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IN THE 2007 movie Wild Hogs, John Travolta leads a group of sad middle-aged men on a motorcycle trip across America. Think of it as a-coming-of age story for blokes about to be divorced by their wives.
Brexit was a bit like this. Presented with the opportunity to reclaim a long-lost virility, an ageing electorate duly pulled on leather pants and gave two fingers to their kids.
But Brexit has an Instagram versus reality problem. Boris Johnson’s patriotic thirst traps promised a bombastic return to a renewed global Britain, but all we’ve been left with is a rather expensive piece of national admin. Even the most diehard Europhobes like Nigel Farage have labelled it a failure. On each end of the political spectrum, no one is happy with how it’s all turned out.
Trade barriers are choking supply chains while restrictions on European workers are gumming up the labour market. Inflation has been coming down across Europe but the UK’s figures have remained stubbornly high.
Rising interest rates will hammer millions of British homeowners when they roll off their fixed-rate loans next year in what economists are calling a “mortgage time-bomb”.
Leaving the European Union is the only big idea that Britain has had in almost a decade but it’s proven completely unable to solve the real problems people face. Houses remain unaffordable, the health service is on its back, and the cost of living continues to spiral. Politicians have spent too much time arguing over how best to jilt Brussels and too little time considering how to grow the economy. Everyone is worse off as a result.
The conservatives without Johnson are like a cult without a prophet. Its members find themselves blinking helplessly at Rishi Sunak, wondering exactly what was in the Kool Aid they just knocked back. So far, he’s a lot less convincing than his former boss.
For the rest of us though, there’s something faintly reassuring about his earnest Head Boy persona. Sure, he’s a former investment banker and married to one of the world’s richest women. But while he’s from that world of immense privilege, there is a sense that he is not of that world. Born to two middle-class Indian immigrants, he’s a scholarship boy done good. Though Johnson and his pals viewed the government as an extension of their boarding room mess hall, Sunak gives the impression that he really wants to do well.
It speaks to the low bar set by British politicians recently that a vague sense of sincerity is his most redeeming feature. For while his perceived competence will appeal to some, he’s unlikely to inspire Red Wall voters in the way Johnson’s boorish, class clown persona did.
Through hard work and personal credibility, Sunak got a better deal out of the Europeans than his predecessor did. But he’s gotten almost no credit for this because good statecraft is boring.
Brexit under Sunak is like a stag weekend organised by the lad who doesn’t drink. Instead of strippers firing rocket launchers at livestock, it’s a 7 am hike followed by a pasta-making class at lunchtime.
You can only leave the EU once. Without anything new to offer people going into the next election, it looks like they’ll just double down on migration panic. It was the secret sauce that helped to carry the Brexit referendum after all. But while Johnson’s Brexit was at least veiled by images of rejuvenated English spirit, Sunak’s pledge to “Stop the boats” is raw xenophobic sloganeering at its most artless.
It remains to be seen how far he’ll be willing to go to keep his promise to curb the numbers crossing the channel. The great irony is that the government minister responsible for some of the harshest rhetoric on immigration, Suella Braverman, is a practising Buddhist. Her unique blend of English nativism and Eastern mysticism could be just the ticket for a party trying to rediscover its message. I can almost see the billboards: “Loving kindness – for the English first”.
The British public will only swallow so much. Brexit has failed on its own terms and now polls show that a third of Leave voters support re-joining the single market.
Johnson promised them the jape of the century, only to resign midterm and leave everyone else to clean up his mess. In this version of Wild Hogs, the gang has gotten halfway down the superhighway only to realise that they’re out of gas, their pants have torn at the crotch, and their leader has thumbed a taxi home to the missus.
Peter Flanagan is an Irish comedian and writer. You can find him on Twitter @peterflanagan and Instagram @peterflanagancomedy.
It’s what the British people voted for, respect their democratic choice.
@Winston Smith: If they hadn’t been lied to by a member of the elite oligarchy, I’d almost agree with you.
@Nick Vasilakis: All the elite lie to all of us, they are pathological liars, it’s in their very characters, they all lie for a living, lying as easy as breathing is a prerequisite for the job.
@Nick Vasilakis: No offence intended, but that simply has to be the most naive, gullible, comment of the 21st century…so far.
The little englanders voted to leave the EU , Then they bought into the whole tory anti emigration waffle and gave bungling borris a massive majority. Add to that the British Labour Party offers no alternative, as its frozen in fear of anti EU tory gutter press. To say the little brittions are in serious trouble ,may not be wrong
@Robert Halvey: Would they be better off, under the thumb of the EU?
@Robert Halvey: The referendum was won by 17,410,742 Britons who refused to be intimidated, insulted, ridiculed or patronised by the Conservatives, Labour, the LibDems, the SNP, Plaid Cymry, the SDLP, the Greens, the Trade Unions, the BBC, the Bank of England, the Treasury, the CBI, the IMF, the President of the United States of America, all 27 of our EU ‘friends’, 300 ‘leading’ historians, 78% of scientists, 77% of lawyers, 80% of business leaders, 72% of economists, the banks, the bishops, most celebrities and Eddie frigging Izzard
@Harry: Untraceable statistics and a long list – the refuge of the unlettered. Bravo.
@Nick Vasilakis: There’s definitely only one Eddie Izzard.
@Harry: total nonsense..17 million duped by a few elites.
