Fergus Finlay: English about to see the consequences of their own self-delusion

Perhaps it’s racism on my part, or maybe just sour grapes, but I’m not a fan of English rugby. I’m especially not a fan of watching England play rugby on an English TV channel with a former English international as one of the commentators.

So it was with gritted teeth, I admit, that I tuned in to the final of the so-called Autumn Nations Cup between England and France on Sunday. If they were gritted before I sat down, I started grinding them through clenched jaws shortly before kick-off, as the statutory former English international (Dewi Morris on this occasion) declared that England had one hand on the trophy already.

Both commentators were expressing the hope that France would at least turn up to provide some entertainment before the inevitable crushing. Then, almost 60 minutes into the game, Mr Morris announced, in an air of great astonishment, “the French are still in this”.

When he said it, the score was France 13, England 9, and the French were giving “our boys” a lesson in attacking rugby. 

In the end, to my chagrin, England drew level in the final second of the game, after scoring a dodgy try, and went on to win the match by the skin of their teeth in extra time. 

The nervous apprehension that had crept into some of the analysis was immediately replaced by the more usual sense of entitlement. I didn’t wait for the trophy presentation.

By the time you read this, there may be a deal on Brexit. Or there may not. 

No matter what the outcome, the one thing we can all be certain of is that the British sense of entitlement will survive undiminished.

Win or lose, deal or no deal, Boris Johnson will make the same speech. It will be about Britain and independence and sovereignty, Britain and taking back control of its borders, Britain and its bright new future as it rebuilds the empire of old. And there will be yet more patronising references (while the rest of us grind what’s left of our teeth again) to “our friends in Europe”.

If there’s no deal, Boris will present Britain as being forced out of Europe despite its best-faith efforts to strike a deal. But it will be Europe’s loss, he’ll declare. 

Just as Britain proved itself the best country in the whole wide world by being the first to sanction a Covid vaccine, so it will once again prove to be a world titan when it comes to trade and economic growth.

It’s hard to know which is worse — Johnson’s self-delusion or the self-delusion he has helped to foster in the country he leads. 

Britain suddenly becoming a foreign country to the rest of Europe, will do immense damage everywhere, and perhaps especially on this island. 

In the First World War, the British Army came to be described as “lions led by donkeys”. Right now, it looks like sheep being led from behind by donkeys.

There’s a body in the UK called the Office for Budget Responsibility. It’s a bit like our Fiscal Advisory Council, with a mandate to call it as they see it. There are no wild-eyed lefty radicals here — they’re as sober a bunch of public servants as you’ll find anywhere.

They’ve just published their most up-to-date economic and fiscal outlook. In it, they say that the coronavirus pandemic has ensured that across the UK, “GDP is set to fall by 11% this year — the largest drop in annual output since the Great Frost of 1709”. As for the future, they present three scenarios. 

The best one assumes that lockdowns and vaccines will get rid of the virus more or less immediately, the other two are based on slower returns to normality. 

In their best-case scenario, economic output eventually returns to its pre-virus trajectory. 

But in the other two scenarios, output is left “permanently scarred” by the pandemic, as they put it, by 3% and 6% respectively.

And all of those scenarios are based on the pandemic only — in other words, the assumption is that there’s the best possible Brexit deal. And if there isn’t?

The Office for Budget Responsibility devotes an entire annex of its projections to that. It’s a laborious read, but suffice it to say it essentially predicts (on a middle to worst-case scenario basis) that a no-deal Brexit on top of the pandemic will condemn Britain to four to five years of economic devastation before the economy begins to recover.

If that is true or even half-true, I think it’s reasonable to assume that the people of Britain haven’t the faintest idea of what’s about to befall them. 

And their leader, rather than telling them the truth, will continue to try to foster illusions, just like he did in relation to the pandemic itself.

The complete absence of any dawning of reality can be seen in an anecdote reported by the political editor of The Sunday Times, Tim Shipman, at the weekend. He quoted a “senior government source” as saying “if they move their standards either up or down, we have to go with them, and it we don’t, they have the right to punish us. It isn’t Brexit.” 

But it is. Brexit was about Britain asserting the right to its own sovereignty, to do whatever was in its own interests. 

If Britain decides to fill its chickens with hormones or cover its fields with dangerous pesticides, that’s Brexit — Britain’s business and no-one else’s.

But if Europe decides it doesn’t want to buy the hormone-filled chickens or the crops grown with unregulated pesticides, that’s Brexit too, isn’t it? If my right to sell what I want is a reflection of my sovereignty, then your right to buy or not to buy is a reflection of yours.

The other anecdote from Shipman’s piece that resonated with me, because I’ve experienced it myself, was the revelation that at the start of the week, the negotiators from both sides shared pizzas and meals from a London restaurant. 

By Friday, the European negotiators were offered “manky sandwiches in plastic”. I’ve eaten manky sandwiches at the end of an eight or ten-hour negotiating session with British officials. Some things never change.

As I write this, the British are apparently offering to drop the various clauses from its own legislation that are a fundamental breach of Britain’s international obligations in respect of the border on this island. 

That’s another age-old British tactic, isn’t it? Introduce a “straw man” into the argument, by drafting your own legislation, then graciously offer to withdraw the thing you’ve created yourself in return for concessions from the other side.

As I said earlier, we might all know more by the time you read this. The last thing I saw was a distinctly gloomy Michel Barnier giving a very downbeat assessment of progress, and Simon Coveney denying that there had been any breakthrough at all. Maybe that’s the “dark before the dawn”. Maybe it isn’t.

Of course it matters, because a breakdown now, and Britain suddenly becoming a foreign country to the rest of Europe, will do immense damage everywhere, and perhaps especially on this island. 

It might be entirely unworthy to say it, but there will be one upside at least — no more listening to that smug entitlement.