© REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

A clear majority of Conservative Members of Parliament wants Boris Johnson to take the helm and navigate the country out of the Brexit mess. 160 out of 313 voted for him in the final round of the leadership elections last week, compared to 77 for Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and 75 for Environment Secretary Michael Gove (amidst allegations of tactical voting from Johnson supporters to eliminate Gove, who was considered a greater threat).

It is now up to the approximately 160,000 Tory members to choose the next British Prime Minister from the last two men standing. Johnson and Hunt will present their pitches to the party faithful in hustings across the country, with voting closing on 21 July and the next Prime Minister to be announced shortly thereafter.

Due to his popularity with the party’s base, most of whom are hard line Brexiteers, Johnson is the clear front-runner, although his campaign has already hit a road bump: on June 21 the police were called to Johnson’s girlfriend’s flat after neighbors reported that the couple had had a loud altercation. The details are still unclear, but he will likely have to answer difficult questions sooner or later.

The Face of Leave

Johnson was the face of the infamous Leave campaign in the run-up to the Brexit vote, and to Remainers he epitomized all that was wrong about Brexit, with his propensity for xenophobic remarks and imperial nostalgia; his outright lies, like the claim that leaving the EU would boost the British coffers by £350 million a week; and his gross misrepresenting of the EU—he once compared it to the Third Reich (Hunt, incidentally, has compared the EU to the Soviet Union). President of the European Council Donald Tusk’s comment that a “special place of hell” was reserved for “those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan of how to carry it out safely” was a thinly veiled attack on Johnson.

But in the aftermath of the vote, his star rapidly descended. At the eleventh hour of the previous leadership contest in 2016, Johnson’s running mate  Gove back-stabbed him, citing a lack of character and leadership quality. Once promoted to Foreign Secretary in 2016 in Theresa May’s cabinet, Johnson stood out for his amateurism, unpreparedness, and gaffes. When visiting a Buddhist temple in Myanmar, a former British colony, he started reciting a nostalgic poem from the colonial era, forcing the British ambassador to intervene. And the Brexit impasse exposed his charlatanry during the campaign.

And yet, in a reflection of the dire state of British politics at the moment, Johnson quickly emerged as the man to beat once Theresa May resigned. Built on a far more professional campaign than in 2016, his team has kept Johnson’s media appearances to a minimum to avoid gaffes. He has also managed to reach out far beyond the Brexiteers in his party to attract the support of centrists like Matt Hancock, current health secretary. Tories see Johnson as the last chance to unite the polarized party and, given his popularity among voters and track record of twice winning the mayoralty of liberal London, prevent a wipe-out at the next election.

Brussels’ Horror Scenario?

At first glance, a Johnson premiership would be a nightmare for EU leaders, who have grown ever more frustrated with the Brexit mess and just want to move on to deal with other pressing issues like China, the Trump administration, or climate change.

During the campaign, he has sold unicorns, repeating demands to renegotiate the Northern Ireland backstop, threatening to withhold the £39 billion payment of the divorce bill (that he agreed to in cabinet), and wanting to leave the EU with or without a deal by the next deadline on Halloween. Yet the EU has made clear it is not going to budge on its red lines: the UK will have to settle its financial obligations before any negotiations about a future trading relationship and at the European Council on June 20-21, Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker reiterated that “the withdrawal agreement is not open for renegotiation.” And the EU leaders know that they are in the stronger bargaining position, as no-deal would be exceedingly more harmful to the United Kingdom.

Two scenarios are thus conceivable. First, Johnson fails to change the substance of the Withdrawal Agreement and seeks to leave acrimoniously without a deal. But the Westminster parliament, where there is no majority for no-deal, could be able to stop him from going down that path, necessitating fresh elections or possibly another referendum with destination unknown. In that case, the EU would probably grant another extension of the Brexit-saga beyond October 31. Irish Premier Leo Varadkar said that “an extension could only really happen if it were to facilitate something like a general election in the UK or perhaps even something like a second referendum.” Second, Johnson leaves the substance of the Withdrawal Agreement intact, but agrees with the EU to rewrite the political declaration to commit the UK to a free trade agreement rather than a customs union, in the process gaining some extra promises that the backstop will not be needed. This would also require a short extension. He could then try to push this repackaged deal through parliament.

The Johnson U-turn

The second option would contravene everything that Johnson has campaigned for in recent months. But who else could be so shameless to commit the mother of all U-turns? Even he knows that leaving without a deal would be calamitous for the British economy and political relations with its main partners—he has already shifted his rhetoric, arguing when asked to guarantee the exit date that leaving on October 31 is “eminently feasible”.

If anyone can persuade a Conservative Party that has descended into Brexitmania to vote for the repackaged deal (as well as the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party and perhaps a handful of Labour MPs), it is Johnson. Unlike Theresa May, Brexit poster-boy Johnson has sway over the rebellious Tory Brexiteers on the backbenches, most of whom would find it impossible to again vote down a deal that would deliver Brexit. He would also threaten to have no choice but to call a general election should his attempts to push through the deal fail, in which the Tories would be punished heavily by the electorate for not delivering Brexit.

Johnson getting a deal through a divided parliament would be the ultimate irony of Brexit: calling in the arsonist as a firefighter. The next months will show whether the Brexit conflagration can still be contained.

