Paul Taylor, a contributing editor at POLITICO, writes the “Europe At Large†column.
PARIS — Some things never change. Even after leaving the European Union and opting for a minimal free trade agreement rather than a closer partnership with its continental cousins, Britain is once again embarking on a phony war with Brussels.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has launched an offensive to unpick the arrangements for trade with Northern Ireland that he had accepted less than two years ago. Tally-ho, we’re off to the sausage war! If you don’t surrender to our perfectly reasonable, common-sensical demands to shred part of our agreement, we’ll just suspend the rules.
As galling as Johnson’s move might be, when it comes to Europe and the United Kingdom, it’s actually par for the course. London has never reached an agreement with Brussels that it did not seek to renegotiate, often while the ink was barely dry.
This latest dispute, just six months after the U.K. left the EU’s single market and customs union, is ostensibly about procedures for inspecting goods shipped from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, including processed meats such as sausages and minced meat. In reality, it’s all about U.K. politics.
The last thing the British prime minister wants to be accused of is breaking up the union by having agreed to Northern Ireland remaining in the EU single market after the rest of the country has left.
A glorious battle with Brussels is the most expedient way for Johnson to soothe the anger of hardline Ulster unionists, appease Brexit fundamentalists in his Conservative party and feed the right-wing English media’s lust for Europe-bashing headlines.
Indeed, good old-fashioned Euroclashes have long served as useful distractions from domestic divisions for Tory prime ministers. Since Margaret Thatcher first swung her handbag to demand “my money back†from the community budget, every Conservative leader has had their own little war with Europe.
John Major fought the EU over the monetary union and mad cow disease to appease Euroskeptics who sniped incessantly at his government. David Cameron took the Conservatives out of the center-right European People’s Party and demanded a renegotiation of Britain’s membership terms. Johnson has already renegotiated the Withdrawal Agreement reached by his predecessor, Theresa May, but blocked in parliament. This current fight is an attempt to disown part of his own eventual deal.
And it’s not just the Tories. Renegotiation is a bipartisan British trait. Harold Wilson staged the first such hold-up to surmount splits in his Labour party in 1974, a year after the U.K. joined what was then known as the Common Market. He negotiated the right to import more cheap lamb and butter from former British colonies, declared victory and won a referendum on staying in the European Economic Community.
In the current spat, Johnson, who rose to fame as a Brussels-bashing journalist, has not even attempted to implement the border check system that he negotiated and declared, at the time, to be “a great deal†for Ulster. Having untruthfully claimed that it would not mean any extra paperwork for exporters from Northern Ireland or British traders sending products to the province, he faced a backlash by hardline Ulster Protestant politicians and violent loyalist street protests when the first checkpoints appeared.
In response, London unilaterally froze the introduction of port checks and demanded more time and flexibility. It also rejected, out of hand, the easiest way to avoid most of those controls: committing to stick to the EU phytosanitary and food safety regulations that the U.K. has observed for 45 years. To hell with practicalities! Such a step would compromise the absolute sovereignty that the most purist Tory Brexiteers insist must prevail, and might stymie a trade deal with a country demanding lower standards.
Instead, the prime minister declared his own deal “unsustainable†and demanded that the EU scrap the agreed border arrangements and trust U.K. traders to respect the rules with no on-the-spot verification, and without the oversight of the hated European Court of Justice.
No wonder there is widespread exasperation among EU member countries. “Is it too much to expect the U.K. to stand by what it has negotiated, signed and ratified?†Germany’s EU spokesman fumed on Twitter. Sadly, the answer has long been “yes,†and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.
It’s just too tempting for Johnson to try and evade responsibility for his own political choices, blame Europe for allegedly trying to split Northern Ireland off from the U.K. and unleash another spat with Brussels. By firing up his jingoistic backers in the press, he also diverts attention from public doubts about his decision to lift almost all public health restrictions, even as a new surge of COVID-19’s Delta variant rampages across England.
Johnson used similar saber-rattling tactics on the eve of local elections in May, briefly sending two British gunboats to confront French fishermen protesting off Jersey over post-Brexit access to Channel Island fishing waters.
Picking yet another fight with “Europe†now enables Johnson to signal to Ulster unionists that he is fighting in their corner, just as the onset of the politically fraught “marching season†in mid-July threatens another wave of violence, putting at risk the fragile Good Friday peace agreement that ended 30 years of bloodshed in Northern Ireland.
It papers over cracks in the Conservative party by mollifying ultra-Brexiteer MPs, who also happen to be some of the most outspoken campaigners against public health restrictions. And it creates a dilemma for opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer, who has tried to heal his own party’s deep divisions over Brexit by moving on from the issue and focusing on the government’s handling of COVID and social policy instead.
Johnson doesn’t even need to win the sausage war. Just keeping it going, and occasionally turning up the heat when he’s in a tight spot domestically, will do very nicely, thank you. The issue may be phony, but the battle is a political free lunch for the prime minister — unless, of course, Uncle Sam charges him a price for this game.
As long as his populist soul mate Donald Trump was in the White House, Johnson could afford to play fast and loose with Brussels, tear up agreements and defy international law. But President Joe Biden, who prides himself on his Irish heritage, has made clear that cooperation with the EU on Northern Ireland is a condition for smooth relations between Washington and London.
Anger in Berlin, Brussels and Paris, and even the threat of retaliatory EU trade sanctions are unlikely to reverse Johnson’s cynical maneuver. But the risk of a serious falling-out with the Biden administration might make him change course. Now is the time for the U.S. president to show that he, unlike Johnson, is a man of his word.
