What did Angela tell Boris in that phone call — and what does it really mean?
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What really happened in that fateful telephone call? We only have one version of the conversation between Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel: the British one. According to the Downing Street briefing, it was a moment of truth. The leader of Europe’s most powerful country allegedly set out “a new established position that means a deal is essentially impossible, not just now but ever”. Germany could leave the EU “no problem, but the UK cannot leave without leaving Northern Ireland behind in a customs union and in full alignment forever.”
No wonder this interpretation was political dynamite. Number 10 claimed that “a deal is overwhelmingly unlikely and [Merkel] thinks the EU has a veto on us leaving the customs union”. The source added: “It was a very useful clarifying moment in all sorts of ways.”
The EU refused point blank to accept this version. Donald Tusk immediately denounced the British for playing “some stupid blame game”, while in Germany — where the Chancellor’s office refused to issue their own version of the phone call — a similar view prevailed. Today’s headline in Die Welt, for instance, suggests that the British were seeking to make the Germans the scapegoats: “Johnson deals Merkel the Black Peter card”. Prominence was also given to Nigel Farage’s reaction, who accused the EU of behaving like a “newly militarised empire”.
No doubt Downing Street’s account of the phone call was heavily spun. Along with another, given to the Spectator, that set out a no-deal election strategy, they have Dominic Cummings’s fingerprints all over them.
Yet it is at least possible that Boris Johnson genuinely felt ambushed by what Mrs Merkel had to say — and no wonder. She is under pressure too. And politicians under pressure sometimes feel the need to be blunter than usual.
The German public has had enough of Brexit: two thirds (66 per cent) oppose granting another extension. Uncertainty is damaging the German economy, which has other problems too. It has just slipped four places in the World Economic Forum rankings. This matters to ordinary Germans as well as business leaders. Brexit seems to them an unnecessary and irksome distraction. They want it sorted.
Mrs Merkel has delivered home truths over the phone before, notably to the Greeks and the Italians. Now it is the turn of the British. She evidently thinks the carefully crafted plan to replace the backstop that Boris Johnson unveiled last week is a waste of time. The British need to accept that they cannot avoid giving Dublin a veto over Northern Ireland leaving the customs union. Johnson’s job is to square the unionist side. Leadership, in her view, means telling your own people what they don’t want to hear — as she has done throughout the euro crisis, the migration crisis and the climate crisis.
The problem is that Boris Johnson, unlike Theresa May, doesn’t accept Angela Merkel’s analysis. He may be seen by his enemies at home and abroad as a clown, but he is and always has been deeply serious about the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He agrees with the DUP that leaving the province behind as the rest of the UK leaves the EU would in the long run mean a united Ireland. And he will never accept the dismemberment of the UK.
It is a tragic fact that both Merkel and Johnson are right. Britain is indeed, as she says, in a unique situation because of Northern Ireland, which means that leaving the EU was always going to test the commitment of both sides in the peace process. But Downing Street is correct that for the EU to force the unionist community in the North to accept a trade border with Britain is to “torpedo the Good Friday Agreement”, at least in spirit.
A great German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, preached a doctrine that he called amor fati, “love your fate”. The German Chancellor apparently wants the British to embrace their fate, which may mean choosing between Brexit and the integrity of the UK.
The Prime Minister, by contrast, refuses to accept that this is our fate, let alone to love it. Indeed, Boris Johnson rejects the very idea of fate. If he can persuade the British people that their future is in their hands, that they are free to forge their own destiny, he will win.
