Listening to Prime Minister Boris Johnson rave about the Brexit deal he struck with the European Union, you’d be forgiven for thinking he wowed the Europeans with his negotiating skills. And that, as a result, he not only got everything he wanted, but induced them to give him a few extras.
But Johnson is not the first prime minister to declare Britain victorious in treaty negotiations with Europeans only for haughty Britons to come to the tragic realization that it was anything but.
Britain and the European Union struck a hard-fought trade agreement on Thursday, settling a bitter divorce that stretched over more than four years and setting the terms for a post-Brexit future as close neighbors living apart. …
Despite running to thousands of pages, the agreement leaves critical parts of the relationship [e.g. services sectors] to be worked out later [ha!]. …
In a blow to young people in Britain and across Europe, Mr. Johnson said the country would no longer participate in the Erasmus exchange program, a Europe-wide program that has allowed about 200,000 students a year to travel abroad for study, work experience and apprenticeships since 1987.
(The New York Times, December 24, 2020)
Frankly, this is like a couple signing a divorce agreement that settles spousal support but leaves unsettled critical issues like property settlement, and child custody and education.
In other words, Brexit is giving new meaning to the Neil Sedaka lyrics
Breaking up is hard to do.
Yet Tories seem seized with the same kind of willful suspension of disbelief that has them hailing Boris Johnson as a latterday Winston Churchill, which has had Republicans hailing Donald Trump as a latterday Jesus Christ for the past four years.
Meanwhile, Britons need only look at how the following mess played out for a sense of what this purported breakthrough agreement portends:
Britain was cut off from Europe for a second day Tuesday.
Nearly 3,000 trucks remained stranded in southeastern England after France closed the border over fears of a potentially more contagious coronavirus variant.
British supermarkets warned of shortages of some goods just days before Christmas, and even if talks between the two nations result in the border being unsealed, the chaos will take days to resolve.
(CNN, December 22, 2020)
And can you spell red tape for conducting every other form of business…?
Not to mention the pain in the ass it’s going to be for ordinary Britons to queue up at passport control to enter Europe. In fact, I suspect it won’t be long before this inconvenience alone causes young Britons to launch protests to undo Brexit that make the protests those old farts launched to create Brexit look like picnics.
But I warned at the outset that Brexit was all about Britain trying to have its cake and eat it too; further, that Europe would be damned if it was going to allow that. I refer you to such commentaries as “Brexit: Forget Leaving, Britain a Greater EU Contagion if It Remains” June 22, 2016, “Brexit: Having Cake and Eating It Too…?” July 24, 2018,“On Brexit Plan, EU to UK: No Way!” September 24, 2018.
And so they have come to this. Yet, in reflecting on the (purported) end of this Brexit affair, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen endeared herself to self-immolating, cake-eating Brits by quoting William Shakespeare as follows:
Parting is such sweet sorrow.
Never mind that, given all that’s left to be worked out even after four years of negotiations, T.S. Eliot is the English bard she should have quoted.
First from his “Four Quartets” to acknowledge their four years of futile Brexit negotiations:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
And then from his “The Hollow Men” to point out that, instead of the complete break they promised four years ago, the Brexit men have left the UK tethered to the EU with all kinds of umbilical cords:
This is the way [Brexit] ends
Not with a bang but a whimper
Note: Bonus
My Recitation of an Abridged Version of “The Hollow Men”
Related commentaries:
Forget leaving… having cake…
* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Sunday, at 6:50 p.m.