11th October 2021
You will remember from Mary Poppins the character of Admiral Boom.
In the first Poppins book of 1934 the admiral is introduced early, almost as the first absurd or magical element of the story:
‘…Mr Banks popped his head out of the window and looked down the Lane to Admiral Boom’s house at the corner.
‘This was the grandest house in the Lane, and the Lane was very proud of it because it was built exactly like a ship.
‘There was a flagstaff in the garden, and on the roof was a gilt weathercock shaped like a telescope.’
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Given the problems of the United Kingdom government in procuring a post-Brexit trade flagship, perhaps building one in a garden, with a flagstaff, is not as absurd or magical in 2021 as it would have been to readers in 1934.
But in the book there is no time gun.
The cannon was devised for the 1964 film:
And as you will remember, the firing of the cannon is regular and loud and a cause of few moments’ inconvenience.
But ultimately the cannon fire is inconsequential: the vases and the pictures are put back as before, and the characters carry on as before.
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Admiral Boom is now, it seems, in charge of Brexit policy.
On a regular basis – usually at the weekend for the excitement of the Sunday press – there is an explosion.
Article 16 of the Northern Irish protocol will be triggered, or something.
There is then a sudden flurry of a frenzy, but soon the political actors carry on as before.
This is not to say that Article 16 will not get triggered – the United Kingdom government has done stranger things during Brexit.
And it is not to say that – under cover of Article 16 – a deal could not be done by the European Union and the United Kingdom – for realpolitik can take many forms.
But it is to say these regular threats of triggering Article 16 are being regarded as only as loud and momentarily inconvenient as the firing of Admiral Boom’s cannon.
Either Article 16 should be triggered or it should not be, but the performative politics of regularly threatening to do so should be avoided.
Article 16 is intended for urgent situations – but this long run up indicates a lack of urgency.
(And Article 16 does not say what those currently wanting to trigger it thinks it says, as this blog has previously averred.)
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The current Brexit minister David Frost – who is the one usually saying that Article 16 will be triggered – is not in a credible position.
Here are his tweets from when the agreement was signed.
‘excellent deal with the EU’
I'm very pleased and proud to have led a great UK team to secure today's excellent deal with the EU.
Both sides worked tirelessly day after day in challenging conditions to get the biggest & broadest trade deal in the world, in record time.
Thank you all who made it happen.
— David Frost (@DavidGHFrost) December 24, 2020
‘the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice ends’
It also restores Britain's sovereignty in full. EU law ceases to apply; the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice ends; there is no alignment with EU rules; and our Parliament sets all laws for our country once again.
— David Frost (@DavidGHFrost) December 24, 2020
‘a fully independent country once again’
Our country begins a new journey as a fully independent country once again on 1 January. Our future and our prosperity are in our hands. I am confident we will thrive and succeed.
— David Frost (@DavidGHFrost) December 24, 2020
The current news is that Frost is citing the (very limited) role of the European Court of Justice in the protocol as the basis for ‘a significant change’.
2. We await proposals from @MarosSefcovic. We will look at them seriously & positively whatever they say. We will discuss them seriously and intensively.
But there needs to be significant change to the current situation if there is to be a positive outcome.
— David Frost (@DavidGHFrost) October 9, 2021
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So we have the preposterous negotiation of Frost against Frost.
The Frost of 2020 who not only trumpeted the Brexit deal in general but that it ended the role of European Court of Justice in particular against the Frost of 2021 who now says the role of that court is fundamentally important.
And somehow in this negotiation both Frosts are losing.
Both were/are wrong.
The Frost of 2020 did not want to admit the small continuing role of the European Court of Justice.
The Frost of 2021 does not want to admit that the small continuing role of the European Court of Justice is of almost no practical importance.
The European Court of Justice is a sham issue – it is a contrived, bad faith attempt to find something – anything – to open up the protocol.
As an exercise in misdirection, it is up there with the Chewbacca defense:
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The current politics of the United Kingdom have a surreal quality – where things are better illustrated by references to Mary Poppins and South Park than by citing precedents from political history.
We have a Brexit agreement negotiated and celebrated as ‘excellent’ by the same minister who now says it is so flawed that it needs to be re-negotiated.
