Editorial of the "World". Who would have thought, at the time of the June 2016 referendum on Brexit, that at the beginning of 2020 the British would still be busy looking for ways to implement their decision to leave the European Union? However, this is the issue of the legislative elections of Thursday, December 12, the third in four years in this country divided more than ever on the question of Europe and whose successive governments, paralyzed, do not much of other than trying to get out of the quagmire of Brexit.
But the choice between two prime ministers who offer themselves to voters bodes ill for the future. On the one hand, the 70-year-old Laborist Jeremy Corbyn, a left-wing eurosceptic who sees the EU as a mere club of capitalists and has never been able to decide between the vast majority of Labor's anti-Brexit members, and the 37% of its voters who voted to leave the Union. Mr. Corbyn has never had the courage to say to the auto workers worried about competition from the East European workforce that Brexit was threatening the industry that employs them, totally dependent on from the continent.
The leader of Labor tries to hide his ambivalence on Europe behind a radical economic and social program. It rightly wishes to stop austerity and reduce inequalities abyssal by investing in public services. But he forgets to say that the exit of the EU risks compromising his beautiful promises.
The main lie of Boris Johnson
The position on the Brexit of Boris Johnson, 55, it seems clear: " Get Brexit done » ("Let's realize the Brexit") are the three words he keeps hammering. But the outgoing Prime Minister is first known for the freedoms he takes with reality. In 2016, his campaign bus falsely claimed that Brexit would help bail out the health system. In a televised debate in November, the audience burst out laughing when asked if it valued the truth.
His main lie is to make believe that Thursday's vote will "achieve Brexit". Certainly, if Mr. Johnson, the polls favorite, gets a majority in the House of Commons, he will be able to ratify the divorce agreement he has negotiated with the EU. Such a vote would mark a legal and psychological break, but in practice it would maintain the status quo in relations until a new trading arrangement is found. On issues as conflictual as compliance with European rules, financial services and fisheries, the future deal may require years of negotiations. Unless Mr. Johnson yields to his ultra-liberal ideological friends by granting them an exit without agreement.
Breaking with his clowning, the Prime Minister began to show his true face: brutal, power-hungry, fleeing contact with the public and embarrassing issues, disregarding Parliament and, above all, waving worthy nationalism and arrogance Donald Trump. His carelessness on Irish and Scottish issues threatens the unity of the country. The " Great Britain world Which he promises after the Brexit flatters the imperial nostalgia but looks like a chimera. For all Europeans, starting with the French, the closest neighbors and partners, the rooting of a Trump on the heels of dreaming to turn the United Kingdom into a tax haven practicing social and environmental dumping at the doors of the continent would be a very bad news.
