In the spring of 1982 Margaret Thatcher had been in power for three years and was highly unpopular, even within her own party, when the Argentine military dictatorship invaded the Falklands. It was providential for her, allowing her to declare war, appeal to patriotism and set herself up as a defender of British sovereignty. In the winter of 2020 Boris Johnson is not considered a prodigy, the conservatives wonder if it would not be appropriate to replace him as leader, the pandemic has collapsed the UK economy (like so many others), and Brexit will finish off it. And the prime minister also sees in arms a possible way out of the quagmire.
Appealing to the most primitive instincts of a sector of the population (the one that buys far-right tabloids like the Daily Mail and the Daily Express ), Johnson has announced the deployment in the English Channel of four eighty-meter-long patrol boats equipped with machine guns “to defend the territorial waters of the United Kingdom” as of January 1, if negotiations with the Union European Parliament for a trade agreement end today (or later) in failure. The Navy police would be authorized by the British Government to “stop, inspect, seize cargo and detain the crew” of fishing vessels from other countries that, in their opinion, are fishing illegally.
It is a provocation by Johnson to Macron, whom he accuses of wanting to punish the English for leaving the EU
The Johnson Administration’s resort to “gunboat diplomacy” is a direct provocation to French President Emmanuel Macron, who has refused to negotiate directly with him (as did German Chancellor Angela Merkel) the most contentious aspects of a trade agreement, such as fishing quotas and regulatory alignment. From the beginning his strategy was to divide the EU and he has not succeeded. It is a sign of their despair at the bleak prospects for the future.
The nine hundred dead from the Falklands war allowed Thatcher to show her firmness and determination, becoming the Iron lady . Johnson’s plan A continues to be to extract a favorable pact from Brussels that allows him to proclaim that he has successfully fought and defended national sovereignty, but plan B, if the negotiations are considered unsuccessful today, is the same as that of its predecessor tory , appeal to the patriotism of the masses and to the concept of British exceptionalism that is the essence of Brexit. The Minister of Education Gavin Williamson made it very clear the other day: “We were the first to administer the vaccine because we are the best.”
The presence of armed patrol boats off British shores could easily lead to complicated scenarios, because it is conceivable that French or Danish fishermen will not resign themselves to stop fishing in waters they have worked for centuries and over which they think they have historical rights, Brexit or no Brexit. In the 1970s there were “the cod wars” between the United Kingdom (which eventually deployed twenty-two frigates) and Iceland (which in response tried to buy several from the US), and skirmishes between English and French ships have recently been recorded. dedicated to scallop fishing.
Johnson’s message to Macron and to the EU at large is that Britain may have a hard time if there is a Brexit with no trade deal (there are already monumental truck lines in Kent County), and could suffer from fresh food shortages for a time. medicines, but the no deal It would also have negative repercussions for European citizens, and London would strictly enforce exclusive rights over the two hundred nautical miles of its territorial waters.
Johnson’s aggressiveness and the threat of force, and even more so if incidents occur, could increase his popularity among the most radical Brexiters and English nationalists. But perhaps not enough to compensate for the deterioration in their image that would be brought about by an economic crisis made even more dramatic by their refusal to make the necessary concessions for a deal, and to accept the reality that fee-free access to the world’s largest single market it can only be achieved by giving up sovereignty.
“Boris thinks the British are better”
Boris Johnson’s resort to militarism as his last weapon to try to wrest concessions from the EU in the negotiations of a trade agreement has drawn criticism within his own Conservative Party. “Boris is not a true Tory but an English nationalist who thinks that the British are better than anyone, and does not believe in the importance of our institutions, the independence of the judiciary, the Union and international cooperation,” said Lord Patten, who was Governor of Hong Kong, Minister and Chairman of the formation. Tobias Elwood, who heads the House of Commons Defense Committee and is from the same party as Johnson, has denounced the “irresponsibility” of deploying armed patrol boats. However, former Admiral Alan West agrees with the Government that “it is perfectly logical and legitimate that the police and Royal Navy ships protect the United Kingdom as a sovereign maritime power and ensure that its territorial waters are not violated. ”. Meanwhile, the Labor Party is strangely silent on all things Brexit, with its leader Keir Starmer saying he will vote in favor of a deal with the EU if it finally happens.
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