A remarkable phenomenon throughout the long saga of the Brexit process has been the UK’s loss of self-confidence in its own ability to defend its interests through negotiation.
This self-doubt was one of the underlying factors that drove the 2016 referendum. It was again strikingly evident in the Johnson government’s recent decision to disrupt the normal negotiating process with the EU by purporting to give itself the right to act unilaterally, and in breach of international law, in relation to the Northern Ireland protocol.
In the years leading up to the referendum, one of the key arguments of Brexit advocates was that the United Kingdom had long been unable to defend its national interests effectively in Brussels. The British public was constantly told that their country was being dictated to by EU bureaucrats or by France or by Germany, or by whoever the chosen fictional bully of the day happened to be. Several years before the referendum, a senior Conservative frontbencher was so casually critical of the UK’s negotiating effectiveness in Brussels, during a visit to the Irish Embassy, that I felt obliged to point out to him how exceptionally admired and effective his country’s European negotiators actually were.
The only national capital that had come to underestimate British influence in shaping the European Union, both in its overall direction and in its detailed policies, was London itself. How this inversion of reality came to be so widely accepted was not entirely mysterious. At its heart was the growing failure of many at political level in the UK to understand the nature of European negotiations which, as in any negotiating process, required give and take. The fact that British ministers and diplomats, in reality, so often won the argument in Brussels was insufficient to counter the false and relentless domestic narrative that compromise was a form of surrender rather than a necessary way of advancing interests. This failure of comprehension, ultimately devastating for British long-term interests, was propelled by mendacious and now well-documented journalism that created, for domestic public consumption, an infantile fictional version of European negotiations and of Britain’s role within them.
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False narrative
Needless to say, not everyone in the UK bought into this false narrative. Many British officials and politicians have always understood, and indeed still understand, the EU as well as anyone. Their ability as negotiators was second to none. The tragedy is that their wisdom and experience has been set aside, at least for the moment, in the shaping of British relations with the EU.
The recent announcement by British foreign secretary Liz Truss that her government intends to introduce legislation purporting to permit it unilaterally to tear up the Brexit protocol, a binding international agreement, demonstrates precisely the same lack of national self-confidence in Britain’s own negotiating abilities that has driven the entire Brexit process. In other words, the Johnson government so lacks the confidence in its own negotiating ability to reach agreement, fairly and legally, on the necessary flexibilities within the protocol, that it has chosen to threaten action outside the negotiations with the EU and indeed outside the law.
Fake brazenness
It is true that, early in the Brexit negotiations, the UK government seemed to be brimming with self-confidence. British ministers claimed the negotiations were set to be “the easiest in history” and that Britain “held all the cards”. However, it is now evident that their brazenness amounted to no more than whistling in the dark. In retrospect, British negotiators have entirely changed their tune about that period, with some British representatives now claiming the UK should not feel itself bound by what it signed up to because it negotiated the protocol from a position of weakness or under duress. Even the swagger of ministers at the outset of the Brexit negotiations turns out to have been a cover for a lack of self-confidence.
A British government source is quoted as having told the media, in relation to its proposed legislation to override the protocol, that “We want a weapon on the table… it’s like a nuclear deterrent”. Such a strategy of pursuing a negotiation while threatening to blow it up, bizarrely, carries echoes of the republican movement’s famous approach of “a ballot-box in one hand and an Armalite in the other”. Of course, today’s situation and the nature of the threat are utterly different. Successive British governments, working confidently with their Irish counterparts, were resolute and ultimately successful in bringing violence to an end on this island. Moreover, fortunately, any reference to weaponry in relation to Northern Ireland is now exclusively metaphorical. However, any two-pronged strategy of pursuing negotiations while holding an external threat over them, especially when accompanied by a threat to act outside the law, is improper, regrettable and lacking in self-confidence.
Bobby McDonagh is a former ambassador to London, Brussels and Rome