Opinion｜Brexit: A Summer of Discontent

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For detailed info on what to do as British citizen living in Europe to prepare for Brexit, see our other Brexit related content or the links at the end of this piece.

And breathe. After another summer of confusion and carnage in British politics, on September 3 MPs asserted their authority over the government to prevent a “no-deal” Brexit on October 31. The worst possible outcome for British citizens living in the EU, and EU citizens in the UK, has been averted (for the next couple of weeks, at least).

But don’t hold your breath. The Conservative government, lie as it might about its deal making abilities, seems to be doing its level best to ensure the talks fail. When that happens, or when Parliament votes the government’s deal down, the ruling Conservative party has insisted the UK will be leaving the EU anyway. How it will do this, and which laws it is willing to break to do so, is as unclear as anything surrounding Brexit. A delay and a fresh general election look like the most probable outcomes, until, of course, some other momentous thing inevitably takes place days (probably hours) after this piece is published and we’re back to the guessing game once more.

Just writing all that down is giving me deja-vu. Or, more accurately, putting me in a Brexit induced coma from the drudging predictability of the whole thing. This is how it goes: months and months of cyclical, utterly tedious debate, then a couple of weeks of mania. More delay, more division, no resolution. The same, the same, the same again—just this time with newer, meaner faces.

Nothing New for Brits in Europe

Stasis has been the only color on offer for those of us Brits living in the EU who are worried about what will happen once the UK leaves, despite the arrival of new political faces on the continent. In Spain, Hugh Elliot has taken over the role of British ambassador from Simon Manley, assuring us all that our rights as citizens are at the top of his agenda. But assurances, rather than bills set in stone, are all the UK government has been able to muster, highlighted when Mr. Elliot was joined in Madrid recently by one of the most eternally stupefied faces in all of British politics, the Secretary of State for Exiting the EU, Steve Barkley.

Barkley—a man who couldn’t look more like the head of a failing car dealership if he tried—used his visit to Spain to showcase his ability to proclaim bravado nonsense and achieve absolutely nothing. There was more talk of getting a deal, how protecting citizens’ rights was a "top priority," and no concrete solutions to any issues that Brits living in Europe face in reality. As such, Brits from Girona to Gibraltar are expected to sit and wait for the worst, as their own government pursues a “no deal” Brexit that would throw their lives into complete uncertainty.

Neither the UK nor the European parliament, following a recent joint resolution, has been able to actually translate their reassurances into reality. It’s all swagger with no substance, "warm words" instead of anything resembling anything concrete—a microcosm of what’s been happening in the UK (only without the warm bit).

A Hard Right Turn

In British political discourse, a season of “discontent” is usually reserved for the colder months, but there hasn’t been a period in the UK’s history as bleak as this summer has been in a long while. British summer time—featuring record breaking temperatures thanks to the worsening climate emergency which Brexit is preventing anyone from doing anything about—has been dominated by the bluster and buffoonery of Boris Johnson, the UK’s new Prime Minister, voted in by a handful of Conservative party members in July. 

But to call it bluster and buffoonery is probably to play into the Tory party leader’s hands: there is nothing funny or whimsical about the way that Johnson has conducted himself in the job he has craved since he declared his ambition to become “World King” as a child. Johnson and his cabal of Brexit-ultras—sycophants and careerists all—form what is the most right-wing UK government in decades, and they have ridden roughshod over British parliamentary precedents in their attempts to force Britain out of the EU with or without a deal, come what may, do or die or dead in a ditch.

The first few months of Johnson’s (please, join me in refraining from encouraging his “Boris” shtick at all times) premiership have been defined by a handbrake turn to the right and an approach to governance that teeters on the edge of legality. There is a miasma emanating from Number 10, thanks in no small part to the pestilent presence of Johnson’s chief advisor—self-styled “clever man” and “reader of long books”—Dominic Cummings. Cummings has already made plain that he is a bullying, insidious force with Downing Street under his thumb, but the fact he is there at all has raised more than a few eyebrows. Cummings was just this year held in contempt of Parliament for failing to give evidence to an inquiry into the false news he spread as campaign director of Vote Leave during the 2016 referendum, hardly the right sort of CV for someone essentially running the country.

