Todd Bishop
British Prime Minister Johnson, who took office a month later, finally made his way out of the country this week: Wednesday (August 21) to meet Merkel in Berlin; Thursday (August 22) to Paris to meet with Mark Long; Saturday to Next Monday (August 24th to 26th), at the G7 summit in France, I first encountered “Genuine Trump” as “British Trump”.
Johnson’s first foreign visit, of course, is inseparable from the only topic of British politics: Brexit.
“Is it wrong to leave the country?”
On Monday (August 19th), he came to a “four-year-old” letter to the outgoing EU Council President Donald Tusk, which was used in the existing Brexit agreement. In order to avoid the “backstop” scheme on the island of Ireland, it is not necessary to ask the EU to abandon the bottom line of its “bottom solution” and seek a “flexible and creative” “alternative”, and it must have “a considerable degree.” Confidence to deal with alternatives ultimately failed to address all border issues.
As soon as he took office, he promised to reinvigorate Brexit and bring down all the “skeptics, disaster prophets, pessimists”. Johnson seems to want to bring his “incorrigible” optimistic positive energy to the leaders of the EU. . In the atmosphere of the weak economy of Germany and France, the successor of Merkel, and the low popularity of Mark Long, this positive energy seems to be coming in time.
Of course, under the packaging of positive energy, there is also a hidden political propaganda campaign of Johnson: firstly, the friendly and open attitude of seeking a solution, and contrasting with the EU’s inconsistent approach, and ultimately, there will be no agreement on the pan-European public opinion. Europe’s responsibility for economic strikes in the UK and EU countries has been pushed to EU leaders.
“No agreement” is approaching Johnson’s “optimism to save the country”
At the moment, there are already many songs in the UK. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is actively recruiting votes to pass the congressional no-confidence motion, leading him to lead the transitional government, delisting for Brexit, and early elections; the House of Commons Speaker John Bercow is likely to be with the pro-European parliamentarians. It should be external, allowing the latter to force Johnson to request the EU to postpone the Brexit in order to prevent Johnson from leaving the European Union on October 31.
The Sunday Times also issued a confidential pre-judgment document of the government’s Operation Yellowhammer on the impact of no agreement on Brexit. The document is expected to reduce the freight between the UK and Europe within 40 hours from 40% to 60% of the day after the Brexit. The car dragon will need at least one and a half days to dissolve; the supply of drugs and fresh food will be in short supply, and the inventory effect will be Suspicion; cross-border transmission of personal data has lost the legal basis, affecting national security cooperation and cross-border service industries; Northern Ireland has no borders to maintain; public and corporate readiness is very low; European and British rights are difficult to protect; less attention The border between Gibraltar and Spain will also be crowded, logistics, and so on.
For these sirens, Michael Gove, the Duke of Lancaster Territory Affairs, who is responsible for the preparation for the Brexit, said that the pre-judgment was only for the “absolute worst case” “old documents.” The Prime Minister’s Office even reported that the document leaked out was the operation of some former cabinet members to speculate on the fear of Brexit. However, the Labor Party Hao Erbin put forward a very good request: ask the government to disclose the “newest” internal prejudgment; in the end, it is not necessary.
In the face of public concerns, Johnson continues to distribute positive energy: “The road ahead may be a bit bumpy, but with or without agreement, we will be ready to leave the EU on October 31.” With a consistent attitude, he only said that “friends across the British Straits, and now there is still a little bit of reluctance to change their stance”, but he said that he “is very confident that they will change their stance.”
However, is there any real support behind positive energy?
Britain’s ruthless reality
First, before Johnson took office, he threatened to take the £39 billion “break-up fee” (that is, the promise of the UK’s various spending plans before the Brexit) and demanded the EU to make concessions. The EU reacted indifferently to this, even as hostile, and now Johnson has rarely mentioned it.
Secondly, the rights of citizens in the British Union seem to be on the table again. A spokesman for the Prime Minister’s Office suddenly announced on Monday that the free movement of the EU population will be suspended immediately after the absence of an agreement, which is quite different from the “gradual cancellation” plan of the Wen Cuishan government. However, the details of the new policy and the lack of implementation methods have greatly angered the business community: since EU citizens have the right to work and reside in the UK today, many from the banking industry to nurses and other service industries, non-British people.
At present, there are nearly 3 million EU citizens in the UK. Johnson seems to want to use them as a bargaining chip to pressure the EU countries to support their citizens’ livelihoods and rights, and to support concessions to the UK in the Brexit agreement.
However, in fact, there are nearly 1.3 million people in Europe and Britain. In the absence of an agreement, their handling will be handled by the EU countries. If Johnson wants to play a civil rights card, the EU has the same card in hand.
Finally, the Irish issue is also a card in the hands of Johnson. Above the existing Brexit agreement, the EU’s insistence is to preserve the peace between Northern Ireland and Ireland since the 1998 Belfast Agreement, so it is necessary to try to avoid the checkpoint. If the UK has no agreement to leave the EU, the border is inevitable, and for Ireland, it is the worst result.
In Johnson’s letter to Tusk, Johnson proposed to enter into a “legally binding” approach with the European Union to avoid the promise of a renewed Irish border, and to replace the existing “recovery plan” with the EU and seek joint efforts with the EU. “alternative plan”. The implication is that if the EU does not accept it, it will be the EU, not the UK, that will undermine Ireland’s peace.
However, the “alternatives” in Johnson’s mouth are only an extension of his optimistic positive energy, and the content is not. According to the Irish alternative to the policy research organization Prosperity UK announced at the end of June, there is no way to avoid border crossings in the UK without a deal. Unfortunately, this extremely detailed proposal has an Achilles heel, that is, the UK still has to accept the EU’s commodity standards regulation, etc., but this is one of Johnson’s core dissatisfaction with the “Bottom-fixing scheme.”
Johnson may be aware of this. Therefore, he said in his letter that “if the alternative arrangement is not fully implemented after the transition period, we will have a certain degree of confidence in future developments.” The word “confidence” seems to be his only way to solve the problem.
In fact, Brexit and Ireland do not establish borders, which are two mutually exclusive options. No matter how much confidence, optimism, and positive energy Johnson has, it cannot change this reality. The so-called “replenishment scheme” itself is only a matter of delaying the solution, but it is the only way out.
Johnson, who is full of positive energy, will “embark” on the European continent at this moment, and will probably hit a high wall called “reality”. Finally, he will return to the brink, and he will face the challenge of the British Parliament’s pro-European forces after the summer vacation.
