The UK we never expected
8/10/20 10:33![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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talkpolitics"This is going to be a fantastic year for Britain", Boris Johnson infamously boasted about 2020. Boy, was he wrong.
After last winter's exhausting election battle, and months of parliamentary chaos, after years in the shadow of Brexit, lots of folks were starting to say prayers about the country's future. And yet, Britain is now seeing one of the highest Covid mortality rates in the world, and more than 1 million jobs have just vanished.
It's no surprise that the optimists are few, and far apart these days. What's worse, the Tory government doesn't seem bound by any sense of rule and responsibility.
I get it, many Brits may've learned to find BoJo's friendly clumsiness amicable. His staunch beliefs and bombastic statements sure worked pretty well during the election campaign. But now the Britons are coming to the realisation that none of that is anyhere near enough to govern a country competently. What's worse, even if we're to overlook his cronies' blatant disregard for international law, a number of key figures in the cabinet are no longer even following their own rules.
Just an example. Dominic Cummings, Johnson's top advisor and mastermind behind both this government and the entire Brexit project, failed to comply with quarantine requirements when he got the Coronavirus. He didn't follow the rules that his own government had imposed. Instead, he took his whole family to their holiday cottage in the countryside. His credibility finally collapsed when he started telling stories about how they had visited a local landmark, so he could "check the state of his sight". The outcry went way beyond the British Isles, and Johnson was forced to dismiss his aide.
That's how people's precious trust and confidence in anti-Covid measures and social distancing gets undermined overnight. It melts away like spring snow when people realise there's one set of rules for them, and an entirely separate one for their leaders.
But back to the Brexit. Johnson got parliamentary support for it when he promised everybody there wouldn't be a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. His election slogan was "Let's finish this off", and that's what swayed the fence-sitters in his favour, and won many of those who were already too weary of all the political mess.
Except, nine months later the Brexit agreement is stuck in a dead end. What's more, it now looks less likely to happen than ever. The new bill about the domestic market, you see, is going to violate the UK/EU agreement in just "a very specific and limited way", as a minister from BoJo's government vaguely put it recently. Oh sure! So every driver who's driving under influence could say he's only violating the law in a minor, specific, and limited way then?
Such behaviour is a disgrace for a country that often boasts of being among the creators of the post-world international order, where the rule of law is paramount. We're now seeing a systematic disregard for laws and agreements that would've otherwise suited the likes of Donald Trump more. We saw it when Johnson was threatening he wouldn't be ratifying the Brexit deal, and then when he dismissed Parliament to prevent it from scrutinising the agreement. The Parliament eventually did get the right to have a say on the issue, and only thanks to a Supreme Court ruling - naturally, the Supreme court was then duly declared "enemy to the people" by the right-wing press.
It's not just that the UK government introduces illicit changes to the Brexit bill; it's far more scandalous how they pushed the Overseas Operations Bill, which says that British soldiers would no longer bear responsibility for atrocities committed abroad, including torture, as long as 5 years have passed since the act.
The Tories are obviously and blatantly spitting on international law and human rights, but that's nothing new. It was Johnson's predecessor, Theresa May, who was obsessed with the idea of ridding her country of European Court for Human Rights jurisdiction. Only, she lacked political clout to achieve that.
I suppose you might say the Britons have always had it in them to disregard international law. Starting from their colonial history, going through their actions during the Iraq War, and finishing with the War on Terror, Britain's approach to international law has always been, how to put it, rather controversial.
Well, at least until now Britain used to be bound by conventions, agreements and alliances - which it's now happily throwing overboard with gusto. Even top-ranking US politicians have expressed concern about the potential consequences that a hard Brexit could have on peace in Northern Ireland.
In conclusion, this new brand of isolationism and lawlessness, combined with the government's grip on power in the UK, are making British official policies much more unpredictable than ever in history. And that doesn't spell good days ahead for Britain.
That's not the UK I've known, and loved. The feeling is of great disappointment, and shame.
After last winter's exhausting election battle, and months of parliamentary chaos, after years in the shadow of Brexit, lots of folks were starting to say prayers about the country's future. And yet, Britain is now seeing one of the highest Covid mortality rates in the world, and more than 1 million jobs have just vanished.
It's no surprise that the optimists are few, and far apart these days. What's worse, the Tory government doesn't seem bound by any sense of rule and responsibility.
I get it, many Brits may've learned to find BoJo's friendly clumsiness amicable. His staunch beliefs and bombastic statements sure worked pretty well during the election campaign. But now the Britons are coming to the realisation that none of that is anyhere near enough to govern a country competently. What's worse, even if we're to overlook his cronies' blatant disregard for international law, a number of key figures in the cabinet are no longer even following their own rules.
Just an example. Dominic Cummings, Johnson's top advisor and mastermind behind both this government and the entire Brexit project, failed to comply with quarantine requirements when he got the Coronavirus. He didn't follow the rules that his own government had imposed. Instead, he took his whole family to their holiday cottage in the countryside. His credibility finally collapsed when he started telling stories about how they had visited a local landmark, so he could "check the state of his sight". The outcry went way beyond the British Isles, and Johnson was forced to dismiss his aide.
That's how people's precious trust and confidence in anti-Covid measures and social distancing gets undermined overnight. It melts away like spring snow when people realise there's one set of rules for them, and an entirely separate one for their leaders.
But back to the Brexit. Johnson got parliamentary support for it when he promised everybody there wouldn't be a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. His election slogan was "Let's finish this off", and that's what swayed the fence-sitters in his favour, and won many of those who were already too weary of all the political mess.
Except, nine months later the Brexit agreement is stuck in a dead end. What's more, it now looks less likely to happen than ever. The new bill about the domestic market, you see, is going to violate the UK/EU agreement in just "a very specific and limited way", as a minister from BoJo's government vaguely put it recently. Oh sure! So every driver who's driving under influence could say he's only violating the law in a minor, specific, and limited way then?
Such behaviour is a disgrace for a country that often boasts of being among the creators of the post-world international order, where the rule of law is paramount. We're now seeing a systematic disregard for laws and agreements that would've otherwise suited the likes of Donald Trump more. We saw it when Johnson was threatening he wouldn't be ratifying the Brexit deal, and then when he dismissed Parliament to prevent it from scrutinising the agreement. The Parliament eventually did get the right to have a say on the issue, and only thanks to a Supreme Court ruling - naturally, the Supreme court was then duly declared "enemy to the people" by the right-wing press.
It's not just that the UK government introduces illicit changes to the Brexit bill; it's far more scandalous how they pushed the Overseas Operations Bill, which says that British soldiers would no longer bear responsibility for atrocities committed abroad, including torture, as long as 5 years have passed since the act.
The Tories are obviously and blatantly spitting on international law and human rights, but that's nothing new. It was Johnson's predecessor, Theresa May, who was obsessed with the idea of ridding her country of European Court for Human Rights jurisdiction. Only, she lacked political clout to achieve that.
I suppose you might say the Britons have always had it in them to disregard international law. Starting from their colonial history, going through their actions during the Iraq War, and finishing with the War on Terror, Britain's approach to international law has always been, how to put it, rather controversial.
Well, at least until now Britain used to be bound by conventions, agreements and alliances - which it's now happily throwing overboard with gusto. Even top-ranking US politicians have expressed concern about the potential consequences that a hard Brexit could have on peace in Northern Ireland.
In conclusion, this new brand of isolationism and lawlessness, combined with the government's grip on power in the UK, are making British official policies much more unpredictable than ever in history. And that doesn't spell good days ahead for Britain.
That's not the UK I've known, and loved. The feeling is of great disappointment, and shame.
