© REUTERS/Dylan Martinez

When he became prime minister in late July, Boris Johnson reassured anxious Britons that leaving the European Union without an exit agreement was “a million-to-one shot.” An divorce deal, which would be the preface to negotiations on the future relationship between the United Kingdom and the EU, could be reached easily. Yet at the G7 summit in Biarritz in late August, Johnson declared that although the prospects for reaching such a deal were improving, it remained “touch and go” as to whether or not such an agreement could be reached.

What had been a million-to-one shot is now the short-priced favorite. Like life, politics comes at you fast.

If Britain crashes out of the EU without an agreement, Johnson is clear where the blame for this must lie: with the EU itself. Britain, he says, is willing to start afresh, and it is only the EU’s intransigence that stands in the way of a successful, mutually satisfactory deal.

This plainly is a message aimed at Johnson’s domestic audience rather than his counterparts in Berlin, Paris, and elsewhere. The UK, he claims, can easily cope with a no-deal Brexit. This despite the fact that the British government’s own forecasts (“Operation Yellowhammer”) anticipate significant difficulties in the short to medium term if Britain simply walks away from the Withdrawal Agreement negotiated by Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May.

Wishful Thinking

These difficulties include, but are not limited to, large-scale disruption to food supplies, a possible shortage of vital medicines, and a reduction of trade flows at major ports such as Dover that may, at least in the short-term, reduce traffic flows by more than 50 percent. If the government’s own private appraisal is correct, Britain is not ready for a no-deal Brexit even if the government, in public, declares it is.

After Johnson visited Berlin last month, pro-Brexit parts of the British press leapt upon German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s suggestion the UK had 30 days to come up with alternatives to the current agreement as though this proved Johnson’s strategy of defiance was already paying dividends.

This seems a hopeful analysis based more on wishful thinking than anything of true substance. French President Emmanuel Macron made this very clear. Yes, the agreement could be reopened and yes, the UK could propose workable alternatives to the problem of the Irish backstop that has become the totemic issue of contention but, be in no doubt about this, any new agreement would look very much like the agreement that has three times been rejected by the House of Commons. If there is wiggle room here, it is only very limited wiggle room.

Johnson may demand changes but the most likely one remains shifting the de facto UK-EU border from the frontier with the Republic of Ireland to the Irish sea, leaving Northern Ireland in close alignment with the EU while permitting the rest of the UK to go its own way. A Northern Ireland-only backstop, however, was previously rejected by the British government as an intolerable infringement upon UK sovereignty.

“Do or Die”

One thing is clear, however, and that is that one way or another, things can’t carry on like this indefinitely. As matters stand, Britain will leave the EU on October 31. It is, as Johnson says, a “do or die” matter for his government.

However, the prospect of a no-deal Brexit, complete with all its risks and unknown consequences, horrifies many British parliamentarians. Since Johnson’s government enjoys the slenderest of majorities, its long-term survival is very much in doubt. For all his bluster, the new prime minister leads a very weak government.

Johnson’s most senior aide, Dominic Cummings, who masterminded the successful Leave campaign in 2016, says Brexit will be achieved by any means necessary. If that requires parliamentary maneuvers that would, in more ordinary times, be considered a sensational and provocative misuse of power, then so be it. To that end, the possibility of forcing a so-called “people vs. parliament” election has been mooted.

That would allow Johnson to present himself as a kind of people’s champion whose determination to deliver Brexit—as mandated by the people themselves three long years ago—was being thwarted by an alliance of anti-democratic politicians in Westminster, hellbent on frustrating the people’s will. In this scenario, Johnson could, indeed would, present himself as a populist hero taking the fight to an out-of-touch and unaccountable elite who dare to think they know better than the people themselves.

Fear of Farage

If Johnson, a scion of Eton and Oxford, seems an unlikely populist, he remains all too aware that he must defend his right flank first before turning his attention to the center-ground. The threat of the Brexit Party founded by the veteran euroskeptic, Nigel Farage, cannot be ignored. At the European Parliament elections earlier this summer Johnson’s Conservative Party was beaten into fourth place. Estimates suggest more Tory members voted for the Brexit Party than for their own party.

Farage argues that Johnson cannot be trusted to deliver Brexit. He fears a sell-out. Even cast-iron commitments to leave on October 31 are, to switch metallurgical metaphors, fool’s gold. Fear of Farage, more than anything else, helped persuade Tory MPs and members to put aside their reservations about Johnson and elect him leader. Of the available candidates, he was both best-placed to ensure Brexit happened and to then win an election.