The post The Specter of Boris appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Allessandro Garofalo

At the European Council in Sibiu, Romania, this week, European Union leaders will discuss the strategic agenda for the next five years. At last, discussing how to reform EU foreign policy is squarely on their agenda. The return of power politics has shaken the very foundations of the EU and must provide the impetus for leaders to think about how to make the EU more assertive and effective in defending its interests on the global stage.

The challenges to EU foreign policy are not just external. Internally, the EU is chronically divided on foreign policy issues. France recently blocked the EU from condemning Khalifa Haftar’s offensive in Libya, while Italy vetoed a common statement on the crisis in Venezuela. The EU also has no collective policy towards China, Russia, and the Middle East.

Some of these divisions stem from conflicting national interests and a lack of strategic thinking about common European interests. Creating a European Security Council, as recently proposed by Ulrich Speck in a Berlin Policy Journal article, could help. But in many other cases, the unanimity requirements make it very difficult to agree on a common foreign policy. The European Commission therefore proposed, and France and Germany committed to exploring, moving from unanimity to Qualified Majority Voting (QMV) in the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP).

The Unanimity Principle

In most policy fields, the EU makes decisions by QMV: 55 percent of member states representing at least 65 percent of the total EU population must vote in favor of a proposal in order for it to pass. However, there are several important policy fields where unanimity is required, including EU membership, EU tax law, the EU budget, and foreign policy. When it comes to CFSP, every member state has a veto and consequently the power to water down agreements, delay decision-making, or thwart a common policy altogether. The veto power also makes the EU’s foreign policy vulnerable to rival powers, as they know they only need to sway one member state to undermine the entire bloc.

If QMV were to be introduced, it is likely that CFSP would follow the trajectory of other policy areas where QMV already applies: in fact, voting rarely takes place as most decisions are still made unanimously. The crucial difference is that decisions would then be reached in the shadow of the vote rather than of the veto. In other words, member states who hold the minority view on an issue would have an incentive to intensify their negotiation efforts, build alliances, and contribute to achieving an agreement that takes their concerns into account—rather than simply blocking progress. Decision-making would be quicker and more ambitious as a result. Extending QMV would also help shield the EU’s foreign policy from the pressures of third parties. Foreign powers like China would have to win over at least four states to form a blocking minority.

However, changing the incentive structure to encourage unity will only work if the differences in national interests are moderate and outvoted member states can, reluctantly, accept the decision. In those cases, QMV would help overcome the narcissism of small differences in national interests that has hitherto too often undermined the EU’s global sway. Yet if differences in national interests were substantial, decisions under QMV would be divisive, contested, and ultimately ineffective.  (In these cases, the treaties allow a member state to prevent a vote if a critical national interest is at stake.) The challenges to the multilateral order, however, ought to serve as a unifying force among member states. As the world outside of Europe is diverging from the European model of a rules-based international order composed of liberal democracies, we can expect the foreign-policy interests of European states to converge.

Small States’ Concerns

Still, some argue that foreign policy is too sensitive to be integrated any further by moving decisions to QMV. Of course, it would be unimaginable (and illegal in the current treaty framework) to decide to deploy combat troops by QMV. The most important decisions within the remit of CFSP involve sanctions. But voting on sanctions would not be more consequential than other policies, such as trade negotiations or selecting the President of the European Commission, that are already subject to QMV.

Others also rightly point out that unanimity requirements have not prevented the EU from imposing sanctions on, say, Russia. But that does not refute the argument. For one, sanctions regimes would likely be stronger under QMV than under unanimity requirements. For another, China’s and Russia’s pursuits of divide-and-rule tactics are likely to intensify as they become ever more assertive on the global stage, increasing the need for QMV.

Smaller member states might also be opposed for fear that QMV could be used by the larger states to impose their will, because QMV translates population size into voting power. To assuage these legitimate concerns, larger member states should demonstrate that they will seek common EU positions. Germany, in particular, has not been practicing what it preaches. Its unilateral decision to suspend arms exports to Saudi Arabia (at the expense of other European states, whose suppliers rely on German components), its obstinate defense of Nord Stream 2, and its bilateral government consultations with China do not match the constant calls for EU unity.

Other member states that are reliant on Chinese and Russian funding may also be unwilling to cede their veto. The emphasis on fiscal consolidation within the eurozone over the recent decade has led to chronic underinvestment in infrastructure, driving Greece and Portugal into China’s arms. If the EU wants to create greater cohesion, it should revise the fiscal rules to encourage, not inhibit, investment.

The fiercest opposition is likely to come from a group of member states governed by euroskeptic parties, which oppose granting the EU greater control over foreign policy decisions. But euroskeptic governments are divided on foreign policy issues like Russia, suggesting that opposition towards extending QMV may be fragile. And even euroskeptic governments are subject to realpolitik: situations may occur when their dependence on other member-states will be sufficient for them to support extending QMV to foreign policy. It is conceivable, for instance, that Italy would prioritize expending its political capital on the budgetary conflict with the European Commission and tolerate the extension of QMV (just like it has never blocked EU sanctions against Russia despite repeatedly signaling its opposition towards them).

QMV is still a relatively high threshold for getting a consensus on foreign policy, albeit a lower one than unanimity. By encouraging compromise when differences are moderate and acting as a firewall shielding the EU from divide-and-rule tactics of rival powers, extending QMV would help the EU to become a more effective foreign policy actor.

The post QMV + CFSP = A-OK appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.