"World" editorial. On the surface, Brexit is a closed matter. By granting Boris Johnson a large majority in the House of Commons, British voters have acclaimed the juggler who has repeatedly hammered out a priority promise in their eyes: put an end to procrastination and implement, by the at the end of January 2020, their decision to leave the European Union (EU). The Queen's speech on Thursday, December 19, in Westminster, therefore, in accordance with tradition, ginned the list of bills scheduled by the Johnson government for the new parliamentary session. Financing of the public health system, increased repression of terrorism, minimum service on trains in the event of a strike, fast Internet for all… Political life, which has been swallowed up by Brexit for more than three years, is supposed to resume its course. The dissolution of the “Ministry of Brexit”, created in 2016, symbolizes this desire to turn the page.
In reality, no one knows what Boris Johnson will do with the immense power he will exercise for five years, his hands all the more free since the Labor opposition, struck by its electoral berezina, no longer knows even where she lives. The refusal, or the inability, of the two major British parties to explain to public opinion the concrete challenges of Brexit – the dismantling of the thousands of links forged with the EU in all areas – leads to this extravagant situation: after forty- two months of debate and two electoral campaigns, in 2017 and 2019, the British, blindfolded, entrusted the keys of the kingdom to a man who did not tell them what type of relationship he wishes to maintain with the continent.
Close relations with free access to the European market in order to preserve the economy, in particular the jobs of the pro-Brexit workers in the north of England who dropped out of Labor to vote conservative? Or a simple free trade agreement which, breaking with European rules, would satisfy the partisans of a new Thatcherian revolution and delight the friend Donald Trump?
Such complex discussions
This historic choice will be at the center of negotiations between London and the 27 EU states which will open in early 2020, as soon as the divorce agreement is ratified. Discussions so complex, uncertain and crucial, that they risk passing the dramatic chaos of recent years as a pleasant curtain-raiser. By announcing that he would enshrine in law his refusal to exceed the deadline of December 31, 2020 to complete these negotiations, a priori unrealistic objective, Boris Johnson threatens to choose a break. But his opportunistic route – his pro-Brexit choice was not obvious before 2016 – and his pragmatism make possible a more open attitude, given an unfavorable economic balance of power: the EU absorbs 47% of British exports, while the United Kingdom weighs only 7% of those of the Union.
For Europe, this prolonged uncertainty is a danger and a warning. Danger of seeing the United Kingdom transform, at its doors, into a competing economy practicing a customs, fiscal, social and environmental dumping policy. Warning if we consider the weakening of the public debate, the concealment of the issues of Brexit, masked by the talent of the Prime Minister's illusionist, and the dilapidation of the opposition, which reflect the shaking of the British political system, the most ingrained of the continent's democracies.
