A lot has happened since my last blog post more than a fortnight ago – especially regarding the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP). The reason why there was no BIT post the last two weekends was not just workload, but also because it is both demoralising and overwhelming to process all the developments and especially the various (at times contradictory) announcements the government makes about the issue. Especially regarding the NIP, increasingly it feels like Groundhog Day. The debate is not moving forward, but we are face with the same old lies and fantasies that we have heard since 2016 at least. Re-reading my blog about the NIP from October illustrates in depressing clarity how little has changed. There is the same denial of the need for a border somewhere between the EU and hard-Brexit Britain, the same bogus solutions that the government full-well knows the EU will not accept, the same jingoistic bluster blaming the EU for the problems to rile up the Brexit-voting right-wing fringe of the British public and make them forget about the cost-of-living crisis, the non-existent levelling up policies, and Partygate.
But of course, the soul-crushing repetition of lies is part of Johnson’s post-truth strategy. The more you lie, the more people will stop bothering calling you out, because there is just too much to be called out.
The Northern Ireland Protocol: New (legal) weapons of mass-deception
Rather than summarising again in great detail what has happened in terms of the NIP – which has been done so expertly by Chris Grey (here and here), Tony Connelly, and David Phinnemore on the Encompass web page – I want to focus on how to explain the ongoing and seemingly unresolvable issues around the Irish Sea border.
The latest change in the Johnson government’s approach to the matter was the government moving away from threatening to invoke Art. 16 – temporarily suspending parts of the protocol – to threatening new legislation that would allow the UK government to unilaterally suspend parts or all of it – as Liz Truss has done on Tuesday. This has left commentators wondering what the purpose of this shift was.
An obvious place to start is, as David Phinnemore does, by seeing the legal proposals as an attempt to genuinely solve the economic and political issues caused by the NIP – namely new paper work due to border checks on trade between GB and NI and the political issue of unionist opposition to any border in the Irish sea. From this benign perspective, the purpose of the proposed legislation could be seen ‘simply tactical and designed to put pressure on the EU in discussions over the Protocol.’
Yet, that does not explain what new legislation would achieve beyond the – now well-known – threat of invoking Art. 16. While legally different from Art. 16 of the Protocol, the effect would for all intents and purposes be the same, namely to unilaterally suspend the application of parts of the Protocol. So it is not entirely clear what is gained from brining into play a new instrument to suspend the NIP, when the UK government has threatened since January 2021 to achieve the same goal by invoking Art. 16, but did not follow through on that threat.
One explanation may be that the UK government is engaging in a sort of unilateral ‘arms race,’ where the Johnson government creates new instruments to threaten the EU, which keep the right-wing pro-Brexit fringe in the European Research Group (ERG) temporarily quiet while signalling to the EU the government’s resolve. But of course, adding new legal instruments that would essentially achieve a very similar outcome to Art. 16 may easily be perceived as a typical Johnsonite diversion tactic that fundamentally shows that he is precisely not willing to actually use either of these instruments. It is a bit like a dictatorial regime with nuclear weapons, adding new fancy weaponry to their arsenal in order to parade them in front of the population knowing full well that they will never use them.
Brexit’s unsolvable borders problem
Even if we were to give the government the benefit of the doubt and accept that this is a cunning strategy to pressure the EU into further concessions then it has already made back in October, what concessions would the government want to see? There lies the whole problem: As Rafael Behr wrote in the Guardian, for Eurosceptic Tories ‘[t]here is no concession big enough, no deal good enough, just as no single fix can end the cravings of a drug addict.’ I share this view: hard Brexit means there needs to be a border between the UK and the EU, but there cannot be a border either between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland – to safeguard peace as per the Good Friday Agreement. So, the border has to be in the Irish Sea which is unacceptable to the unionists and now that ‘Brexit is done’ to the Johnson government.
The irony in all this, of course, is that Brexiters want (an absolutist version of) sovereignty at any cost to be able to do things ‘our way.’ As such they want to be different from ‘our European friends and neighbours.’ Yet, the one thing that is needed to make that difference a reality Brexiters cannot accept: namely, borders. Or as Chris Grey put it succinctly: Brexiters “want to have a different regulatory and tariff regime to that of the EU. Fine - but where, then, does this regime begin and end?” In fact, it is regarding borders that the Brexit project has failed most appallingly – and that is setting a very high bar.
Further adding to the irony is the fact that an honest and realistic assessment of the NIP would reveal that it actually is economically and politically speaking as good a deal as Brexiters could have hoped for under the current hard-Brexit approach. Despite a non-negligible impact on companies relying on imports from GB into NI, overall, the NIP means NI has now a unique position as a bridge head between the EU SM and GB. That position could – in time – lead to considerable economic benefits for the region.
