Doomed to Failure

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By Jason Michael

On my last speaking tour around Scotland, at every event, I predicted exactly what Brexit means. This prediction proved to be frighteningly on target. Before taking up his Prime Ministerial office, Boris Johnson was briefed by Britain’s security chiefs on what a no-deal Brexit would cause. All cross-Channel trade would cease, sixty-six million people in the United Kingdom would be faced with dangerous food shortages and left without access to essential and life-saving medicines. Within days the currency would collapse; driving the British state to the brink of state failure, and the government would be threatened with widespread mass demonstrations, civil disorder, and rioting. Whitehall insiders reported that on hearing this Johnson turned a whiter shade of pale. With all his bluff and bluster, he had no idea how serious a situation Britain is in.

This too I predicted. After an extension, I said, the May administration would collapse and bring the hard Brexit battalion to government under the leadership of Johnson – and here we are. At Buckingham Palace Mrs Windsor asked Boris Johnson to form a government, and that he set about at lightning speed. He had the Cabinet purged in a matter of hours, replacing moderate incompetence with fanatical incompetence; leaving us with Priti Patel – a women in favour of the death penalty and starving Ireland – as Home Secretary and Dominic Raab – the man who didn’t know the importance of trade with Europe – as Foreign Secretary. David Mundell – a capable yet self-serving sycophant – he called in and promptly sacked as Scottish Secretary. In all the changes he has made one thing is clear, even to BBC Scotland’s Nick Eardley who described it as an “afternoon of the long knives:” that this is the most right-wing government Britain has ever had.

But it won’t last. That was my final prediction. Johnson cannot deliver the Brexit he has promised, and that promise is the only reason he is where he is tonight. Ireland’s Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, spoke for the whole of the European Union when he said Britain’s new Prime Minister was not living on this planet; Europe is not going to reopen the Article 50 negotiations. May agreed to the only deal that was ever going to be on the table. She was packed off back to London to ratify it – a task which proved to be far beyond her extremely limited abilities and that ultimately brought about her demise. Boris Johnson will not be offered anything different. He is left with the exact same problem: May’s deal or no-deal at all and all the chaos that promises. Boris – the joker – has no ace up his sleeve.

Having painted himself even before coming to office into a corner, he has no option but to reject May’s deal and leave on the 31 October – as he has promised – without a deal, but he can’t do that either. No-deal can’t happen and May’s deal can’t happen. No Brexit can happen. On the surface that sounds wonderful, but even that option can’t happen. The utter stupidity and arrogance of the British government has brought us to a place where all three options are impossible – and that is where the real trouble begins, when Boris Johnson shows the British public that he is even more useless than his predecessor. At that point his government will collapse and the real forces behind an ultra-right-wing no-deal Brexit will come to power. Boris Johnson is the prelude to British fascism. He has set himself up as the warm-up act for Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party.

At every stage of the Brexit disaster Farage has been the darker shadow of what passes for democracy in the United Kingdom. Yes, we have laughed him off, thinking him incapable of winning a Westminster election. That has been true – until now. At the last European elections, the Brexit Party became the most successful new political party in the history of both the UK and the EU, becoming the largest single party in the European parliament. Of course, we can point out the difference between Westminster’s FPTP and Brussel’s PR electoral systems. Under normal conditions Farage has no hope of winning seats in Westminster, but these are not normal times. Boris Johnson’s support is entirely contingent on his ability to deliver the Brexit the hard Brexiteers want. His problem is that he can’t deliver this. Only Farage can, and the moment this becomes clear to English voters we will see how quickly their loyalties shift from the right to the far-right.

Every one of the commitments made today by our new Prime Minister outside Number 10 cannot be delivered. At best, over the next few weeks and month, we will be fed a diet of platitudes, slogans, and outright lies. But, as the saying goes, Johnson is all fur coat and no knickers. In a previous essay I believe I hit the nail on the head when I described Johnson as the Anton Drexler of British politics. He is the placeholder leader who will make the monster to come more palatable. As Drexler made the way straight for Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, so will Boris Johnson make straight the paths for the rise of Nigel Farage and a new era of British politics that will haunt us for the rest of history.

This is terrible news for Scotland. In fact, everything is terrible for Scotland right now. The Scottish government has tied us to a programme of obedience in which we must seek permission from Westminster for another independence referendum – a permission that will never be granted under the more aggressive administrations of Johnson and Farage. On the ground we have a popular movement diseased with corrupt personality cults and wasters, plagued with Trumpist notions and conspiracy theories, and thousands upon thousands of independence supporters scattered like sheep after the shepherd has fallen. We have neither the steel of courageous leadership nor a mass movement equipped for revolution. We are – and it breaks my heart to say it – like lambs to the slaughter. Our predicament is dire, and unless it changes we are approaching the end. We are about to be led by the nose into the darkness – a place we do not wish to go.

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Boris Johnson’s first speech as Prime Minister in full

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