Forcing an election, however, is less easy than it used to be. British prime ministers can no longer call a poll whenever they choose. The Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, passed in 2011, means an election cannot be called without the agreement of two thirds of MPs. The only exception to this is if a government loses a vote of confidence. In those circumstances, there are 14 days in which to cobble together a new government under a prime minister who can command the support of a majority of MPs. Only then, if no such government can be found, would a new election be called.

No Easy Way Out

Some MPs cling to the idea that a so-called “Government of National Unity” could be formed in the event of the House of Commons toppling Johnson. This seems optimistic, to put it mildly, not least since Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, has little to no interest in such a maneuver.

A no confidence vote this month, then, is a high-risk strategy. Even if the votes can be found to sink Johnson, it is not clear an alternative government could be found. That would mean an election that would probably not be held until early November during which time Britain would gently slide out of the EU, deal or no deal.

That latter scenario looks increasingly likely, not least since any agreed exit in the present climate would look less like compromise than capitulation. Britain finds itself in a corner of its own construction and from which there are no attractive exits.

If this is the beginning of the end of this phase of the Brexit process, it is far from the end of this drama, as shown by the government’s progrurement of parliament —effectively cutting short MPs’ time to block a no deal. An election beckons.

The post The Johnson Maneuver appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

Just hours after the result of the United Kingdom’s June 2016 Brexit referendum had been confirmed, Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, declared that the differential result—in which Scotland voted Remain but the UK as a whole opted for Leave—meant all options were once again, as she put it, “on the table.” That included, predictably, independence for Scotland.

It has been the defining issue of Sturgeon’s life. Her politics and her being are inextricable. She joined the Scottish National Party when she was just 16 years old and first stood as a candidate for election when she was 22. She was elected to the first Scottish parliament upon its establishment in 1999 and has served in government ever since the SNP came to power in 2007. She is not yet 50—she turns 49 in July—but has been a fixture in Scottish public life for so long, she seems improbably young.

When she joined the party, activists were in the habit of celebrating opinion polls suggesting one in ten Scottish voters backed the SNP. The party, which exists to promote the cause of independence, celebrated occasional by-election victories but seemed an impossible distance from real power. Few careerists joined the SNP in the 1980s.

Thirty years later, the SNP is the dominant political power in Scotland. It has run Scotland’s devolved government for the last twelve years, and Sturgeon, having previously served as health minister and deputy to Alex Salmond, the party’s former leader, will in November celebrate the fifth anniversary of her becoming first minister. Since supplanting the Labour Party which had dominated Scottish politics for the previous half century, the SNP has become Scotland’s natural party of government: a social democratic party that recognizes few, if any, boundaries of class or geography.

“Normal” Nicola

Sturgeon herself is a figure with whom many Scots can identify. She is as “normal” as any leading politician is likely to be. A product of the aspirational working class, she was born in Ayrshire in 1970. Her parents were the first in her family to own their own house and she and her sister the first to attend university. Sturgeon read law at Glasgow University.

“I was quite an introverted child,” she told one interviewer, recalling that, “At my fifth birthday, I hid under the table reading a book while all the other kids played.” But she was always driven, always aware that she had “something” inside her that would commit her to a life in politics and a career of public service.

“[Margaret] Thatcher was the motivation for my entire political career,” she has said. “I hated everything she stood for. This was the genesis of my nationalism. I hated the fact she was able to do what she was doing and yet nobody I knew in my entire life had voted for her.” At a time when most politically-aware Scots her age joined Labour, Sturgeon opted for the SNP, determining that only independence could satisfy Scotland’s political and social aspirations.

A Return to the Family of Nation

At her selection as an SNP candidate in 1991, she was introduced as the lady who “will be the first female leader of the SNP one day,” a prediction which embarrassed Sturgeon at the time but proved unusually accurate. In the aftermath of the 1992 general election, Sturgeon reminded her compatriots of her party’s mission: “We will turn Scotland from the invisible nation of Europe into a nation which plays a full part in Europe and contributes to the great international issues.”

Some things in politics are constant, and this is one of them. Returning Scotland to the international “family of nations” remains Sturgeon’s ambition and the purpose of her political life. Brexit has convulsed British politics these last three years but, viewed from Scotland, it is part of a much larger question: should Scotland be an independent country or not?

