G7 – Boris just about got away with it, again
At the closing G7 press conference, Boris Johnson looked as if he was enjoying himself. One can understand why. The Queen, the Red Arrows, beautiful scenery and weather, little Wilfred Johnson, high-flown rhetoric about solving all the world’s problems: it would have been hard to improve on the choreography in Cornwall. To remain unimpressed, you would have to be Emmanuel Macron. Not all Frenchmen are good at bonhomie. Others may have made up for him. But how will all this translate into substance? To assess that, we have to start with personalities, beginning with Boris Johnson.
Our PM has two related character traits. The first is charm and the belief that by deploying it, he can always get himself out of the scrapes which he frequently gets into. So he often has, does and will. The charm is powerful. The second trait is truth, which he uses in exactly the same way. To him, truth is not a matter of facts and substance. It is whatever story he needs to tell to assist in the charm offensive. So the truth of the day is not necessarily the truth of the morrow. What is truth? said jesting Bojo and would not stay for an answer.
Today, Boris will have convinced himself that Cornwall was a triumph and that he achieved all his objectives. Are others equally convinced?
President Biden is the key figure. He regards the 1998 Good Friday Agreement as Holy Writ. From a British point of view, that may not be unhelpful. Did Boris succeed in persuading the President that although the Northern Ireland Protocol genuflects towards Good Friday, the EU’s interpretation of it would actually weaken that Agreement? It should not be impossible to point out to Mr Biden that while the UK has no selfish strategic interest in the Province and is happy to stand by the principle of consent, some key figures in Brussels and Paris do have a selfish strategic interest in Northern Ireland. They want to use it to punish the Brits, whatever the consequences for the North, and indeed for Ireland as a whole.
Yet there could be a conflict between the President’s head and his heart. Will a case based on caution, complexity and statesmanship prevail over Irish-American sentimentality? In the bars of Boston, they have no interest in the principle of consent. Their opinion is easily summarised: Brits out. On the subject of thoughtlessness, it was surprising that in his remarks on arriving in Britain Biden turned to Yeats’s Easter 1916 for guidance and seems to think that today’s America resembles Ireland after the Easter rising. If that were true, the US would be facing partition, a civil war and forty years of economic stagnation. Fortunately for his fellow Americans, the President was talking nonsense. Despite the high-falutin literary reference, that was a prime example of Irish-American tomfoolery.
On other matters, Anglo-American cooperation should be more straight-forward. Boris wants to replace “special relationship” with “indestructible relationship’ and one can understand why. The traditional usage risks making the British sound needy, which of course we were back at the beginning, in the days of Churchill and Roosevelt. Churchill knew that he had to woo the President, which got harder and harder as the War went on, and even in the heyday of Reagan and Thatcher, there were awkward moments. It could often have been argued that the special relationship had never really existed but was as strong as ever.
There is one crucial factor. In all US administrations, the officials find that they and the British generally see the world through the same eyes. In Washington they are usually enthusiastic about working with the mainland Europeans. But they often find it hard to turn ambition into reality. In recent days, there has been a suggestion that some people in the State Department now think that the French could be a principal strategic partner. That will be the day. Although it is true that President Macron is more Atlanticist than most of his predecessors, the Gaullist tradition is still a powerful influence on French strategic thinking. After Suez, Britain and France reacted in diametrically opposed ways. We decided that we would never again find ourselves on the wrong side of the Americans. The French decided that they would never again trust the Americans. Sixty-five years later, that divergence persists. Yesterday, Macron’s tone on China was very different from the US one.
Divergence brings us to Europe. There is a useful Scottish phrase referring to the aftermath of jollifications such as the G7. “Now, it’s back to parridge an’ auld claes” (in Sassenach, porridge and old clothes). In Boris’s case, it is sausages rather than porridge. He may have tried to brush Ulster aside at the press conference, but the problem remains.
Although Dominic Raab’s criticisms of the EU were justified, they were probably unwise. This may not have been the moment for megaphone diplomacy. It is always dangerous when both sides in a dispute think that morality is on their side. Leaving aside the revenge motive, a lot of Brussels officialdom believes that the UK is trying to renege on a deal to which it had agreed. In fact, a reading of the Protocol makes it clear that the UK government can take action to avoid social damage. Even so, it would be wiser to move away from morality and small print, and concentrate on pragmatism. A solution could be found, if there was enough good will, plus widespread Ulster fatigue. Sausages, dreary steeples: there must be a lot of officials who would prefer to vaccinate the world and save the planet. Perhaps they will prevail.
It will be some time before we know the real outcome of Cornwall. President Biden clearly enjoyed himself. After his visit to Windsor, he can look forward to his version of parridge an’ auld claes: a meeting with Vladimir Putin. The contrast with Cornwall should enhance his good feelings towards his hosts and he is still benefiting from not being Donald Trump. It will be interesting to see how those who are delighted with the new President react when he outlines his plans for American fiscal imperialism.
That is for the future. In the short run, Boris Johnson deserves compliments on his performance. Anyone tempted to cavil at that should ask themselves one question. How would things have gone if Theresa May had been in charge?