Since being shoed in to determine the future of the UK by Johnson, Cummings has deployed an uber-aggressive strategy in his attempt to force through Brexit at all costs by the October deadline. His most controversial ploy has undoubtedly been the prorogation of Parliament (a suspension in between Parliamentary sessions, normally reserved for calmer times, when a Queen’s speech is made to set out the next session’s order of business). This got underway on Monday, September 10, in a chaotic debacle which saw chants of “Shame on you!” from the opposition benches, and MPs replicating a scene from the 17th century English Civil War, in which ministers sat on the speaker to prevent him from leaving the house (the instigator, historical reenactor extraordinaire Lloyd Russel Moyle, has a track record of previous offenses of these kinds of flamboyant stunts).

The Courts Strike Back

The debate over whether prorogation is unlawful was quickly taken to the highest courts in the UK, one challenge failing in England but another succeeding in Scotland (the two countries actually have markedly different systems of law, especially in their approaches to constitutional matters). The victory up north is a landmark constitutional case in Britain, the first time that a UK Prime Minister has been found in court to have misled the sovereign. As you might expect, the legal technicalities of this case are as nebulous as anything involving the equally complex British constitution (which is not much more than a jumbled collection of bills and precedents). However, you don’t have to be a constitutional lawyer to work out Johnson and his team’s motivations for suspending Parliament. Clearly, prorogation was designed as a muzzle for MPs, an attempt to shut them up for five weeks in the hope that it would stop the opposition from having the opportunity to legislate against “no-deal.” 

The Tory party line has been to maintain that prorogation is just a normal procedure, blabbering on about the “Queen’s speech” and “business for the next Parliamentary session.” All this, of course, is misdirection; or, to call a spade a spade, a lie. Not even Brexit’s most hardcore fans can sincerely believe that using the last few weeks before the Brexit deadline to shut down Parliament and prevent it from holding the government to account is not politically motivated. In fact, many members of Johnson’s cabinet are actually on camera denouncing prorogation as a democratic outrage, before career-fear and the promise of power sucked them down into Johnson’s moral gutter. 

While it might not prove to be legally unconstitutional, in this context prorogation is nothing more than a desperate, cynical attempt to try and force through the government’s will without allowing the people’s democratic representatives in Parliament to have their say. And depending on the outcome of philanthropist Gina Miller’s appeal to the UK’s supreme court (the outcome is expected around the same time as this piece’s publication), it might yet have dire legal consequences for the government, and could even force the return of Parliament.

Party Pick and Mix

Prorogation has had another unhappy outcome for Johnson, too: it immediately galvanized, rather than silenced, his parliamentary critics. MPs from across the house opposed to a no-deal Brexit worked quickly before Parliament’s suspension to take back control (cough, cough, Mr. Cummings) of the order paper and put through legislation ensuring that Johnson would have to extend Article 50 and therefore the Brexit deadline. Johnson treated this as a confidence vote in his leadership, and duly kicked out 21 Tory MPs who voted for the bill from the Conservative Party in response, while another MP dramatically walked across the house during the debate to join the Liberal Democrats (in 2019, fluid party affiliations are all the rage).

The decision to remove the party whip from these rebel MPs appears to have rattled many in the Tory party. The ousting of a group that included two former chancellors, in Philip Hammond and “father of the house,” Ken Clark, and Winston Churchill’s grandson, Nicholas Soames, convinced influential Tory moderate Amber Rudd to resign from the cabinet. Even the Prime Minister’s brother, Jo Johnson, has now deserted him, citing unresolvable tension with his brother as the reason for leaving not just the Conservatives, but politics altogether. And can you blame them? The expulsions stink of the kind of rank hypocrisy that this government is making a name for itself with. The Tory party, once boastful of its “broad church,” has drunk the populist Kool-Aid, and it’s hard to see how it can ever go back now.

Project Fear Unfurled

Cummings’ grand plan for the Tories seems to be to make it a bigger budget facsimile of the UK’s populist-in-chief, Nigel Farage’s Brexit party. The competition to see who can secure support in Britain’s Brexit heartlands is fast becoming a grotesque reality TV show—we can only hope the judges of “The BreXit Factor” (apologies) don’t put Farage and Johnson together in coalition, One Direction style. In their bid to impress a mostly exasperated audience, the Conservatives have tried to normalise a “no-deal” Brexit as much as possible, misleading the public about the hit it would have on an economy already on the brink of recession. Much to their dismay, the government was forced to release its own predictions for “no-deal” on September 11. “Operation Yellowhammer” predicts fresh food, medicine and fuel shortages complimented by huge delays on roads and at UK ports—essentially, everything that Remainers have warned about for the past three years. Yellowhammer, as expected, is “Project Fear” vindicated.

