While Boris Johnson plays games, the EU prepares to move on
In a normal game of poker, a bluff cannot continue once it is called. But for Boris Johnson an exposed bluff can just be re-bluffed. The stakes get higher even when the poor hand lies open on the table.
Before entering Downing Street, Johnson claimed that deficiencies in Theresa May’s Brexit deal were caused by failure of nerve, not weakness in the UK’s position. The theory was that Brussels needed to see kamikaze intent in British eyes: total commitment to quitting the bloc with no deal. Only then would the cowardly continentals yield. It is true that the EU wants a deal, because of the harm that Brexit without one would do. But the harm is asymmetric. In a no-deal scenario, the UK suffers more and, after a period of gratuitous pain, returns to negotiations with diminished leverage. It was never a real bluff because the economic cards were dealt face up.
Johnson’s posturing has not been without result. It has drained meagre stores of goodwill and increased eagerness to see the exit door swing shut behind Britain. That is bad news for remainers. The Brussels caravan is moving on. The European parliament opened confirmation hearings for Ursula von der Leyen’s commission this week, and there is no British nominee. In December the Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, replaces the great anglophile Donald Tusk as president of the European council. The dynamics of EU summitry are shifting. Angela Merkel is in her political twilight; Emmanuel Macron is in his pomp. The German chancellor is an advocate of patience with British indecision; her French counterpart is not.
In Italy, Matteo Salvini’s far-right League has been expelled from government. In Austria, the 33-year-old conservative Sebastian Kurz triumphed in elections on Sunday at the expense of the xenophobic Freedom party. These are subtle shifts, not some tidal movement away from populism and nationalism, but they add to the feeling of seasonal change in Brussels. Brexit is seen as a tedious legacy issue. Johnson’s end-of-the-pier Donald Trump tribute act looks tired already. [Continue reading…]