I’m quite moved these days when I meet Americans and they ask me, ever so delicately, “How’s Brexit?” Or: “How’s that Brexit thing going?” Or, “Are you guys going to be OK with the Brexit?”
Perhaps it’s politesse, a passing interest in a small country’s affairs. They often wear this anxious look, though, the expression people pull when inquiring about an acquaintance who may or may not be dead. It’s touching.
The correct response, probably, is that Brexit may well now be dead, and nobody knows if British parliamentary democracy will ever recover. It’s that bad.
Since my last dispatch—and again, I’m sorry to bang on about Brexit in this column—the political crisis has only intensified. And yet still, somehow, almost nothing has changed. Prime Minister Theresa May attempted to push the deadline away to June; but the E.U. decided we will now be leaving on April 12. As I write, her Withdrawal Agreement has been rejected three times by the House of Commons, and a fourth vote is scheduled. The House has also voted yes to a resolution against No Deal, that is to say crashing out of the European Union without an agreement, and then again to a resolution to delay.
No Deal, Bad Brexit, No Brexit—all are still in play. We can’t leave. We can’t stay. We are in sovereign limbo.
British politics has taken up what Richard Hofstadter identified as the paranoid style in American politics. Perhaps we always had it. Many Britons believe our pro-E.U. political class is desperately conniving to stop Brexit. Many others are convinced that a clique of duplicitous Westminster Brexiteers are trying to crash the country out of Europe, without a trade or security deal, in some fit of demented chauvinism.
Aside from Brexit, too, sinister trends are happening in Britain. Partly, it’s a stifling political correctness, less noisy but more officious than in America. For instance, one Catholic TV commentator is facing a jail sentence for “misgendering” because she referred to a transsexual as a man on Twitter. This sort of extreme nanny statism can make people irrational. On Twitter, I see more and more wild right-wing theories about British police officers covering up Islamist terrorist attacks in order to stop the spread of Islamophobia. This is often believed across the Atlantic. I’ve come across a lot of Americans who think we’ve effectively become a sharia state. Not yet, I say; give us time.
But it is Brexit, more than anything, which is making the British unhinged. The political system is having a nervous breakdown. Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, says Brexit has “sapped the nation’s confidence.” That is an understatement.
Civil servants talk in private about how they’ve done their bit to stop the insanity that is Brexit. They shake their heads. On television, members of Parliament talk about the grave dangers of thwarting the will of the people—even as they conspire to do exactly that. Perhaps the best example of a politician behaving oddly was Stephen Barclay, Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, of all people. On March 14, he commended to the house his government’s motion for a short extension to the Brexit deadline, only to vote against the same motion himself minutes later. “Anyone got a better word than omni shambles?” asked the veteran BBC journalist Nick Robinson.
Mrs. May is the oddest of them all. She may well have been forced out, somehow, by the time you read this. As I write, however, the woman has shown no sign of budging. On March 20, after another chaotic day, her aides briefed hacks to expect a major announcement that night. Rumors spread: Was she going to resign? Call a general election? Many pundits suggested she would offer to resign if her deal were accepted.
Instead, she delivered a clipped speech expressing her “profound regret” that Parliament had insisted on blocking her perfectly sensible arrangements. It was almost Trumpian in its refusal to accept responsibility—sad!—except far more managerial in style, and grim. It was perhaps an attempt to prepare the ground for her resignation: She tried, but those damned politicians—Remainers to the left of her, Brexiteers to the right—blocked her. Or perhaps it was a resignation speech that got changed at the last moment after the E.U. promised something. Or perhaps she just didn’t know what she was doing.
May used to be said to have a Sphinx-like quality. Her unforthcoming nature suggests to people a cunning that perhaps isn’t there. These days, however, as she blunders on and on, she looks lost and even stupid. Her voice has a tendency to break at times of great stress, and colleagues are starting to worry that she has become mentally ill under the strain. It’s possible, as many suggest, that she is trying to scupper Brexit herself through the most elaborate sabotage operation in the history of politics. But that would require a vile genius. It’s far more likely that she is horribly stuck between foolish pride, uncertainty, and an inability to think creatively.
Where is Boris Johnson in all this? He may be reviled among London’s chattering classes, but he’s still well-liked across the country. Leavers continue to hope, in some deluded corner of their minds, that he can be Brexit’s White Knight. It is often said that, as the author of a recent biography of Winston Churchill, he sees himself as a Churchillian figure, somebody who can buck the country up when doubt and division reign. He certainly has the rhetorical gifts. Why doesn’t he move against her?
The trouble is, if May won’t quit, it is hard to imagine what Boris can do. She has already survived a vote of no confidence, which means she can’t be removed until late next year. Boris isn’t tremendously popular among his fellow Members of Parliament. He would win the second-round vote among the Tory grassroots against anyone, including Jacob Rees-Mogg. But he never gets the opportunity.
Besides, Boris seems to have lost some of his ambitious drive. As a man who puts libido before national or even self-interest, he seems far too busy with his young mistress to do much else. Cometh the hour . . .
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