40 Europe The EconomistAugust 17th 2019
T
he lasttime continental Europeans felt they were dealing
with an easily readable, straightforward British prime minister
was in the late 1990s. Tony Blair charmed his continental col-
leagues. He wooed the French in their own language, led fellow
heads of government on a bike ride through Amsterdam during a
Dutch-led summit and made common cause with fellow “third
way” social democrats like Gerhard Schröder, Germany’s then
chancellor. Set against the backdrop of the “Cool Britannia” popu-
larity of British music and fashion, this all suggested that Britain
had finally cast off its conflicted post-imperial garb and was em-
bracing a modern, European identity.
The glow faded when the Iraq war sundered Mr Blair from the
French and the Germans. Then came Gordon Brown, David Camer-
on and Theresa May, who were all harder to place. All three made
nice at European summits but flirted with the Eurosceptic tabloids
at home. Mrs May took office in July 2016 after the country had vot-
ed for Brexit. But who was she? She ruled out a second referen-
dum—then considered the most likely outcome in some conti-
nental capitals—but did not seem to be “of” the Brexiteers. At times
she posed as a Thatcher-style Iron Lady; at others as a sensible
Christian democrat. Buffeted by events, she was hard to define and
left little lasting impression.
Boris Johnson is a different matter. Unlike his predecessors,
Britain’s new prime minister is a familiar personality on the con-
tinent. Many in Brussels know him, by reputation or in person,
from his time as a reporter there in the 1990s, when he spun highly
exaggerated stories about the euand helped pioneer the outraged
Eurosceptic style in the British press. Continentals also know him
from the London Olympics in 2012, when his performances as the
capital’s buffoonish, zip-wire-riding cheerleader-in-chief caught
the attention of the foreign press. Most of all they know him as the
villain of the Brexit campaign; the man with a lie about the cost of
eumembership on the side of his big red campaign bus who
achieved the sort of victory of which nationalist populists on the
mainland could only dream.
Mr Johnson is familiar in other ways. Mr Cameron and Mrs
May, the previous two Tory prime ministers, bumbled respectively
into the Brexit referendum and through the Brexit negotiations,bothtreatingthesubject as fundamentally technocratic. By con-
trast the new prime minister deals in stories and emotions, styling
Brexit as a test of the country’s mettle, an Odyssean quest, a heroic
battle against the monsters of bureaucratic overreach, federalism
and national stagnation. Continental commentators and policy-
makers view him, it is true, in a different narrative role—as the
dastardly embodiment of the post-imperial nostalgia and chau-
vinism that Mr Blair seemed to have vanquished—but both his
self-presentation and the counter-tale make it possible to orient
him. Unlike his predecessors Mr Johnson fits neatly into the story
his would-be negotiating partners tell themselves about Britain.
Many Eurocrats were raised on British cultural staples such as
Harry Potter, Midsomer Murders, Downton Abbey, James Bond and
Monty Python. Mr Johnson would not look out of place in any of
these imaginary worlds. He is a gift to those continentals who love
the familiar clichés; who imagine Britain as an old-fashioned,
quasi-Victorian society of rigid class differences, lip-curling toffs
and shabby proletarians, absurd social rituals, public-school hu-
mour and eccentric colonial adventurers. Mr Blair was simple, ini-
tially at least, in that he seemed to show that Britain had changed.
Mr Brown, Mr Cameron and Mrs May did not map neatly onto the
clichés. But Mr Johnson fits them as snugly as a bearskin hat on a
guard outside Buckingham Palace.
All of which bodes poorly for the looming confrontation. Mr
Johnson has refused to travel to meet continental leaders unless
they change the terms of the Brexit deal negotiated by Mrs May. He
wants to remove the “backstop” that would keep Britain close to
the eu, and Northern Ireland even closer, unless an alternative
technological solution can be found to prevent a hard border on
the island of Ireland. The eu’s leaders consider the matter closed.
So no meeting has taken place. Mr Johnson will have his first prime
ministerial encounters with Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Mac-
ron at the g7 summit from August 24th, and again at an eusummit
in mid-October ahead of October 31st, when Britain is currently
bound to leave the club. Mr Johnson is increasing preparations for
a no-deal departure, hoping to force the euinto compromises to
avoid the cost and chaos of such a disorderly exit.
He is miscalculating. The euis better prepared for a no-deal
than Britain and would suffer much less. National leaders are sick
of the subject. They consider the current deal generous to Britain—
the backstop would grant Britain many of the benefits of belonging
to the euwithout some of the usual conditions—and are loth to
reopen it to make concessions that might further undermine the
marginal value of membership. Some, especially in Paris and Brus-
sels, believe that no-deal may be a price worth paying.Uncool Britannia
Mr Johnson’s familiarity significantly boosts this tendency—for
three reasons. First, to know him is to know that he is unreliable,
unscrupulous and inconsistent. Second, his story (as leader of a
heroic quest) and the story his critics tell (as the villain of a trage-
dy) both breed fatalism; they shrink the space for the technological
fudge of a compromise and make the emotional conflagration of a
no-deal more likely. And third, Mr Johnson conforms closely
enough to the clichés about Britain that his negotiating partners
can fall back on these as explanations for a rupture; this post-im-
perial, class-ridden, unreconstructed country, they will be able to
say, is simply different and might even benefit from the revealing,
purgative chaos of a no-deal. Familiarity, at least where Britain’s
prime minister is concerned, breeds contempt. 7Charlemagne The book of BoJo
Why Boris Johnson’s familiarity to continentals makes a no-deal Brexit more likely