Similarly, for the UK government the NIP implies that the UK has been given privileges that no other third country has obtained without agreeing to regulatory alignment. Significantly, the EU has entrusted the UK – a third country – with policing its external border and the Commission’s negotiation offer of 13 October 2021 added further concessions. It is therefore somewhat ironic that Johnson’s Brexiter government focusses so much energy on attacking the one bit of post-Brexit arrangements with the EU that lends some credence to the claim that the UK could have from the EU what other third countries could not (although that is of course purely due to the delicate situation in Northern Ireland). Conversely, the UK government’s behaviour since the TCA came into force will make think the EU twice before extending any other such concessions to the UK, given that judging on past behaviours there is a real possibility the UK government would cease to operate any border at all. Rather than trying to make most of the privileged position of NI in the Single Market or even try and build on the arrangement to find trust-based solutions at other UK-EU borders, the Johnson government has weaponised the protocol for political purposes.
The explanation for this approach is that neither economic nor political reason drives the UK government’s policy in Northern Ireland. As Tony Connelly notes, the NIP is a problem not for economic nor for strictly political- but for purely identarian reasons. For Unionists, any "visible signs of a trade boundary" are antagonising unionists on the "identity" issue. This, however, still does not explain why, rather than trying to appease unionists resentments about the Irish Sea border, the UK government caters towards – or at least listens to – the most extreme and intransigent claims made by the DUP, while ignoring the majority opinion in the region.
Last October, I was still under the impression that the government actually may believe in its own claims about the negative effects of the NIP and would therefore go ahead and trigger art. 16. The fact that I was wrong shows that triggering art. 16 is not considered necessary to solve any real-world problems. If the government really thought the issues caused by the NIP required an urgent solution justifying the unilateral suspension of its application, why would it continue to wait despite the fact that little progress has been made in the negotiations with the EU? The fact that the government has not acted yet, undermines its claims about the severity of the issues and shows that all the fuss about the NIP probably has different reasons than any real problems on the ground (of course the DUP’s refusal to enter a power sharing executive with Sinn Fein is now becoming a real problem). A further indication that these border controls are not actually the main problem here – at least not a worse one than at any other UK-EU border – is the fact that recently the government has started shifting from economic towards the political reason (preserving the Good Friday Agreement) for opposing the NIP. So, the government clearly seems to think that Art. 16 is more valuable as long as it is ‘untriggered.’
Therefore, to me, it becomes increasingly clear that there can be only explanation for the government’s approach to Brexit, the NIP, and indeed any other governmental policy, namely each individual member of the government’s own very personal interests, which implies the NIP is just another tool for the people in government to advanced their individual agendas. In other words, the UK is drifting into the territory of ‘egocracy’ where ruthlessly selfish careerists in government use the state apparatus and their position to purely and simply pursue their personal interests in increasing their wealth and power.
Support for the thesis of egocracy comes from the behaviours of two people at the heart of Brexit: David Frost and Liz Truss.
Frost’s Grudge and Truss’s Radicalisation
David Frost, despite resigning from his role as Brexit minister in December, continues to intervene constantly in the public debate, mainly through his articles in the Telegraph. Last week, he called leader of the House of Representative Nancy Pelosi’s warnings over the protocol ‘ignorant’ and insists that a trade war would hurt the EU more than the UK. In normal times, the opinions of someone like Frost would of course not count for much. Sadly, however, in Brexit Britain, we can assume that however disproportionate the attention he gets is compared to his competence, his voice is being heard and in line what Eurosceptics seem to think. What is interesting, however, is that Frost seems to talk as much, or more, about Brexit since he left his official governmental role. One has to wonder why – if he has old the right answers for the problem – he did not use his role to put them into practice. The strange situation where a person who had the chance to shape Brexit policy like no other now uses newspaper columns to lecture everyone else about what should be done is a perfect illustration of this new type of egocratic career politicians: faced with irrelevance, but incapable of assuming real responsibility, all that Frost has left is preaching from a distance in the hope that it will allow him to avoid being relegated to a footnote in the history of Brexit.
Equally remarkable as the amplification of the voice of a mediocre career bureaucrat is the radicalisation of the Foreign Secretary – and without a doubt PM hopeful – Liz Truss. When she took over the Brexit brief from Frost back in December, there was hope that she would seek a détente in the relationship with the EU and find a more productive way to work with EU Commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič. Yet, with Johnson’s premiership still somewhat wobbly due to the ongoing story of Partygate and the Sue Gray report and the May local election results raising further questions about his leadership; and with Rishi Sunak out of the picture as a possible successor, Truss seems to fancy her chances of becoming the Tory backbenchers and the ERG’s favourite candidate for the succession of Johnson. Her chosen strategy to achieve this is to recklessly destroy any trust she may have built up with Šefčovič and the EU in her first weeks in post, by becoming as unreasonable and far removed from reality as the Brexit ultras in the Tory Party. Again, this illustrates a new type of politicians that now control the commanding hights of British government.
