What would Margaret Thatcher have done?

Daniel Johnson took me to task this week for suggesting that Boris Johnson’s move to backtrack on parts of the Brexit withdrawal agreement is a ploy to divert attention from his domestic problems. I have been asked to respond. I’m grateful.

A refresher: the Prime Minister wants to change the Brexit withdrawal agreement, a document on which the ink is barely dry. