European Diary, 14.9.2020: The British House of Commons decides on the unilateral termination of the Brexit Treaty requested by Prime Minister Boris Johnson as part of the so-called “Single Market Act”. The fact that both British laws and international law are thereby broken seems to be of no concern not only to the Brexit Government but also to the majority of the House of Commons. The main argument is the indeed precarious status that Northern Ireland will receive in the new set of rules that Johnson whipped through parliament as a big deal not even a year ago. In a customs union with Ireland and the EU – and a customs border with the rest of the British Kingdom. At least when the negotiations for a comprehensive free trade agreement between the UK and the EU are in trouble. His predecessors John Major and Tony Blair are now “horrified”, but the exit-drunk majority doesn’t care anyway.
Once again, it is clear what price the Brexiteers are apparently willing to pay for their nationalist revolt against European unification. The laboriously achieved, yet precarious state of peace in Northern Ireland is now in danger of being deliberately sacrificed. The fact that Johnson likes to play with fire is well known. But most of his tories now follow him like lemmings. All it takes is a few absurd conspiracy theories that are becoming increasingly popular among right-wing populist leaders: the EU is planning a “food blockade” between Northern Ireland and the rest of the Kingdom.
The Brexiteers grotesquely overestimate Britain’s possibilities to play itself up as an international economic and trading power outside the EU under the protectorate of the USA. This will take its revenge when it is already too late. As it stands, in the next few years Britain will be less concerned with its great, in reality rather ailing economy than with the centrifugal forces that Brexit releases, from Northern Ireland to Scotland, and eventually in London. To which the answer is likely to be nothing more than nationalistic furor.