The Plagues of the Shattered Kingdom by Boris Johnson

This Spectred Isle (the sovereign island) alluded to by John de Gaunt in his speech in William Shakespeare’s Richard III is the title of the next series by British director Michael Winterbottom. Boris Johnson’s tribulations will be the story line of the political drama that will relate “the greatest national and personal crisis that a British leader has had to face since World War II”, according to the producer Fremantle. Sure enough, Boris Johnson is suffering plague after plague, but his Kingdom is increasingly Disunited.

An admirer of Shakespeare and with great talents for dramaturgy, nobody better than Boris Johnson to interpret himself. After a lifetime of yearning to be prime minister, he arrived at 10 Downing Street after Theresa May’s ordeal over Brexit. Boris Johnson promised them very happy but he is suffering as much or more than his predecessor.

Once the ties with the European Union have been broken, on February 1, 2020, and after refusing to request an extension to negotiate the new relationship, there are less than 15 days left until the transition period ends.

The queues of trucks on the access roads to the United Kingdom, which have been there for a few days, portend a chaos that will hardly be avoidable. If there is an agreement in extremis, the effects will be mitigated but there will be more congestion at the border because there may be inspections.

A new variant of the coronavirus

This ‘sovereign UK’ that Shakespeare evokes, and also Boris Johnson, is being isolated by another plague, a new strain of the coronavirus, which spreads more easily. This Monday the prime minister has summoned the Cobra Committee, given the emergency created once eight countries of the European Union have decided to cut their access routes to the United Kingdom. Spain is not among them.

It seems that this spread is now being driven by a new variant of the virus that is more easily transmitted »

boris johnson

The British prime minister met this Saturday urgently to his cabinet and announced the return to the stricter confinement of London and the southeast of England. ‘It seems that this spread is now being driven by a new variant of the virus that is more easily transmitted. There is no indication that it is more deadly or causes a more serious form of the disease, “said Boris Johnson, announcing the new measures, just days before Christmas.

Labor agrees that the measures are strict but accuses the Johnson government of “gross negligence”. as reported The Guardian. Scientists had warned since September that there were signs of a new strain of the coronavirus but the prime minister has waited until a few days before Christmas, when the situation was already out of control, to impose drastic measures.

Many conservatives are also outraged. Sir Charles Walker, vice chairman of the 1922 Committee, has said that he suspects the government already knew it was going to impose a return to lockdown when he appeared before the Commons on Wednesday and Thursday. Boris Johnson would have sidestepped a vote in the Commons on these tough measures.

“This is a leadership failure that we will never be forgiven for. Many used to blame Dominic Cummings for hasty decisions. But now it is gone. It’s up to the prime minister, “said another Conservative MP, according to the British newspaper. Cummings, an advisor to Boris Johnson and the mastermind of Brexit, was forced to leave his post due to continued failures in managing the coronavirus crisis.

This announcement, and the confirmation that the situation is out of control, in the words of Health Minister Matt Hancock himself, has caused panic in the European Foreign Ministries. The new strain spreads 70% more than the already known one.

Germany and Italy have applied restrictive measures that limit Christmas celebrations to the maximum, so they have not hesitated when it comes to suspending flights to the United Kingdom. So have the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Ireland, and Bulgaria. France has joined for 48 hours.

However, Spain, which advocates joint measures, maintains flights and will only reinforce the performance of PCR on travelers from the United Kingdom, which is increasingly isolated, now due to this new variant of the new coronavirus. Spain received 277 flights from the UK this weekend.

Before the outbreak of the coronavirus, British tourists were the most numerous in Spain, and thousands have second homes in our country. Many retirees spend half the year on our shores. You will soon notice the effects of the UK’s exit from the European Union.

The boomerang of Brexit

Brexit will have a boomerang effect in the United Kingdom, which will be the country most affected by the break with the Twenty-seven. The British prime minister insists on posing Brexit as if the United Kingdom had lost its sovereignty and now has it back. In other words, as if it had been an EU colony. But Boris Johnson knows well that is not true.

This misguided approach, which is designed to please ultra-Eurosceptics and provide an enemy to the British victims of globalization, is going to backfire on Johnson, who knows full well the price the UK will have to pay for wanting to rid war, or peace, on your own.

In the umpteenth race against time linked to Brexit, negotiators are now trying to solve the last obstacles to establish the terms of the future relationship. If they do not succeed, as of January 1, relations between the EU and the United Kingdom would be established under the terms established by the WTO (World Trade Organization). There would be tariffs for both parties.

Labor maintains that the UK is not ready for the end of the transitional period. “The government cannot give businessmen, merchants, and citizens certainty about what will happen in the areas affected by the negotiations,” Labor Party member Hilary Benn said this week.

The last hurdle concerns fishing quotas. The eight EU states that fish in British waters get around 650 million euros a year from their acquisitions. The British, 850 million. The prime minister has rejected that Europeans reduce their catches by 25%.

Boris Johnson insists they drop by 60%, which would leave many fishermen exposed to ruin. Spain is one of the affected countries: between direct and indirect jobs it would affect about 11,000 people.

The British also want the fisheries agreements to be reviewed annually, while the aim of the fishermen’s associations was to maintain the status quo and the agreement to be in force for 25 years.

The European Parliament had set this Sunday at midnight as the deadline for reaching an agreement on the future relationship. They would hold an extraordinary session on December 28 to approve the agreement. According to Downing Street, the deadline would be Christmas. The British Parliament has to ratify it. Another possibility would be to reach an agreement in principle to continue negotiating. It has already gone too far to break the deck but nothing is ruled out.

Towards a Disunited Kingdom

The fact that the United Kingdom is immersed in a major crisis due to the coronavirus plays in favor of an agreement for the future relationship. Crisis upon crisis. GDP, which was already going to fall due to leaving the EU at least a point and a half, is now collapsing due to the coronavirus.

To all this is added that the Scots, who voted in favor of remaining in the United Kingdom, hold elections this year. The Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) is the big favorite.

Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon has good crisis management going for her. Almost three quarters of voters believe that it is meeting their expectations, according to a study de la BBC.

In their manifesto for the May elections, Scottish nationalists, leading the polls, again allude to the holding of a referendum for independence. According to the latest Ipsos Mori poll, 58% of Scots would support independence and 42% would vote against.

It is also true that for the moment the Scots believe that the crisis generated by the coronavirus should be overcome before raising independence.

But it would be an unexpected script twist if a referendum in Scotland, which has to be approved by London, as the first one was in 2014 when the no won, resulted in an Escoxit.

How far away those words from the play Ricardo III sound. «This royal throne of kings, this sovereign island, this land of majesty, this seat of Mars, this other Eden, semi-paradise, this fortress built by nature against infection and the hand of war…. this blessed parcel, this land, this kingdom, this England. More island than ever.

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