When that question was asked in 2014, the answer was a clear, but hardly resounding “No”—with 55 percent of Scots opting to remain a part of the United Kingdom while 45 percent voted to leave. The issue remained unsettled, and there was, regardless of individual preference, an awareness of this being an argument only half-completed. The national question had been asked but not settled or answered in a decisive matter.

Even so, there seemed little plausible prospect of it being asked again any time soon. Sturgeon herself had argued the 2014 referendum was a “once in a generation” opportunity to strike out in a new direction. Outside events, determined elsewhere, would be required to revive the independence question.

Lifeboats for Scotland

Enter Brexit. Even if Sturgeon had wished to avoid reopening the national issue, there would have been no way of avoiding it. Even so, Sturgeon finds herself caught in a particular paradox: Brexit is a disaster for the UK, but an opportunity for Scotland. Leaving the EU—especially, as seems increasingly plausible, without an agreement that would pave the way for an orderly transition period—risks all but incalculable damage to the UK, and the Scottish, economy. It is, Sturgeon believes, an act of self-harm, promoted by “charlatans” whose chutzpah is as great as their lack of credibility.

But it is also an opportunity. Britain might be sinking, but there are still lifeboats available to Scotland. The fact that Scotland’s preference to Remain in the EU is trumped by the weight of numbers for Leaving elsewhere in the UK creates a powerful political narrative for Sturgeon: the only way to secure Scotland’s future is to put that future in Scotland’s hands. Time and again, she has despaired that Scotland faces “being dragged out” of the EU against its will, and this constitutes the “material change in circumstances” she believes justifies revisiting the independence question that was answered, but not settled, five years ago.

A new referendum, however, requires the agreement of the UK government in London, and hitherto that agreement has not been forthcoming. Sturgeon, as a consequence, is reduced to being a spectator as Britain’s great Brexit tragicomedy is played out. Suggestions for a “compromise” approach made by her government—which would, in essence, have seen the UK remain a member of the single market—were ignored in London. That in turn has prompted Sturgeon to harden her position: she now favors a second Brexit referendum that must include the option of remaining in, or rejoining, the EU.

The Paradox of Independence

Stubbornly, however, the opinion polls have barely shifted since 2014. Brexit may make the political argument for independence more intuitively plausible and even appealing, but it also complicates the practical meaning of independence. What currency would an independent Scotland use? (Sturgeon favors using sterling before moving to a distinct Scottish currency; the euro is not considered a viable option). How would the Anglo-Scottish frontier be managed? (A question which makes the arrangements reached between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic a matter of singular, exemplary, concern for Scotland). Would Scotland enjoy an easy admission process to the EU, and if so, on what terms? (Probably, but not all the terms would be easily met.)

There is this, too: if, as Sturgeon insists, it is a ruinous mistake for the UK to leave a political union with its largest trading partner, how could it not be—as an economic matter—a self-inflicted error for Scotland to do likewise, given that 60 percent of all Scottish exports go to the rest of the UK (and just 18 percent to the rest of the EU). Moreover, if Brexit is difficult and complicated, how much more difficult and complex might negotiating the break-up of Britain be?

Those are hard—and live—concerns. The shape of independence cannot be ascertained until there is some clarity on the shape, and meaning, of Britain’s EU exit. It may simplify Sturgeon’s message but it unavoidably complicates the practicalities of independence. Which is one reason why Sturgeon sincerely wishes it had never happened. It also means that her demands for a second referendum now have been rebuffed by the UK government. No fresh plebiscite is likely until after the next Scottish parliament elections in 2021.

Trials and Tribulations

Another cloud looms, too. Later this year, Alex Salmond, Sturgeon’s predecessor as party leader and first minister, will appear in an Edinburgh court room to face more than a dozen charges of sexual assault, including two of attempted rape. It is difficult to estimate in advance the likely fallout but equally impossible to avoid the fact the trial will have major ramifications for Sturgeon, the SNP and, indeed, Scotland itself. Salmond was for years Sturgeon’s mentor; the figure to whom, more than any other, she owes her career. Unavoidably, his trial has the potential to more seriously threaten her political future than anything her opponents have hitherto been able to muster against her.

Such is the state of British politics at present, however—simultaneously in flux and stuck in the Brexit doldrums—that anything and everything seems possible. Brexit may yet be the end of the United Kingdom: the catalyst for a break-up that would once have seemed unthinkable and yet to many Scots now seems the most natural thing in the world.

Nicola Sturgeon has been waiting her whole life for that moment; if she needs to wait a little longer, past experience suggests she can.

The post Close-Up: Nicola Sturgeon appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.