Editorial of the “World”. Approved by referendum for more than five years, signed two years ago, in force for less than a year, Brexit is clearly not a path strewn with roses. And the speech of Boris Johnson celebrating, on December 30, 2020, “The start of a wonderful relationship between the UK and [ses] friends and partners of the European Union ” is squealing in earnest today, after a year of strife over Northern Ireland, migrants and fisheries.
In this context, the resignation, Saturday, December 18, of David Frost, fierce anti-European, uncompromising negotiator of Brexit, then minister responsible for implementing it, appears as the sanction of a failure: that of the strategy of the confrontation with the European Union (EU). By threatening to unilaterally suspend the trade agreement signed with the EU to protest against customs controls between Great Britain and Northern Ireland – controls formally accepted by Mr Johnson – David Frost thought he could bend the Twenty- Seven. But the latter, bound by the need to prevent any breach in the borders of the single market, did not give in.
At the same time, the Prime Minister found himself increasingly weakened by a series of setbacks. To the revelation of the scandal of the party organized in Downing Street in full containment, in 2020, was added the rebellion of a hundred Conservative MPs against his plan for a health pass, followed by the resounding loss of a Tory stronghold during of a by-election.
Faced also with a violent comeback of the Covid, Boris Johnson is no longer able to maintain a hard line towards the EU. A compromise is in sight on Northern Ireland, and London has abandoned its rejection of the role of the Court of Justice of the Union in settling Brexit disputes.
But Mr Frost’s resignation also highlights the fundamental political misunderstanding upon which Brexit rests. The minister justifies his departure by his fear of not seeing the UK’s tax haven, “freed” from the social and environmental rules of the EU, promised by Mr Johnson. However, the overwhelming majority enjoyed by the latter in Westminster is based on his success, in the 2019 elections, in underprivileged constituencies in the north of England where voters from pro-Brexit popular circles expect precisely the opposite: aid from the Massive state and its protection.
Very degraded relations
The Covid-19 and its procession of state interventions, Mr. Johnson’s decision to increase taxes to a level never seen since 1950 alienated him from the ultraliberals for whom Brexit was to transform the country into “Singapore”, a deregulated area at the gates of the EU. However, this interventionist policy, if it corresponds to the expectations of the popular electorate, also responds to the need to support the economy slowed down in the long term by… Brexit itself.
It is therefore as if Brexit had opened up a long-term conflict, not only between the United Kingdom and its neighbors, but within the country itself. A hiatus that Mr. Johnson’s antics mask less and less. However, no one, among the populations on either side of the Channel, has an interest in the extension of these very degraded relations. The immediate priority is to do everything, in the strict defense of the unity of the Twenty-Seven and of peace in Ireland, to get London to stop instrumentalizing the conflict with the EU and try to rebuild essential relations of confidence.