Who wanted a return of the Empire like mommy and daddy had
@Winston Smith: The marriage between the EU commission and the U.K. was always a tad rocky to say the least, it was akin to being stuck in an abusive relationship.
For arguments sake, many saw the EU commission, with its small army of presidents, and vice presidents as the abusive husband.
We looked into the future, if it’s this abusive now, what will it be like in 5, 10, 20 years?
Well, so much for our EU “friends” I don’t know about anyone else, I personally did not like what I was seeing, I’m worth more than that. I believe in myself. I trust myself. It’s more important to make my own choices and accept the ups and downs, than rely on a strong man EU commission who says he’ll take care of everything but actually can’t even take care of himself. A man who says that without him I am nothing and could do nothing. I could have done everything in my life without him, and I sure as hell can thrive when he’s gone.
It’s about dignity.
It’s about self-belief.
It’s about my life, on my terms.
It was time to leave.
@John Mcmahon: all empires eventually fail & fall, the new EU empire will absolutely no different.
@Leo’s Veruca: the low skilled immigrants are what kept prices down. The high smiled ones won’t go somewhere where they could be forced to leave at the next election. And refugees aren’t illigal immigrants.
But you know all that.
@Leo’s Veruca: no such thing as illegal immigration as long as they report to the authority and/or claim asylum. But you don’t know what you are talking about.
@Leo’s Veruca: leaving the EU would have zero effect on illegal immigration and it has had zero effect. How would not being in the EU make any difference to illegal immigration? At least while in the EU they has customs officers in France.
As for low skilled workers you couldn’t be more wrong. They have fruit rotting in fields because they can’t get people to pick it. Spend 20 mins on Google and see how badly the UK is now struggling without low skilled workers. Brexit was sold on xenophobia and people thought it would stop Johnny Foreigner coming. It hasn’t. The brown people they hate so much are still coming and the Europeans that they need can’t.
@Robert Halvey: What’s a “little Englander” secondly, what’s a “little Brittion” thirdly, what trouble are “we” in? Please, be as specific as you like. And lastly, it’s not brown people we had a problem with, it’s the elite in Brussels.
@Robert Halvey: the referendum had a 72.2% turnout. Of that it was 51.9% who were daft enough to believe Brexit was a great idea. It wasn’t all of us.
Ireland despite its politicians own weak points planned far better for it than those who championed it back here.
Another problem with it was that David Cameron (just call me Dave) did not allow the EU to get involved in promoting the benefits of membership.
Now the crass phraseology about small boats has become a problem only because the treaty to send asylum seekers back to the first safe country they entered is no longer active, due to Brexit. The U.K. became toxic when UKIP entrenched its MPs with the Tory party. The politicians created this mess but we have to live with the consequences.
Doesn’t Tory mean Outlaw in Irish?
@Leo’s Veruca: Our current bun, it’s followers and the latest PM do call asylum seekers illegal immigrants which is another lie in itself.
I hate the way the U.K. system is treating civilians who flee from the war zones that our politicians and military had a hand in displacing.
We should accept many of these vulnerable people with open arms and allow them a chance to contribute to our society without prejudice.
@Winston Smith: Compare the UK 2016 to 2023 and you will realise that the only thumb you are under is the super wealthy politicians of all parties in the UK.
While the UK stagnates the EU powers onwards and upwards
@Winston Smith: They would be and were far better off within the EU. Where they had a major say at the negotiating table and were able compromise with 27 other countries in a grown up fashion for the betterment of all. Now they have just thrown up trade barriers to themselves and restricted their own movement and have to go along with whatever rules the EU decide to implement anyway with no say in it. Also the EU is not a single entity but a group of 27 countries Ireland being one who work together in many issues.
Very good article Peter .
Sneering at the country next door for a lack of affordable homes and high rents, and clsoing comments on articles about our own housing crisis.
Our neighbours are learning that the hard way that United Kingdom is no longer a kingdom but an island with very little influence wedged between America and the EU.
The UK has a trade deficit. Almost half of the imports from that deficit comes from the trade bloc it walked out of. Now the average voter wonders why everything costs more.
Many argue that UK citizens were lied to. I would argue that voters believed in their flag and ignored that their flag isn’t relevant anymore.
@Bat Boy: When Biden became presdinet the first European country he called was the UK. The UK have been the second biggest arms supplier to the Ukraine.
What about our shrinking economy and our major housing crisis, what’s being in the EU done to help that?
@Bat Boy: oh, we’re doomed, DOOMED!
@Bat Boy: Nope, reality tells us the U.K is still a kingdom, prove me wrong.
@dream catcher: Ask your “royal family” with their hundreds of palaces and lavish houses. Then ask all of your front bench billionaires who are bleeding England dry and selling it off to Russian oligarchs while laundering billions for Putin.
King Charles is planning a state visit to Ireland, this will suitably annoy SF/IRA
@The Legend: anything that annoys SF/IRA is fine with me
@The Legend: Charlie is on film shaking hands and having a friendly chat with the leaders of the biggest political party in the island and that includes the colony in Ulster, while ignoring the swivel eyed Donaldson. You should take more notice of what your betters and royal masters are doing and stay on your knees where you royalists belong
Farage is still inside in a hole Digging
Reply to the legend : you’re a legend alright – in your own tiny little mind.
@donal cusack: you shinners should have a weight watchers protest lol
Beauty!!
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