Maybe if Jacob Rees-Mogg had worn short trousers and a schoolboy cap, the EU might have understood him better. In fact if Boris Johnson and his entire cabinet had got kitted out in similar grab, maybe adding the hair-ruffling touch that the new British prime minister is constantly giving his blond thatch, it would have been easier for the EU to negotiate with them.
At least Theresa May saw herself as “a bloody difficult woman”. Not, you will note, “a bloody difficult school-girl”. Whatever her faults, May was an adult, albeit it an ineffective adult. But Boris and his boys and girls appear to see relations with the EU and the whole no-deal prospect in school-yard terms.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, in his latest statement, has told the EU that the new Tory government “won’t be brow-beaten” by Brussels. Why’s that, you ask? “They should believe us because of our new leader. The new Prime Minister is somebody of considerable force of personality who is not going to be brow-beaten by them.”
Sound familiar? It’s the sniveling little school-boy who feels he’s being bossed and thumped, and who promises that tomorrow his big brother is going to turn up and then we’ll see who bosses and thumps.
And not just big brother Boris.
“They should believe us because of the appointment of Dominic Cummings, which seems to me exceptionally important as a statement as to what is going to happen….It is a tough-minded, clear-sighed government that will accept a decent deal, a fair deal, but will not accept a bad deal and isn’t frightened of leaving.”
Maybe you EU chaps haven’t heard about my big brother Boris’s mate Dominic. You think Boris is a hard man? Wait until you see Dominic. He eats barbed wire and broken glass for breakfast. So if you chaps think you can push us around any more, forget it. There may be twenty-seven of you but when Boris and Dominic are finished with you, you’ll be bleating for morphine.”
As with most school-yard bravado, facts get fragmented and replaced with bluster. The fact that no one in the EU has “brow-beaten” the UK should be obvious. It was the UK that decided to leave the EU, not vice versa. And it was the UK that brought a lot of red lines to Brussels, which were painstakingly worked around by the EU until finally May got her withdrawal deal. It was Boris and his bovver boys and girls who decided they wouldn’t accept the withdrawal deal after all, and that the UK was tired of being pushed around and here come Boris and Dominic, better wise up, EU, or they’ll stuff you good and proper.
When grown men and women adopt that sort of stance and pretend politics and trade is about who’s got hard men and who hasn’t, you know that something has flipped in the British psyche. Is it really possible that they believe the EU’s concern for international trade and economic health are really threats from European bullies who, once faced with British tough nuts like B and D, will start crying and hand over their school lunches?
Oo-er, chaps. There’s the bell. Ask not for whom it tolls.
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