Adolph Hitler thought he was a lot cleverer than all his Generals after he invaded Czechoslovakia, Poland, and France with much greater ease than anyone predicted. He then concluded that it would be an easy job to invade Russia. That wasn’t an accidental miscalculation made by an otherwise sane person who could have made different choices. It was in the nature of the beast to keep on pushing his luck until it ran out. Fascism always destroys itself in the end but unfortunately it imposes a huge cost on the rest of us as it does so.
Less extreme right wing nationalists also display the same tendencies. Donald Trump has been remarkably successful at his strategy of ignoring the normal rules and simply turning on his accusers when anyone mentions that he has just lied, cheated or boasted once again. He has used blatant aggression and character assassination to great effect. Despite all the evidence that his election campaign was helped by Russia a section of the US public still thinks he is a great patriot. Some of them still sign up to everything he says even when they know in their heart of hearts that it can’t possibly be true. Like the idea that Mexico would pay for a wall. People who place their faith in some “great leader” want to believe that “their man” is defending their country against the attacks of a liberal elite that believes in crazy things like scientific evidence, facts and morality.
Yet there comes a point when those who aren’t quite so blindly fanatical, and just gave him the benefit of the doubt, can’t stomach what is happening. It isn’t easy to watch Kurdish allies dumped in a casual whim. It is hard to trust someone who keeps sending out increasingly deranged tweets. It is also difficult to simply ignore the use of the Presidential office for personal gain. Trump may well succeed in manipulating his way out of impeachment but he has clearly become very careless. It is hard to see where he picks up new support from in 2020. It is easy to see where he loses it. The final nail in his coffin will only come when his wild gamble on a huge budget deficit and a trade row with virtually every country he can find unwinds into an ugly and dangerous crash. Nevertheless he has probably already done enough to be deserted by the people who voted for Obama twice and then opted for Trump. Once the Republican Party senses weakness it won’t be long before some of them start to distance themselves, and then a lot more follow.
Johnson is even more exposed. He is temporarily riding high in the opinion polls on the strength of a promise that he is the strong man who can get Brexit done and finished with. He has repeated endlessly that we’ll be out on 31st October and also promised that every public service can have more money, there will be tax cuts for all and our economy will enter a new golden age. Indeed, it is hard to think of anything that he hasn’t promised.
If he succeeds in bullying the EU to back down and cons Parliament into signing up for a deal that is even worse than the one they rejected three times under Theresa May then his cunning plan might well work. His honeymoon period might just last until he stumbles through a General Election campaign. He wants to go into that campaign claiming to be the man who delivered. His strategy from the first has been to scare people with no deal then sneak through any kind of cobbled together deal at the last minute. Then proclaim a lousy deal to be the best deal ever.
Unfortunately, his strategy is based on a massive gamble and some very poor logic. The British nationalist in him has bought into the idea that the EU always backs down at the last minute. That is always possible but I think it most unlikely. Give in to Johnson and they risk destroying the EU. So it is much more likely that negotiations will break down. Once they do it is far from clear that an extension will be on offer and virtually impossible to see how Johnson can sign up to it without destroying his career and his party. Put simply he has made the classic mistake of all arrogant men. He has over-reached himself.
The only possible way for Johnson can survive a bit longer will be to gamble further and take an even bigger risk. That is why I think he will now proceed to crash the country out of the EU without any extension. I know that is against the law. He doesn’t think that matters. He thinks he is above the law and there is no way he is going to ask for an extension and no way that he is going to resign and let someone else do it. Instead he is going to double down on the risk and let the UK crash out of the EU if necessary by some really dodgy tactic, like trying to declare a state of emergency to override the law.
There are those who believe that this will result immediately in utter chaos. There are others who think it is the first step to our glorious sunny uplands. I tend to think the immediate problems will be a heck of a nuisance but not short of total disaster. The real problems are more fundamental and long term and they will begin to accumulate steadily. So it isn’t going to be easy to deliver a tax cut and all those lovely spending pledges in the middle of an economic downturn that delivers a deficit in government finances much bigger than any windfall from our relatively small net contribution to Brussels. I don’t see too many voters being impressed by month after month of problems and difficulties when they have been led to believe that Johnson was somehow magically going to fix Brexit painlessly.
No deal is not what the vast bulk of the British people want. Every effort will be made to dump the blame on the EU and on the disloyalty of remainers. I have little doubt that the mean-spirited nastiness that came out of the woodwork the second the referendum result was announced will take another kick forward. I also happen to think that the majority of ordinary people in Britain won’t go along with it. Johnson simply won’t be able to escape all the blame when his gamble fails and Britain is out in the cold.
The British public have had enough of Brexit. That doesn’t mean they want to crash out at all costs. It means the majority wanted someone, anyone, to put an end to all the endless debate and find a wonder solution. Many are prepared to suspend their disbelief for a few weeks and trust good old Boris to pull it off. Once bumbling incompetent Boris hands them failed negotiations and the cold hard reality of exposure to the world economy it won’t be long before they start to take a hard look at the man who promised so much and delivered so badly.
What they will find is that they have been led into a dark place by a liar. That they have a Prime Minister who tried to trick the Queen and Parliament and got caught out by the highest judges in the land. Unanimously. That they have a womaniser in number 10 who arranged favours at the public’s expense for his ex-girl friend. That they’ve been led down the garden path by someone who had no idea that it ended in such an ugly place.
Boris Johnson is not the Messiah. He is a very nasty piece of work. People might have put up with that if he had turned out to be competent. Watching his plans unravel as we crash out with no deal is going to convince a lot of people that he is neither competent nor honest and his popularity is then going to prove incredibly fragile. How much better would it be for all of us if the great British public could see through that mask of public-school self confidence and dump him before we have to go through all that pain?