You would think that a government pursuing a policy which its own predictions say will cause major disruption to the UK would put the Conservatives out of the race in a forthcoming election. But you would be wrong. Cummings’ cunning “copy Farage” plan may come to fruition and win the Tories the oncoming election, such is the inadequacy of the main opposition Labour Party, fronted by the ever-slippery Jeremy Corbyn. Only once they get the chance to call an election, that is. Downing Street’s strategic response to the bill calling for an extension to Article 50—a motion Johnson has deemed Corbyn’s “Surrender Bill” (remind me who Britain is currently at war with?)—was to put forward motions calling for a fresh general election to break the parliamentary deadlock. Both of Johnson’s motions failed. Indeed, he lost all six motions put to the house in as many days. Not a great start for clever-clogs Cummings and co.

Johnson’s problem is, even before he expelled 21 MPs, his majority was so small he would never have the two-thirds support needed to call a general election. He is in government with no majority, both in power and without it. Shackled by his own hubris, Johnson must wait until the opposition parties decide the time is right for an election, which looks like it will be once the opposition can categorically ensure no-deal is off the table after October 31.

That is, unless Johnson attempts one of any number of fanciful, illegal ways people have suggested to evade the block on “no-deal.” And given who is manning the ship at the moment, it would be foolish to assert any of those are beyond the current government, who still insists we are leaving by the October deadline. Expect the unexpected—including even another prorogation—before Halloween.

All Bets Are Off

As the UK gears up for an autumn of further international humiliation, nothing is certain and everything is permitted. Who will win the next election? God knows. Whoever can unite their political tribe will surely have the best shot, but even then another hung parliament or a Tory win looks the most likely outcome. Will a second referendum be called to breach the impasse? With commons gridlocked, it’s certainly looking like a more and more viable option. Who would win that is another question altogether. 

The fault lines wrenched open by the 2016 referendum, splitting the country more or less 50/50, have not been healed, and it doesn’t look like they will be anytime soon. Unless a predicted demographic shift that says the overwhelmingly Remain-supporting youth will soon usurp the Brexit-supporting older generation comes true, that is. The unfathomably bleak implication of that last sentence—that we will have to wait until a generation of Leave voters all die before the deadlock is broken—shows just how fractured and miserable the UK currently is.

No matter the outcome of a fresh election or referendum, this runaway train is not stopping anytime soon. I said as much to end my last Brexit column, that Britain leaving (and now I would even add to that, staying in) the EU will not be the end of this mess. If the lactic acid of Brexit fatigue is stiffening the country’s sinews now, imagine what it will be like when we’re still talking about it in a decade—rigor mortis sounds about right. Despite flurries into the throng, whip and drama of the political high seas, the UK will be stuck in the doldrums for the foreseeable future; we can only hope whoever commandeers the tiller in the next election is sober, sane and has remembered their compass.  

For more information on how to prepare for a no-deal Brexit, the possible consequences for Brits living within the EU, and the recent legal developments UK citizens, read our previous Brexit related articles here.

Check the UK government website for more info on living in the EU post Brexit, as well as updates on the Brits in Spain Facebook page.

It’s also worth signing up to email alerts from the British Consulate in Spain, who sends regular updates on ways to prepare for Brexit, as well as following organizations lobbying to safeguard the rights of UK citizens in the EU, British In Europe, ECREU, Brexpats, EuroCitizens.

British citizens living abroad may vote in UK general elections, referendums and European Parliament elections for up to 15 years after leaving the UK. So if you were registered to vote in the UK when you lived there, you can still register to vote through this government website.

Harry Stott is a regular contributor to the Barcelona Metropolitan covering Brexit, local political and social issues as well as the music scene. He recently received a B.A. in music from the University of Leeds, and now writes and produces radio content for a number of organizations in Barcelona and beyond. You can read more of Harry's articles here.