If Brexit had been the FA Cup Final, Britain would have lost 5-0
The evidence is pouring in, and it has nothing to do with the rights and wrongs of Brexit. Many people in Europe and around the world, including the United States, thought that leaving the EU was a mistake which the UK would come to regret. But no one expected the deep layers of incompetence and ignorance that marked the British side’s approach to the negotiations that followed.
Yesterday’s votefest in the Commons, in which for the second time in four days precisely nothing was resolved, served only to underline the depths to which our democracy has sunk.
Prior to the referendum, and right up until the triggering of Article 50, foreign observers were united in the belief that, in the event of Brexit, the British would give a good account of themselves. The Conservative government was generally reckoned to be serious, experienced and professional, and behind the politicians was Britain’s Rolls-Royce civil service, led by the Foreign Office and the Treasury.
It looked to be a formidable combination. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, now we know. There is no point in rehashing the tragi-comedy of the last two years. From top to bottom, the British political class was out-classed and out-gunned. In the end, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. The Europeans knew exactly what they were doing. They came with their dossiers, their rule book and an impressive display of unity. We were left floundering. We had led with a series of facile assumptions, each of which was knocked down the moment they were raised. It was humiliating. If Brexit had been the FA Cup Final, the EU would have won five-nil, including at least two own-goals.
As I say, this has nothing to do with whether or not Britain’s decision to leave the EU was a good thing or not. The two sides could argue about that until Hell freezes over – which seems a distinct possibility. The point is that voters are united in regarding the negotiations as – to borrow a phrase from the Irish statesman Conor Cruise O’Brien after a double murderer on the run was founding living in the home of the Attorney General – Gubu: grotesque, unprecedented, bizarre and unbelievable.
It is the upshot from all this that is important at this stage in the game. The lasting, reputational damage comes from the fact that the world believes that it has seen through us to what looks like our empty, or rotten, core. Never again will leaders from the 27 regard 10 Downing Street as the primus inter pares of Europe’s chancelleries. Up to the spring of 2017, we were seen by our European partners as surefooted, stable and – as used to be said of graduates of Balliol College, Oxford – effortlessly superior. It was sometimes hard to take, but it was a fact of life.
Even when the UK, down the years, refused to adopt developments that its partners considered inevitable, such as the single currency and open borders, it was felt that the British could be relied on to be honest brokers, standing aside on principle while wishing everyone else well. Whitehall Mandarins were especially prized. Their ability to draft legislation, as with the Single market and the European Arrest Warrant, was legendary. Britain’s politicos provided the headlines; its fonctionaires wrote the text.
Was it galling to our partners that we so often seemed to be looking down on events from our lofty perch, as critics, not participants? Of course. But it was generously supposed that our lack of commitment arose from the fact that we could see further ahead than everybody else, all the way to the pitfalls that were bound to arise in any new set of circumstances. Could we be insufferably smug? Absolutely. But in the end, we came across – certainly to ourselves – as just that little bit smarter than our Continental counterparts, who, quite rightly, envied not only our precise analytical skills but our sense of irony topped off with amusing displays of self-deprecation. It wasn’t just our Saville Row suits. Our minds, it seemed, were tailor-made for the job. We were like Monty Python – a little bit over the top sometimes, but just sooo clever.
Well, you don’t hear that anymore. These days the world is laughing at us. And when I say “us,” I mean you. The Germans, the French, the Poles, the Americans, even the Belgians: they’re making fun of us. We are the butt of their jokes. They couldn’t believe that Theresa May, in a bid to deliver her equivalent of Margaret Thatcher’s Bruges speech, thought Brexit was all about political declarations – Lancaster House, Florence, the CBI – rather than sustained engagement across the negotiating table. They were astonished by how little she and her ministers knew about how Europe actually works. Nor could they believe how contemptuous of the process ministers were, in David Davis’s case to the extent that he frequently arrived late or cut meetings short, in Boris Johnson’s through the sheer vacuity of his rhetoric. It was if the patina of perceived brilliance had rubbed off all at once, to reveal the peuter mug beneath.
When Jacob Rees-Mogg dismissed one of his fellow Tories in the Commons last Friday as “highly intelligent but fundamentally wrong” on the basis that he was a “Wykehamist” – in other words that he had attended Winchester College, not Eton (like himself, Johnson and, indeed, David Cameron) – that said it all. All it missed was that the Wykehamist in question, Nick Boles, was about the jump ship.
The Tories rarely took part in discussions about Europe’s future when they were part of the EU infrastructure. They simply announced what they wanted, made speeches (démarches, they called them) and tuned out the response as idle chatter. While other leaders of the 27, notably the Irish, continued the arguments over coffee or in the corridors, the British talked mainly to themselves or to the London-based media, seemingly aloof, but actually clueless. It was their heroic officials, busy behind the scenes, who kept the myth of British genius alive. All that changed after Article 50. From the day that Mrs May and her chosen team took charge of proceedings, it was downhill all the way. She wasn’t up to it. Nor were her ministers. They shortchanged the British people because, quite frankly, they didn’t know what they were doing.
And here’s the kicker. If it hadn’t been Mrs May and David Davis, it would have been Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. Keir Starmer would have done his best, but he would have been hopelessly blindsided by Magic Grandpa.
As for Parliament, they lost the plot on page one of the Brexit Papers. If, after another day of futile indicative votes, they finally come up with something on which a majority can agree – which is far from certain – it is likely to be on the same 52/48 split that brought us Brexit in the first place. Even then, if it was all over bar the shouting, we could live with it. The trouble is, the shouting is the substance, and it never stops. Commons debate may sound like democracy in action. In fact, what it most closely resembles is the noise of squabbling crows crowded together in a group of trees just after sunset.
Never doubt it. The United Kingdom’s reputation has taken a battering in the last two years. It’s not just Europe, it’s also America, China, India and the other Commonwealth nations. They have all seen how we comported ourselves when the chips were down, and they are not impressed. Given that we are still hoping to bring home “brilliant” trade deals from these same countries, this matters. Our only hope now is that British business and the City of London, together with our overworked civil service, can yet rescue the situation and persuade the world that the UK is not in the hands of a set of characters straight out of Evelyn Waugh and P.G. Wodehouse. But it will be a close-run thing. The trouble with our political class in the twenty-first century is that, when push comes to shove, the thing in shortest supply is class.