Eighty years, to the day, since living its Finest Hour, the Hinge of Fate turned Great Britain towards yet another nadir – the latest in a string of historic setbacks that slowly and painfully disassemble a once great power.

On Monday, September 14, Parliament voted on the second reading of a bill that directly contravenes key parts of the laboriously negotiated Withdrawal Agreement (WA), duly signed and ratified by all signatories. The WA sets out the conditions for the country’s departure from the European Union. A week earlier, a government minister – Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis – freely admitted to the House of Commons that the Internal Market Bill ‘breaks international law’.

The UK’s exit from the EU, effective January 31, 2020, and the imminent closure of the transition period that kept all prior rules and regulations in place on December 31, enters the history books as a drama of errors, myths, and outright lies – all disguised as matters of high politics aimed at ensuring the survival and wellbeing of the state – fanned to a blaze by hollow jingoism.

The Battle of Britain, fought in the summer of 1940 by the few to whom was owed so much by so many, marked an absolute high point in the history of Great Britain: The indomitable lion that bravely stood up to fascism whilst many others were kowtowing to it, hoping for Nazi Germany to throw them a bone to chew on. Not so the British who refused to compromise on their moral values. Though the Battle of Britain, and the London Blitz that followed, left an indelible imprint on the British national psyche, reality has moved on.

New Jerusalem

Whilst building a New Jerusalem at home in the drab post-war years, the British lost the empire, though not their fighting spirit which had its last hurrah in the 1956 Suez Crisis when France and Britain embarked on an ill-fated and ill-timed military adventure to punish the Egyptians for their nationalisation of the canal. Both powers had to abort the mission in haste and humiliation after the United States intervened diplomatically – and forcefully.

The episode accelerated Great Britain’s demise as a power of note. A few years later, stumbling from one financial crisis to the next, Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced the closure of all British military bases east of Suez, reducing the country to the previously unthinkable level of a mid-sized regional power.

The Great British Demise has not stopped since, it was only slowed a bit by the country’s accession, in 1974, to the European Community – a body it had long sought to join. After a bout as the Sick Man of Europe, Great Britain managed to roar back to robust health with a vengeance, becoming the world’s financial centre, tapping into the vast oil reserves of the North Sea, and exploiting the fast-growing markets of the continent. All seemed well in Albion which, at long last, had successfully claimed its new place in the world. In 1982, a small war with a distant tinpot dictator over a colonial relic in the South Atlantic was quickly won with admirable aplomb. The world rejoiced: Great Britain was truly back. Alas, it lasted but a short generation.

More Than Just a Vote

The parliamentary vote of September 14 carries a deeper meaning: Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Great Britain is knowingly and willingly prepared to violate an international treaty that the country is party to and has ratified. Regardless the fact that the deplorable attitude opens a Pandora’s Box of troubles in Northern Ireland, the realisation that Her Majesty’s Government’s word can no longer be trusted has far-reaching consequences.

To observers, the most stunning bit is that the same prime minister who just months ago embraced the Withdrawal Agreement as his most significant accomplishment – and illegally prorogued Parliament to cajole it into ratifying the agreement – now wants to break that deal for no apparent reason other than that, at the time, he may not have understood its full implications or cared to read the fine print.

In fact, EU officials in Brussels are beginning to suspect that the Internal Market Bill is part of a grand strategy to trick the union into granting the UK reasonably unfettered access to its single market in order to avoid a land border in Ireland – something that would violate the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) which the EU is bound by treaty to uphold.

After giving the UK government two weeks to dismiss the bill and reaffirm its commitment to the agreement, the EU turned silent in a clear sign of its exasperation with a negotiating partner who, apparently, acts in bad faith and cannot be relied upon to keep his word. Brussels has, essentially, given up on the UK. Long-suffering EU lead negotiator Michel Barnier will, however, keep going through the motions in order for the failure to reach a free trade agreement to be credited to its rightful owner.

Pit of Darkness

The United Kingdom is not just poised to crash out of the EU Single Market with no deal of any kind in place, the country has also squandered its global reputation for honesty, fairness, and the rule of law. Key allies and friends such as the United States take a dim view on anything that could endanger the GFA. Communist China has already suggested the UK can no longer credibly criticise its role in Hong Kong.

From the Finest Hour to a Pit of Darkness in 80 years. Gauging Prime Minister Johnson’s increasingly jingoistic attitude, the ride is far from over. With a pandemic doing the rounds, and a no-deal Brexit in the offing, times are becoming just a bit too interesting for comfort. In fact, in a turbulent world ruled by nationalists, autocrats, and potentates, the European Union now seems the sole remaining bastion of reason, pragmatism, and civility. That says, however, more about the present state of the world than it does about the EU.

Nonetheless, the union of 27 sovereign countries has so far withstood all attempts to sow division by China, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Cynics have always suspected that the UK only joined the then-EC to wreck it from the inside. As that didn’t work out as planned, the country will continue the job from the outside. The trouble is that after four years of fruitless talks, Europeans – ‘continentals’ to the British – have grown tired and bored with the UK and its incessant whining.

Nuance has gone out the window: there is no longer even a reluctant willingness to humour the British by paying lip service to their nation’s ‘exceptionalism’. To Brussels, the only job left to finish is to see the UK ushered out and avoid being blamed for the resulting disaster. It’s a sentiment shared even amongst the UK’s former allies such as the Germans and the Dutch. Nobody really understands what motivates the British to engage so passionately in the creative destruction of their nation. But much worse is the sad fact that almost nobody cares any longer. That hurts most.

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© 2018 Photo by ChiralJon