Like the (literally) ship-shape house introduced at the beginning of Mary Poppins, what should seem very odd has very soon become very normal.
Yet, as the attorney in South Park avers in another context, ‘it does not make sense.’
And the key to understanding so much of current law and policy of United Kingdom is that it does not make sense, but it is happening anyway.
Brace, brace.
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As George Orwell put it, in his Nostradamus tome “1984”:
“The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”
Messers Frost and Johnson don’t fear the public record, they either ignore it or claim (contrary to all fact) that it says what they (currently) think it should say. The emeperor is stark naked, but we all seem to polite to tell him, or howl with laughter and point which might be a more appropriate response.
And showing the rest of the world that we’re not to be taken seriously. So much for “Global Britain.”
Thank you for pointing out how ludicrous Frost’s objection to the ECJ now is – as a simple matter of practicality. For him to pretend that it is now an issue of principle is risible. The ECJ has a tiny potential role to play in very limited circumstances. Which was the case when he trumpeted otherwise in December 2020.
I also read a report recently which averred that Johnson was going round saying that he had been “misled” over the deal. Also utterly risible. The EU doesn’t do misleading. It does excruciating detail.
My partner and I were in fits of laughter this morning when I asked her to nominate the finest Brexit Minister from the short list of David Davis, Dominic Raab, Stephen Barclay and David Frost.
The Cheshire Cat from Alice on Wonderland comes to mind as an alternative metaphor.
The cat which periodically partially disappears leaving only its iconic grin and then to later reappear and its words “We’re all mad here…..”
Frost 2021 v Frost 2020? Try Frost 2016, immediately before the referendum:
‘The single set of rules in the single market makes it easier for us to operate across all of Europe.
[…]
Exports to the EU would face additional paperwork and other border formalities. We would find it much harder to influence EU rules
[…]
In short, we have nothing to gain, and a lot to lose, from Britain having the status of Norway, Switzerland or Canada, the models pushed by the proponents of Brexit, still less from relying on WTO rules only.
For all the EU’s frustrations, it makes production easier, paperwork simpler and competition stronger – and hence prices cheaper. Let’s not turn our back on the world’s greatest free trade area, on our own doorstep: instead, let’s make it work.’
https://scotchwhisky.com/magazine/opinion-debate/the-debate/9558/would-leaving-the-eu-boost-scotch-whisky/
I fear we may run out of comparative examples when trying to assess the behaviour of this government and sadly not just in regard to their brexit antics.
A farce has yet to be written that would describe adequately a government in such disarray, that crisis discussions between two senior departments are praised by one party yet denied to have ever taken place by the other.
Perhaps the Navy Lark comes closest where somehow, whichever way HMS Troutbridge was steered by the hapless crew, it still managed to collide with the pier.
(for the uninitiated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Navy_Lark)
It’s a dodgy issue to try to keep the crowds baying for. Even those in England who can work up a serious amount of froth about a purist concept of sovereignty cannot raise their personal temperature with quite such enthusiasm when the issue is related only to Northern Ireland.
If, as is widely trailed, the EU is prepared to compromise on most practical issues, then Lord Frost is in danger of terminally boring his supporters if he digs in on such a hypothetical issue as the ECJ occasionally interfering on niche imports to NI.
As it is, the protocol’s impact on GB-NI trade has only a marginal impact on life in NI. It’s main effect seems to be to feed the DUP politicians’ need for a perceived threat to “the unionist way of life”.
If it were not deadly tragic it would be exhilaratingly funny.
The accepted wisdom has been that Brexit is all about the UK leaving the EU to become a global power able to turn the tap of cheap immigrant labour on and off as it pleases whilst still being able to poach the brightest and best from elsewhere.
A new strand is developing and that is that Brexit is about destroying the EU and dividing member states so that they are weakened on the world stage and are easy prey.
The EU objective must be a United Ireland within the EU.
Perhaps it is a British wish as well ?
Excellent analysis.
“Whatever happens, we have to make it look like their fault. Boom!”
I appreciate it is probably bad form to quote from another estimable blog on the matter but I thought this latest extract from Chris Grey was one of the best examples of what you are describing
“… it’s Brexit doublethink
However, the more important point is that this is just the latest example of something inherent to the entire Brexit project. Always it has relied upon, and been permeated with, inconsistent claims produced at the same time and often by the same person. This also wrongfoots (and exhausts) opponents, who carefully chase down the flaws in one claim only to be confronted with a different, and diametrically opposite, one.
The ‘sovereignty at any cost’ and ‘all costs are Project Fear’ dyad is perhaps the most obvious example, and the constant slippage between and conflation of ‘Norway’ and ‘Canada’ models of Brexit during and after the campaign is another. Further examples include:
· The UK is a big economy, so is bound to get a good Brexit trade deal AND the EU is useless at making trade deals with big economies
· The EU needs us more than we need them AND the EU is bound to punish us for leaving
· Because the EU will give us a great deal, that proves it’s right to leave AND because the EU didn’t give us a great deal that proves it’s right to leave
· The UK-EU negotiations will be quick and easy AND the EU is slow and lumbering
· Germany always tells the EU what to do AND the EU can never decide what to do because it has to get the agreement of all its members
· We will threaten the EU with ‘no deal’ to get what we want AND a ‘no-deal Brexit’ would have no adverse consequences
· We don’t need a trade agreement with the EU, WTO terms are fine AND we must make trade deals with other countries rather than trade on WTO terms
· The EU is a bully AND the EU is weak and on the point of collapse
· Brexit will make us more global AND Brexit will protect local traditions and businesses
· Brexit will lead to a glorious future AND Brexit will reclaim the past
· Brexit will change everything AND most things will go on as usual
There are undoubtedly many other examples of the same thing, and at one level they could just be seen as normal political opportunism and, certainly, as one of the reasons Brexit was supported, since the very contradictions in the case meant it could mean all things to all people. But I think that the opportunism wasn’t just a tactic to win Brexit but was inherent to the intellectual and strategic incoherence of Brexit itself: it wasn’t a coherent project which was sold in contradictory ways, but its very incoherence lent itself to being expressed in such ways.
This matters hugely, now, because it explains why delivering Brexit is proving to be such a mess. The government oscillates between totally contradictory economic and geo-political strategies because the only guiding thread of its formation was to ‘get Brexit done’ (the ‘levelling up’ agenda is a sub-theme of this, in that it is presented as being what getting Brexit done enables), and that thread pulls in contradictory directions, for example as between free trade and protectionism. Moreover, whilst Brexit could mean all things to all people as a proposal, by definition it cannot do so in delivery, since its various aims and claims were incompatible.”
Indeed; doublethink is a policy the government has also applied to many other things such as a minister on Today claiming it’s the Labour Opposition’s fault the 2nd lockdown was delayed by five weeks but the government’s triumph that their strategy was so successful in preventing even more fatalities.
In my opinion it all makes sense.
To the government, the EU is a political tool. I have long suspected that many of our leading politicians do not care whether the UK remained or stayed in the EU, it was always a simple tool to gain political power.
And now the UK has left the EU, they still require the tool to look strong, show that they are ‘fighting for Britain against the evil oppressors’ to keep in power.
This is politics, where a show of strength is more important then logic, the law and the needs of the country/people. And it’s something this government is very apt at.
I sincerely wish Mary Poppins would come to the rescue!
Perhaps the EU could put Lord Admiral Boom Boom Frost out of his pathetic misery – and ‘Trigger’ Article 16 for him. It would certainly trigger all the blithering Brexiters.
I see Boom Boom is now blaming the EU for not letting us continue to play in Horizon – yet he heralds Hard Brexit as a necessity for experimentation (with what – other than the lives of poor people – I know not) – definitely still trying to have his cake and eat it.
Has this country ever had such an appalling bunch of gaslighting idiots in government?
“Has this country ever had such an appalling bunch of gaslighting idiots in government?”
Given the government’s robust standing in opinion polls, doesn’t that mean the electorate are also an appalling bunch of idiots?
In which case, whither the UK?
It’s worth always repeating – don’t ever discount the Opposition’s appalling alternative under the lack of leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. Many traditionally Labour voters felt caught between two monsters and voted for the least offensive in their view. Besides there are so many varying reasons why people vote at all.