Johnson’s exit won’t change Brexit

Europeans may be rejoicing at the downfall of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, but there’s scant reason to believe that relations between London and Brussels will improve once their nemesis leaves Downing Street — except perhaps in tone. 

Borexit won’t alter the remorseless logic of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union. Relations will remain distant, all too often adversarial, and frequently fraught due to the political dynamics in Westminster and Belfast. 

Long-term alienation is Johnson’s enduring legacy. 

Despite opinion polls showing a plurality of British voters do recognize that Brexit has made them worse off, the sad fact is there’s no political upside for either of the country’s two major parties in advocating for closer ties with Brussels.  

The ruling Conservatives are now overwhelmingly anti-EU. Even the surviving Tory ministers who voted Remain have bowed to the consensus. The issue also bitterly split the opposition Labour party, costing it working class votes in traditional northern strongholds, which is why its leader, Keir Starmer, pledged last week that a Labour government wouldn’t seek to rejoin the EU, or its single market or customs union, if he wins the next general election, due by 2024. 

Neither major party can afford to tell voters that they were wrong, or hoodwinked, and that leaving the bloc was a costly mistake. Only the Liberal Democrats, who stand in third place, and the Scottish National Party, which governs in Scotland, still advocate reversing Brexit. 

For better or worse, Johnson got Brexit done. Except for a hard core of unreconciled Remain activists, voters are thoroughly fed up with the issue and simply want to move on.  

On that note, it’s important to remember that Johnson was forced to resign because his serial dishonesty on squalid domestic scandals and his chaotic conduct of government were turning the one-time vote winner into an electoral liability. He wasn’t dumped for his biggest lie — the claim that quitting the EU would make Britons better off. Instead, his hard Brexit has damaged the economy, shrunk trade, reduced inward investment and diminished the U.K.’s international influence. 

Now, the many candidates hoping to succeed Johnson are vying to strike a tougher pose than the other in defying the Euro-monster, and backing legislation to unilaterally unpick the protocol on trade relations between the EU and Northern Ireland, which Johnson signed, then reneged on. They will all claim to be best placed to “unleash the benefits of Brexit.” 

Whatever their private thoughts, however, the contenders’ hands are tied, as the hardline anti-EU European Research Group holds the swing vote in the Conservative parliamentary party, and grassroots Tory members, who will select the next leader once MPs have narrowed the field of candidates to two, are far more anti-European than the wider electorate. 

Moreover, the Democratic Unionist party, which represents the hardline Protestant unionist minority in Northern Ireland, will continue to paralyze the province’s power-sharing government, and wield disproportionate influence over the Conservatives in Westminster.  

In 2020, when Johnson negotiated a bare-bones Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU, he rebuffed all proposals for institutional cooperation in foreign, security and defense policy, agreeing only to keep essential police and judicial collaboration going.  

Downing Street was convinced it could handle European security issues through NATO, pursue “E3” cooperation with Germany and France — of which there has been strikingly little — and weave a web of privileged military and political relationships with small partner groups in Central Europe and the Nordic and Baltic countries, all while ignoring the EU.