A common thread these days: the enormous disconnection of so much of our elite and governing discourse from anything tart could be described as "reality". Consider Martin Wolf observing Boris Johnson's attempts to do the job of Great Britain's Head of Government: Martin Wolf: UK About to Shoot Itself in Both Feet https://www.ft.com/content/de2a1e52-4677-11ea-aee2-9ddbdc86190d: 'Britain’s demands for its negotiations with the EU are unrealistic: Boris Johnson has an autonomy fetish. The UK prime minister’s fetish is the belief that his country not only has the sovereign right to shoot itself in both feet, but also has a duty to do so if the alternative is to allow EU institutions any role in its affairs. Brexit, he insists, means autonomy. If he persists with this demand, it is likely that, early next year, the UK will suffer the complete rupture of trading relationships it has built up over 47 years.... British government... demands... are unrealistic in three respects: the first is the hope that any agreement will be between “sovereign equals”; the second is the belief that the EU would agree a Canada-style agreement; and the third is that an Australian relationship with the EU, governed by World Trade Organization rules, is a reasonable alternative.... Sovereignty is not the same thing as power. The EU has 446m people, against the UK’s 66m.... Let us be clear: this is not a relationship between equals. The difficulty for the UK in its relationship with the EU is rather that it is too small to be an equal and too big not to matter.... The EU is saying here is that your autonomy stops where it inconveniences us. If the UK insists upon it, then the deal it seeks may not be agreed. To the reasonable conclusion that no deal is likely, three replies are possible. The first is that the EU will give in. That is quite unlikely. For the EU to back down on the issue of the “level playing field”, to take one example, would require it to trust the UK not to compete by undermining the EU’s standards. But what else—the EU will ask—is all this freedom for?... A second response is that it does not matter to the UK if no deal is reached. But it does.... A last response is that, in the end, Mr Johnson will retreat from his red lines. That is what he did last October over the Irish border issue, when he accepted the economic dismemberment of his own country, something his predecessor had refused outright, all the while denying he had done any such thing. The ability to surrender while successfully insisting that one has not is a form of genius. Maybe, the prime minister can find a description for humiliating surrenders that dress them up as great victories. I would certainly not put it past him. This, however, is hope against hope...
#noted #2020-02-29
