Brexit a bigger humiliation than Suez

The Daily Star
Monday, 21 October 2019
By Michael Glackin

Beirut -- “We’re going in” roared the front page of British tabloid The Daily Sketch, 63 years ago this month. The headline was announcing what would turn out to be Britain’s greatest political humiliation since World War II - the disastrous Anglo-French, and Israeli, invasion of Egypt, the Suez Crisis.
Sunday’s British headlines should have read something along the lines of “We’re going out” after Parliament met Saturday to rubber-stamp the deal agreed late last week by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the European Union to enable Britain to finally leave the trading bloc on Oct. 31.
Unfortunately, not for the first time, Parliament had other plans, and instead voted to delay Britain’s departure from the EU during a historic showdown in Parliament.
The international humiliation of the seemingly never-ending political impasse being played out in London and Brussels over Brexit is on a par with the ignominy of the Suez Crisis. More of that in a moment.
First, what happened last weekend?
Parliament’s decision means it will not vote on Johnson’s deal until it has examined the legislation in detail, something that could take months.
In the first Saturday sitting of Parliament since the Falklands conflict, when Britain went to war four decades ago, parliamentarians voted by 322 to 306 to withhold support for Johnson’s Brexit deal, forcing the prime minister to write to the European Union and ask for an extension to British membership of the trading bloc - for a third time - until Parliament agrees to leave.
The letter, a legal requirement imposed on the prime minister by the U.K. courts last month, was duly sent to Brussels late Saturday night, but Johnson refused to sign it. He then telephoned EU leaders to ask them to ignore Parliament’s request for more time, sharply increasing the likelihood that Britain will crash out of the EU without a trade deal at the end of this month.
French President Emmanuel Macron appears to agree with Johnson. A statement from Paris Saturday night warned: “A further delay is not in anyone’s interest.” The German government also hinted that if Parliament cannot vote for the latest deal, then Britain should leave the EU without one.
There is nothing left to negotiate. Yet despite the hardening of attitudes in Brussels, it seems unlikely that the EU will refuse to grant a further extension.
Meanwhile, as the politicians debated Brexit, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators demanding a second referendum on the issue took to the streets and protested outside Parliament. You could be forgiven for thinking you woke up in Lebanon, not London, Saturday morning.
Johnson still hopes to get his deal through Parliament later Monday, or in the coming week, thus enabling Britain to stick to its Oct. 31 deadline to leave the EU.
However, later Monday a Scottish court will decide whether the prime minister is breaking the law by seeking to leave the EU without a trade deal.
Confused? You are not the only one.
The government is now effectively powerless. The executive arm has been captured by the legislature. This would normally result in an election. However, the opposition parties fear an election would allow the government to proceed with a no-deal Brexit and consequently refuse to vote for one.
Brexit has become a bigger political humiliation than even the Suez Crisis. It has dealt a severe blow to Britain’s standing in international affairs and even threatens the political unity of the United Kingdom. Support for the secessionist Scottish National Party, which advocates Scottish independence, has increased sharply as the Brexit debacle drags on. Brexit has resulted in the government being dragged through the courts, and all but destroyed the reputation of our parliamentary system.
Indeed, while British people are deeply divided by Brexit, they are united in their contempt for Parliament and politicians for the way they have dealt with the issue over the last three years.
The Brexiteers, who comprise just over half the population based on the 2016 referendum result, are determined to give the EU a bloody nose, even if this means leaving without a trade deal with the countries the U.K. has been freely trading with for almost half a century. The Remainers, almost half the population, are aghast at such folly, and appalled at Parliament’s failure to implement a second public vote on Brexit.
It is supremely ironic that the entire shambles is reaching its coda at the same time of year as the Suez Crisis brought Britain to its knees six decades ago.
Suez marked a critical watershed, not just for the U.K. and Egypt and the rest of the Middle East, but also for what eventually became the European Union.
For Britain it of course fatally exposed the hollowness of its imperialist pretensions in the postwar world. U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, enraged at Britain’s action, effectively ordered then Prime Minister Anthony Eden to abandon the invasion by refusing to allow the International Monetary Fund to provide Britain with $500 million in standby credit, and preventing the U.S. Export-Import Bank from extending a $600 million loan unless it withdrew from Suez.
Britain quickly obliged. After that, while never abandoning what it still insists is its “special relationship” with the United States, Britain turned increasingly toward Europe in its bid to remain a power broker on the world stage.
For France though, the lesson of Suez was clear. Britain could not be trusted if it meant falling out with the U.S. France threw itself wholeheartedly into the project of European integration.
The six-nation European common market, which became the 28-nation European Union, was established the following year with the Treaty of Rome. When Britain tried to join the club in the ’60s, France twice vetoed its application, largely on the grounds that London would be a Trojan Horse for U.S. interests. Britain was not finally admitted until 1973.
Legend has it that at the height of the Suez crisis, on Nov. 6, 1956, French Prime Minister Guy Mollet was in his office hosting German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, discussing European integration. Prime Minister Eden telephoned to abruptly tell Mollet he was abandoning him, and the invasion following Eisenhower’s diktat. There was nothing else to discuss.
When Mollet put the telephone down, the wily old Adenauer told him Britain would always side with the U.S. over European allies. As Mollet surveyed his humiliation, Adenauer said: “We have no time to waste. Europe will be your revenge.” It certainly has been.
Michael Glackin is a former managing editor of The Daily Star. This article was published in THE DAILY STAR newspaper in Beirut on Monday, 21 October, 2019.