- The Observer
38 25.08.19 Focus
70 shows, 12 days: my
life as an Edinburgh
comedy awards judge
After hours of watching standup
and sitting through endless
meetings fuelled by bad coffee,
Nosheen Iqbal is exhausted. But
she has gained a rare insight into
the state of the nation’s psycheI
was asked to be a judge
on this year’s Edinburgh
Comedy Awards , the ones
formerly known as the
Perriers, the prizes that
have helped to make the
careers of Stephen Fry and Hugh
Laurie , Steve Coogan , The League
of Gentlemen quartet and Bridget
Christie.
It sounds a great deal – and an
entirely boggling experience. How
could it not be? You’re being made
to laugh all day, every day, tramping
through the city from show to show,
rarely eating a meal requiring either
cutlery or sitting down. No one likes
you and you’re blamed for pushingCulture
ners on hand to draw attention to
British humiliation.
Emmanuel Macron, when asked
last week if he thought that Johnson
and Trump would team up together
in a united front against other
Europeans at the G7, played on deep
British fears about the future.
“I don’t think it’s Boris Johnson’s
project or the British people’s pro-
ject, as Britain leaves the EU saying
it wants a bigger space in the world,
to then become the junior partner
of the US,” the French president told
reporters last week.
He said any future trade deal
between the US and the UK would
not make up for the UK’s geograph-
ical and strategic links to Europe,
and a trade deal with the US could
come at a high price for Britain: a
“historic vassalisation” to the US.
I
t is unlikely Macron chose
his words carelessly.
Johnson fi rst signalled his
break from Theresa May at
the end of 2017 by warn-
ing that the UK must not
become a “vassal state” of Europe.
With the EU, the UK had one of the
bigger seats at the table, but in the
absence of a withdrawal agreement
with Europe, Britain approaches the
US as a junior partner at best, a sup-
plicant at worst.
Johnson has insisted that he will
defend British agriculture and the
National Health Service against
the predations of US corpora-
tions, but that will be harder if the
UK crashes out of the EU without a
deal, a course of action Trump and
his administration have repeatedly
advocated. Johnson’s readiness to
embrace such an outcome distin-
guishes him from Theresa May, and
is arguably the most important rea-
son Trump openly preferred him to
his predecessor.
On this issue at least, Johnson
has, with his brinksmanship, placed
himself closer to Trump and further
from the EU. The European Council
president, Donald Tusk , drily noted
that when he meets Johnson today ,
he will be the third Tory prime min-
ister with whom he has sat down to
discuss Brexit. He warned Johnson
yesterday that he risked going down
in history as “Mr No Deal”.
On the way to Biarritz , Johnson
sought to defend his strategy of
blaming Britain’s EU partners for
failing to come up with a solution to
the Irish backstop impasse.
“I don’t want a no-deal Brexit but
I say to our EU friends if they don’t
want no deal they have got to get
rid of the backstop from the treaty,”
Johnson told reporters. “If Donald
Tusk doesn’t want to go down in
history as Mr No-Deal Brexit, then
I hope this point will be borne in
mind by him too.”
Trump, ironically for a self-pro-
claimed master of the deal, can be
expected to continue to pull in the
other direction, seeking to persuade
the prime minister that “Mr No
Deal” would be a badge of pride.
In the absence of specifi cs, both
Trump and Johnson will seek to
play up the manly bonhomie of a
renewed “special relationship”. The
US president will want to show he
has at least one friend in Biarritz,
the man he proudly referred to as
“Britain [sic] Trump”, and has shown
that he is prepared to overlook past
slights in special circumstances.
For his part, Johnson – who
declared only a few years ago that
the only reason he would avoid
some parts of New York was “the
real risk of meeting Donald Trump”- must seek to show he can connect
more successfully with the US presi-
dent that his hapless predecessor.
Both men will paint a rosy pic-
ture of a future US-UK trade deal,
because the ugly reality of the
negotiations can be put off until
later. At some point post-Brexit, the
UK will have to make a decision on
whether its regulatory standards
are to converge with the US or with
the EU.
It cannot do both. Converging
with the US would be likely to
involve breaking promises about
British food, agriculture and ani-
mal welfare as well as the National
Health Service.
Moreover, any trade deal with
the US would have to gain approval
from Congress, and the House of
Representatives will be in no mood
to cooperate if Brexit has an impact
on the Good Friday peace agree-
ment in Northern Ireland. The
Democratic speaker of the House
of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi ,
has repeatedly said there is “no way
whatsoever” a US-UK free trade
deal would be approved if Brexit
affected the border between the
two Irelands.
So whatever the upbeat noises
about future trade Trump and
Johnson make on Sunday, it will
mean little in real terms. The rest
will be mood music, and Johnson
has shown himself adept in that
department. The G7 is a big stage,
but not a particularly challenging
act. There are set scripts and ortho-
doxies to follow.
But as ever, Trump is the wild
card, constantly threatening to upset
the comfortable western consensus
of years past. If he so chooses, the
president could set the rejuvenated
special relationship with the man
he has frequently called his friend,
and force Johnson to make the hard
choices he is hoping to postpone
until after an election.
Johnson to
walk policy
tightrope at
G7 summit
Continued from page 37ON OTHER PAGESJeremy Cliff : Exasperation
mingles with regret as Europe
tries to deal with Brexit
Comment, page 45