21st century egocrats
While commentators often consider Brexiters as staunch Thatcherites and believe the Johnson Government’s reference to Thatcherism, there is a fundamental difference between the Thatcherite ‘revolution’ of the 1980s and what is happening now. Of course, Thatcher brought about a profound change in economic and social policies in the country that transformed British society and its economic model for good. However, these policy changes did not fundamentally question the UK’s political and constitutional set up. In terms of the political institutions, Thatcher was genuinely a conservative.
Johnson and his cabinet ministers on the other hand are distinctly not conservative in any meaningful sense of the word. Just like David Cameron and George Osborne, Johnson, Gove, Javid, Patel, Raab, Turss etc. are a new type of conservatives with a different take on liberty and different views on the purpose of politics than Margaret Thatcher or John Major. One way of capturing this generational change is by looking at the intellectual heroes of the conservatives of Thatcher’s generation and 21st century Tories.
In a party meeting, Thatcher famously brandished a book written by Austrian Economist Friedrich Hayek and declared that that was what she ‘believed in.’ Hayek’s thinking is a mixture of conservatism and libertarianism in the sense that he advocates for a limited (indeed minimal) state, but also for the respect of traditional norms and rules that have spontaneously grown from the ‘bottom up.’ He believes that what emerges spontaneously has proven its functional usefulness for society and has been selected – in evolutionary fashion – as best adapted to its environment. Conversely, contrary to such spontaneously grown (common) ‘law,’ state created ‘legislation’ is bound to fail due to the limited knowledge that state officials and politicians have of local circumstance.
21st century Tories of Johnson’s ilk, on the other hand, most often refer to Ayn Rand as their intellectual hero. Most Explicitly, Sajid Javid who openly declares his admiration for the pseudo-philosopher. This is telling, because Rand explicitly rejected Hayek’s theories because she deems his recognising the importance of social norms as being ‘collectivist.’ Rand’s thinking, on the other hand constitutes ‘an assertion of individual will and autonomy against social conventions and the will of the majority.’ Rand’s vision is one of a ruthless selfish individual who rejects all externally imposed rules including social norms and instead exclusively follows their own individual truth. Indeed, truth is relative. Everyone has their own personal truth.
The Spectator quotes the philosopher John Milbank who states that 'it is extraordinarily disturbing that any mainstream politician should express any admiration for Ayn Rand. We should be concerned that someone like Sajid Javid can now hold high office within the United Kingdom. Rand promoted a cult of amoral selfishness and ruthlessness that is certainly not conservative in any traditional sense – certainly not Burkean, but quite emphatically Nietzschean.’
The Randian bent of 21st century Tories is reflected not only in their complete disregard for any laws or moral norms, but also in their constant lying and opportunistic shifting of positions whenever their personal interests requires it. In fact, in a Randian world, where truth is absolutely relative, lying does not exist. The individual is at the centre of the world and right to disregard any external constraint or reference point. This is the ideology what turns politicians into egocrats – using their public office not to pursue any public interests, but purely their own selfish goals.
These are not normal times
The longer the government persists with its hard-Brexit strategy obviously disregarding any negative impact on the common good and any negative impacts on the country, the harder it gets to see Brexit as independent from a broader political project. It becomes increasingly clear that for the architects of Brexit, Brexit never was an end in itself, but only ever a means to an end. The enormity of what has happened with Brexit is only slowly becoming clear. The importance of Brexit was not so much the decision to leave a free-trade area and increasingly political supranational organisation. That is a legitimate choice (had it been taken in legitimate circumstances rather than a bogus referendum) and could have been handled with the appropriate preparation and a competent government to guide the country through it. The real problem with Brexit is that it becomes increasingly clear that it was primarily an enabler of a far-right fringe of British politics to take control of the government in a system that relies on people’s decency and opposes few checks and balances to whoever is in power. Such a system is risky in the best of times with the best possible politicians in power, but it becomes outright self-destructive if the people in power are egocrats who follow the Randian pseudo-philosophy to justify their sole interest in self-enrichment and self-aggrandisement.
That is what is happening now. Yet, as Anette Dittert pointed out on Twitter, in Britain we are still struggling to see the enormity of what has happened. Brexit truly has brought about a revolution that has set the country on the same path as other failed democracies before it. As I argued a couple of weeks ago, it becomes increasingly clear that nothing will stop the Tory Party from seeking complete control over our political institutions. There is now also evidence that this power grab is spreading to the sub-national level, as a Tory attempt to undermine democratic institutions in Norfolk shows. It is high time we accept that what we are dealing with is not the conservative party of Thatcher or Major, but an entirely new type of political movement with an entirely new political project – that of establishing an egocracy. We have to accept that these are not normal times – these are times where the survival of our democracy is at stake. Rejecting 21st century Toryism therefore should not be seen as a partisan call for supporting any specific opposition party. Rather, it should be the rallying cry for anyone who cares about protecting British democracy, whether they vote Labour, LibDem, Green, or indeed Conservative.