2021 – The Tories celebrate the journey to a country promised by Brexit that does not exist | Rafael Behr

The Prime Minister’s education, upbringing and professional experience enabled him to have intensive contact with European cultures and global institutions. He can speak French properly when he has to. He is a true cosmopolitan in every way, apart from the political stance that he thought made sense in his pursuit of power. One of the skills he brought to the Brexit project was a truly globalized perspective which he used to draw the most cartoonish fantasies about Britain’s place in the world.

This combination of pompous internationalism and wanton narrow-mindedness is now official government doctrine. It was voiced by various voices at the Tory conference in Manchester. Liz Truss, newly promoted to Secretary of State, Made a speech promised to build “a network of economic, diplomatic and security partnerships” with a list of allies that included Gulf autocracies but not the EU.

The next morning, Brexit Minister David Frost described EU membership as a “long bad dream”. Significantly, Frost takes the contract he negotiated with Brussels into a nightmare, which is why he does not feel bound by its terms. The man whose job it should be to restore a functioning diplomacy across the English Channel is instead trumpeting about the “British renaissance” stimulated by the severing of continental ties.

When Rishi Sunak addressed the conference that afternoon he reaffirmed the belief that led him to take electoral leave in 2016. It is a principle that is guided by the conviction that “flexibility and freedom” from Brussels is more valuable than “just being close to a market”. The Chancellor’s vision is Great Britain as a “science superpower” and “the most exciting place in the world”. In this brave new world, continental truck drivers are no longer needed. The gas stations are believed to be powered by autonomous vehicles that are serviced by highly skilled local workers with lavish wages.

Sunak did not explicitly complete this last part of the picture, but it is the way that much of what ministers in Manchester have been saying implies. Johnson set the tone in interviews before and during the conference, arguing (with typically biased use of statistics) that wages rise because labor demand exceeds supply. This is seen as a healthy correction of previous dependence on immigration. In other words, the disruption in the supply chain, queues for gasoline and empty supermarket shelves are the birth pangs of an order after Brexit; not so much a crisis as a catharsis. The discomfort will pass in due course, releasing the nation from its addiction to the lazy and unpatriotic trading habits that prevailed before January 2020.

Michael Gove even went so far as to describe inequality and poverty wages as a function of the “old EU model” that voters flatly rejected. In reality, Brussels never insisted on low wages and meager job rights. British governments used their sovereign power (including as EU members) to choose these terms and often asked for special exemptions from treaties when continental neighbors preferred OSH. But Gove told the story in the revolutionary style of the Vote Leave campaign, which attributes everything rotten in the state of Britain to the epoch of ill-rule by the remnants of the establishment.

It is a device for resetting the clock to Tory’s 11 year tenure. Theresa May and David Cameron belong to a different regime. This is the second year on the revolutionary calendar, and since most of that time has been lost to the pandemic, the real work is just beginning.

Perhaps Johnson has no choice but to portray the economic troubles as temporary turmoil as he moves into a better future. He still seems to be taking considerable advantage of the doubts in public opinion, or at least the part of it that wanted Brexit, and has neither much remorse from buyers nor much magnetic pull on Labor. In such conditions, using the usual tricks of bravery and bonhomie to weather the storm might be a good plan. It depends on how long the storm lasts and what kind of stomach the Prime Minister has for choppy water. He’s more a showman than a helmsman and the dying applause will soon make him sick.

Revolutions have a habit of turning bad when their advertised benefits are slow to come in. The more utopian the rhetoric that describes the goal, the less likely it is to achieve it. The Tories could have used their conference this week to face expectations and revisit everyday concepts like geography and economic gravity. Instead, they celebrate an embarkation, sail to the promised land of Brexit, only with Boris Johnson’s hastily scribbled cartoon drawing of the world for a map.

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