Boris Johnson’s real scandal: Brexit

Not before time, Boris Johnson has resigned as leader of the UK’s Conservative Party. The Guardian reports that Johnson’s leadership “toppled under a wave of sleaze allegations and failure to tell the truth.” But his real scandal lies elsewhere — with Brexit.

In 2013, when Boris Johnson was not yet pro-Brexit, he wrote that “the question of [European Union] EU membership is no longer of key importance to the destiny of this country.” And he stated that “most of our problems are not caused by Brussels, but by chronic British short-termism, inadequate management, sloth, low skills, a culture of easy gratification and under-investment in both human and physical capital and infrastructure.”

Even more pointedly, Johnson asked: “Why are we still, person for person, so much less productive than the Germans? The answer has nothing to do with the EU.” Nonetheless, Johnson threw his weight behind Brexit.

The entry of Johnson into the Leave campaign mattered. As one research put it, “polling certainly persistently suggested that voters were more inclined to believe what Johnson said about Brexit than they were the utterances of any other politician.” His celebrity status, “Englishness” and nationalistic leanings all contributed to the Brexit cause.

More ominously, having cynically embraced the Brexit cause, Johnson compared the EU to the Nazis. He stated that “Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods.” By voting Leave, Johnson suggested that the British people would once again be the “heroes of Europe” as they were when fighting the Nazis. Given the EU’s commitment to the rule of law and its overall goal of peace, this comparison was as inaccurate as it was childish.

But politically, it worked, and he quickly became foreign secretary under Theresa May after the successful Brexit vote in June 2016. He went on to become prime minister in 2019, having campaigned to “get Brexit done” despite evidence that it would make the UK substantially poorer.

But given his preference for spectacle over policy, Johnson did a bad job of it. Consequently, in December 2020, as the Brexit deadline neared without an agreement, Boris Johnson was forced to place a desperate call to Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, to secure an invitation to Brussels to pen a real agreement.

Johnson’s charade was that Brexit would not alter its trading relationship with the EU. Nonetheless, border checks in all their details began in January 2021. As a result, British exports to the EU fell significantly in early 2021. British firms eventually adjusted, but they absorbed the trade compliance costs in the process.

By October 2021, the UK began to experience significant shortages of foodstuffs and petrol in part due to a loss of approximately 10,000 EU lorry drivers. In response, the Johnson government was forced to begin offering temporary visas for EU truck drivers.  

Then there was Northern Ireland. When Ireland and the UK were both part of the European Union, there were no tariff barriers between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. With the departure of the UK from the EU, this trading relationship was thrown into disarray. The Johnson government negotiated the Northern Ireland Protocol to avoid a hard border between it and the Irish Republic, which retains its EU membership.

The protocol, however, transformed the Irish Sea “border” between the UK and Northern Ireland into a border between the UK and the EU. In response, Johnson began to suggest that the protocol itself might be abrogated despite having signed it himself as a matter of international law.

Refugees also played an illusory role in the Brexit debate. In April 2022, Johnson’s Home Office announced that it would begin sending some asylum seekers to Rwanda. While the Johnson government claimed that the agreement was in line with the United Nations Refugee Convention, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees disagreed. Both the Home Office staff and Prince Charles opposed the plan.  

The pure emptiness of Brexit was on display at a March 2022 Tory conference where Johnson compared the Brexit vote to the bravery of Ukrainians fighting against Russian invaders. Lost to Johnson was the irony that Russia invaded Ukraine because Ukrainians wanted to more closely associate with the EU. There was also the small matter that voting in a referendum is not quite the same as risking your life to confront an invading army.

Boris Johnson’s real scandal is Brexit. The UK is poorer for it.  

Kenneth A. Reinert is a professor of public policy and director of the Global Commerce and Policy Program at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.