A recent YouGov poll found that 53 per cent of the British public think Brexit is going badly. A mere 18 per cent believe it is going well. The British people are remarkably astute given that the majority of MPs, as well as great swathes of the British media, are in denial.
Brexit, like TS Eliot’s Macavity, continues to be something of a Mystery Cat. The Johnson government’s policy agenda for implementing and celebrating the restoration of the UK’s so-called “freedom” falls into two broad categories.
First, doing things the UK was perfectly free to do as an EU member state while proclaiming them to be a Brexit dividend. Second, pretending that the real negative effects of Brexit have nothing to do with Brexit. As TS Eliot might have put it, Brexit is “the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair/For when they reach the scene of crime – Macavity’s not there”.
On the one hand, there are the many Brexit “triumphs” claimed by the Johnson government, developments that would have been entirely compatible with the UK’s continued membership of the EU. Much of the British media has either fuelled this fiction or allowed it to go unchallenged.
While imaginary Brexit benefits became holy writ for the British tabloids, the obvious negative effects were swept under the carpet
Most obviously, there are the international trade deals through which the UK has scrambled to maintain the beneficial trade arrangements it already had through the EU.
Although the UK is now, at best, no better placed in trade terms than it was before and certainly less influential into the future, the constant trumpeting of illusory negotiating triumphs propelled trade secretary Liz Truss to become the Tory faithful’s most popular member of government.
Similarly, EU membership would not have prevented the UK from participating in AUKUS, its new trilateral security pact with the US and Australia, even if poking France in the eye would have been even more foolish if the UK were still trying to work closely in Europe with its most important and natural partners.
The UK’s early genuine success with its Covid-19 vaccination programme, now surpassed by much of Europe, was falsely presented as having been made possible by Brexit.
On the other hand, while such imaginary Brexit benefits became holy writ for the British tabloids, the obvious negative effects were swept under the carpet. It is as plain as a pikestaff that the unnecessary trade barriers with the UK’s closest neighbours have contributed to a significant fall in British exports to its most important market.
Equally, the ending of free movement of people with Europe has contributed to significant labour shortages which continue to affect many sectors of the economy, including most obviously fuel deliveries. Bare supermarket shelves, not replicated elsewhere in Europe, are another reflection of the Brexit strategy.
While sincere attempts are being made, the UK maintains the threat of negating the protocol's meaning and purpose by triggering Article 16
Meanwhile, government ministers are wheeled out to deny there is any elephant in the room, even as the Brexit pachyderm looms in the background waving its trunk conspicuously at the camera. Like Macavity, Brexit “always has an alibi, and one or two to spare/ at whatever time the deed took place – Macavity wasn’t there!”
I’m not sure what surprises us Europeans most: the starkness of the challenges now posed for the UK by Johnson’s hard Brexit, the insouciant insistence by British ministers that Brexit has nothing to do with those challenges, or the willingness of much of the British media to play along with the fiction.
It is also sad to observe that the British Labour Party now finds itself boxed into a corner, unable – for well-known reasons of electoral calculation – to criticise the government on the terrain on which it is most vulnerable.
It is difficult to identify a single significant practical benefit of Brexit. It is striking but not surprising that Downing Street has set up a Brexit Opportunities Unit. However, it would be unfair to suggest that Johnson’s Brexit agenda consists solely of either denying what Brexit actually means or pretending that it means something other than it does. His government is also looking bravely to the future.
The cabinet office has announced plans to move ahead with the reintroduction of imperial measurements. This represents the third string to the Brexit strategy: doing things differently from the EU solely to be seen to do things differently. The possibility that, in future, petrol shortages can be measured in gallons will no doubt turn the current opinion polls on their head.
While sincere attempts are being made, by both sides I hope, to resolve the remaining difficulties with the Brexit Northern Ireland protocol, the UK maintains the threat of negating the protocol’s meaning and purpose by triggering Article 16. It is not, therefore, reassuring to recall that TS Eliot credits Macavity with yet another trick: “And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty’s gone astray…/It must have been Macavity – but he’s not there”.
Bobby McDonagh is a former ambassador to London, Brussels and Rome