Minister in 2016, we could have avoided
the next three years of Remainer rearguard and absurd concessions to the EU.
The most crucial mistake or perhaps betrayal was Theresa
May accepting that it was the UK’s responsibility to keep the border in Ireland
open. Johnson/Gove could have told Ireland we will neither check your citizens
coming over the border nor will we monitor your goods, but what you do on your
side of the border is your problem not ours. The likely result would have been
light monitoring on the Irish side of the border or checks between Ireland and
the continent. But crucially there would have been no checks at all between
Britain and Northern Ireland.
Once the backstop was conceded it became impossible
for the UK to diverge from the EU in any significant way, which made Brexit
less beneficial than it otherwise could have been. That I think was the point
of Theresa May agreeing to the backstop and the EU making it such an issue. The
one thing the EU feared was that the UK would become a light regulation, low
tax competitor a few miles from the continent. We could have undercut them but
chose not to.
We should have used two further bargaining chips. There
were millions of EU citizens in the UK. We could have said we will make them
apply for work visas and leave to remain as if they were from any other country
in the world no better nor worse. Instead, we unilaterally made it as easy as
possible for EU citizens and didn’t receive the same concession for our own citizens
living in the EU. Nor did we receive any other concessions. We did not bargain.
We collapsed.
We could have promised the EU that if it continued to
treat us in an unfriendly way then it would find British armed forces unable to
help Europe if it were attacked. In short, we should have argued as hard as
Barnier did. Instead, we conceded on everything and gained nothing.
Johnson’s victory in 2019 was as crucial as the victory
in 2016. Only he could have won that election and only he could have achieved something
approaching a complete break with the EU exception that it left Northern Ireland
stranded. But it is hard to imagine a Prime Minister making a worse job given
the majority given to him.
Johnson had the correct instinct with regard to Covid
but lacked the conviction to implement it. This is his tragic flaw. Whether it
was realistic in the atmosphere of February/March 2020 to completely avoid
lockdown, Johnson could have made most of the regulations voluntary. By all
means work from home if you can but go to work if you want to.
We now know that lockdown saved few lives. It almost
certainly killed more than it saved. If Johnson truly had a conviction, he
would now be Prime Minister of one of the few countries that avoided full
lockdown that left it to the discretion of his citizens and their good sense
rather than the law. His reputation would be intact. Instead, he leaves
Parliament with no reputation at all.
Johnson is a political visionary who doesn’t believe
in anything other than his own advancement and his own pleasure. He is a libertine
controlled too much by his continual desire for a new woman and for new power.
But politically he could do what no one else in British politics could do. But
rather like Joe Biden Boris should not have been left in charge of anything
lest he fall over.
His fallout with Gove and Cummings was crucial. Boris
is genuinely clever but only with regard to Latin and Greek and writing funny
articles in the papers. He needed the brains of Gove and Cummings and he needed
to be ruled and to an extent controlled by someone clever at running a country
and cunning at dealing with opponents. Instead, Boris was ruled by a woman more
than twenty years younger than him who controlled him like Anne Boleyn briefly
controlled Henry VIII by means of her youth and his lust.
Without Boris Johnson there would have been no Brexit
and it is this above all else that has kept the UK together. But in nearly
every other respect Brexit has failed and been a dismal disappointment. Johnson’s
fall out with Gove in 2016 is the crucial factor caused by Johnson’s lack of
conviction and lack of competence.
But his mismanagement, the chaos in Downing Street and
his failure to stand up for what he really believed about lockdown led to Johnson’s
downfall and his replacement with Rishi Sunak. We are now left with a country
that is in a much worse position than it was in 2019. Inflation is high, we have
spent vastly more than we have earned, and we are importing up to a million
people a year. Far from taking control of our borders we have merely substituted
unlimited immigration from the EU for unlimited immigration from everywhere else.
If you continue doing that for long enough, you won’t
have Britain anymore. You will have replaced all the planks of your ship and
you will merely have the same island that barely resembles the ship that it
once was. There will be no sceptred isle, because there will be nothing that
Shakespeare would recognise.
Boris’s historical achievement was Britain’s Exit from
the EU, but was it for this? For what?
