Macron’s troubles put Brexit into perspective

Viewed from deepest Brittany, where leaders of the gilets-jaunes movement are reportedly demanding that France withdraw from both the European Union and Nato while, en route, enacting a swingeing new wealth tax and doubling the raft of benefits payable to the poor, events at Westminster suddenly seem pretty tame.

The fact that a terrorist gunman was on the loose yesterday somewhere in the Strasbourg area, resulting in the nation being placed on a renewed state of high alert, only added to my sense that the problems of the Tory Party, and even the issue of Brexit itself, are in the end no more than a bitterly-contested domestic quarrel.

The difficulties Theresa May experienced this week as she tried to force her Brexit plan down her colleagues’ throats, and thus to remain in office, must have looked to France’s embattled President, Emmanuel Macron, like the scale of problem he wouldn’t mind having.

London has long prided itself on its mob, which could be relied upon to take to the streets the moment the authorities appeared to overstep the mark, as with the Poll Tax riots in 1990 or the city-wide – later nationwide – uprising in 2011 that followed the shooting by armed police of Mark Duggan, a suspected gang leader.

But In France, and especially in Paris, the mob is almost written into the Constitution. It is apparently the duty of citizens periodically to dress up in some easily identifable garb – in this case the luminous vests drivers are obliged by law to keep in their vehicles – and to converge on the capital, wreaking whatever violence is considered appropriate to the President’s latest perceived failing.

At this point, the Government, while doing what it can to minimise the threat to life and property, traditionally gives in, leading to choruses up and down the country of the Marseillaise and threats of further violence to come that gradually subside.

Which is exactly what happened this week, leaving Macron in a wretched state, pondering his future and counting the cost.

In Britain, meanwhile, where the mob up to now has confined itself to protest marches and demonstrations, most of the obvious unrest has been confined to the governing party, with noises off from the Labour Opposition and – by way of comedy relief – the Democratic Unionists.

On the pro-Brexit side, the argument is simple. On June 23, 2016, 17.4 million of the British people voted to leave the EU, against a “mere” 16.14 million who said they wished to remain. Everything else, to the hardliners, is sophistry. Remainers retort that some 9 million voters never bothered to turn out and that, in any case, few at the time appreciated the true consequences of leaving. They are both right.

And that is where we are today. Whether Theresa May is prime minister or not only matters if she is able to persuade Parliament that her hard-won version of Brexit is (a) worth it and (b) the only settlement available apart from the cliff-edge of No-Deal.

The arithmetic remains the same whoever is in charge. At least 100 Tory MPs have rejected the Government’s proposed settlement, as – in hopes of forcing a general election – have most of the Labour Party, as well as the SNP, the Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru … and the DUP (formerly Mrs May’s most loyal supporters). It is an ex-plan. It has run down the curtain and joined the Choir Invisible. Only if the EU were to reverse its stand on the Northern Irish backstop (which is about as likely as the DUP embracing Irish unity), would it have even the ghost of success.

And yet, on and on it goes – utterly pointless and heading for the cliff edge. If No-Deal is to be the ultimate achievement of Tory policy on Brexit, competent governance is out the window and God knows where we will all end up. Enter Jeremy Corbyn, stage far-left.

If this had happened in France, the mob would be incensed. It would be baying for blood. But in the UK, in recent times, only death and taxes bring the people onto the streets looking for someone to string up. Wat Tyler and Jack Cade have put their feet up and are posting on the internet.

But could this be about to change?

If No Deal becomes the final settlement, the Remain mob might just find its voice, along with its street cred. Facebook and Twitter would give way to an England-wide call to arms. More plausibly, if, following a post-May government surrender or a pro-Remain “People’s Vote,” we end up revoking Article 50 and staying in the EU, the fires of what might be termed the European Research Group mob could all-too-easily be stoked, resulting in angry confrontations up and down the country led by a reborn Nigel Farage, with Jacob Rees-Mogg and his thuggish sidekick Boris Johnson looking on from the wings.

Either that or we will all just shrug our shoulders, accept whatever is thrust upon us and get on with the business of living. What was the point of it all? Was it all about immigration and nothing else?

I have no idea how Brexit will pan out, or even if it will. It has become impossible to read the runes. But it would not totally surprise me if, ten years from now, with Britain locked into an annex of the European Project, historians looked back on the hysteria of 2018 and got themselves tied up in knots trying to explain how it was that we got so worked up about something that ultimately fizzed out and, quite frankly, no longer seemed all that important.

By then, of course, Emmanuel Macron will be long gone – as long, perhaps, as Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn – and whoever is the new French President, of Left or Right, will be waiting for the latest reports of riots on the Champs Élysée before deciding whether or not it is time for him to pack his bags.

Who would be a politician in Europe in the twenty-first century.