As the UK prepares to enter the Brexit process and re-negotiate its relationship with the EU, questions are swirling about the tone of PM May’s new government, what Brexit means for her and what she will mean for Brexit. Ian Bremmer, political scientist, author and TIME columnist, breaks it down for The Hindu.
What are PM Theresa May’s top priorities as she assumes power, forms her cabinet and prepares to handle Brexit?
First of all her top priority is making sure at this point that the Conservative Party stays together and that she’s able to lead it at least through the Brexit negotiations and potentially-from her perspective-past that. Let’s recognize that that’s why she put the cabinet together the way she did. It may not be the best governing cabinet, in may not be very aligned with her on all issues, and in the case of Boris Johnson it’s particularly problematic for the Brits internationally. But again, what she wants to do is make sure that the conservatives are loyal to her and I think she’s accomplished that with her initial cabinet.
She was as they say a “reluctant remainer” but she’s made it very clear that she’s governing following the Brexit referendum, and there will be no going back on it: she will trigger Article 50, but she will not want to do so until she has a reasonable sense of where the UK wants to negotiate from. And also, if she can she’d like to get a little bit of sense from the Europeans--informally--on where they’re going to be too. Publicly there will be no informal negotiations until the exit clause is triggered, but the reality is she’s going to be in Brussels on October 20 for a European summit. She’ll be meeting with heads of state there; she’ll be meeting with leaders before then. And they’re not going to just talk about their families: this will come up. So, to the extent that she can get a sense, she’s going to do her best.
She will trigger Article 50. She’ll be under a lot of pressure publicly from the Europeans as well as from those who supported Brexit, particularly those in her own conservative party. And of course the uncertainty is crippling the UK economy too. For all of those reasons by the end of this year or the beginning of next year she will trigger Article 50.
In terms of what Brexit will mean for her, she is one of the people who are interested in maintaining some kind of access to the common market and the EU. I just don’t think that’s feasible given her, her cabinet’s and the Tory Party’s position on immigration. If you ask me where they’re likely to end up going I’d say it’s probably not a Norway-style agreement, it is probably more towards UK-EU Free Trade Agreement and that is ultimately going to be more politically palatable for both sides, but it’s also harder to negotiate. You’re doing it from scratch, and so the likelihood of being able to do it within the two-year period and not have an extension seems to me a very tall order.
Like every crisis in Europe, this is going to be long and very unattractive.
What are the biggest impediments to a solution likely to be?
One impediment is going to be the UK’s position on immigration; May’s position, her cabinet’s position, how difficult it will be for them to continue to allow freedom of movement given how politicized that has become. The bigger impediment is going to be the Europeans themselves. You’re not negotiating with one country; you’re negotiating with well over two dozen. You’ve got the Germans and the French who have their own elections coming up next year and they’re unlikely to want to negotiate on the hardest issues until after those elections are over. You have a number of other European countries who are only looking through this through their own political lens, which may be problematic. Austria for example, after their election if the Freedom Party ends up winning (this is the re-do election) in the fall, Italy, if Renzi loses his referendum in October that would be important, countries like Poland and Hungary which are themselves run by Eurosceptic governments and are not looking to do anything to make European institutions stronger, for their own domestic political purposes. And then you have the reality that there’s just going to be more crises in Europe over the course of these negotiations that are going to make this a harder process. More terrorist attacks: they’ve been expanding, we’ve seen a bunch of them recently. Maybe a Greek crisis, maybe a Turkish crisis. There are far too many things that go wrong over the next two years that can distract, take attention and take capabilities away from the Europeans. This would be a hard thing to negotiate in the best of times, and it will not be the best of times.
What is the rationale behind the nomination of Boris Johnson to the foreign ministry? Many were wondering what PM May was thinking.
Everything the UK has done in the last half a year, really ever since they decided on the referendum, has been to say to the rest of the world that the Brits are not particularly concerned about the way they are perceived internationally, they’re not particularly perturbed about their standing in the world. They are focused much more domestically and they’re focused much more on their own individual political well-being. The decision of both Boris Johnson and Cameron around the referendum--Cameron to call the referendum to begin with because he wanted to be Prime Minister again; Boris Johnson to support Brexit without a plan, without not even really thinking Brexit, because he thought it would position him for a bigger position and it turns out of course that he was right but not it the way that he expected. Theresa May now deciding to appoint Boris Johnson because she wants to ensure the Conservative Party stays together and because she wants to stay Prime Minister for a period of time. She doesn’t really care if this is going to be a red rag to a bull in terms of Britain’s standing internationally, that’s not really relevant. It’s very clear, with someone like Boris Johnson…the American’s can get over the fact that he’s a buffoon, albeit a very smart one. But you look at Turkey, what do you think’s going to happen the first time Boris Johnson goes to Ankara, having written that poem about the Turk having sex with a goat? This is a disaster for UK-Turkey relations and that’s not a priority, either for Premier May either for Boris Johnson. They do not care; it is not what is relevant to them. As someone who sees the trans-Atlantic relationship as the most alliance in the world since WWII, and as someone who has seen the British Foreign Office as the most capable, until they started gutting its budget in the past years, it’s really sad to see how the Brits have so little concern for the fact that their leadership has been necessary for other countries and that it will be missed. The Brits simply do not care.
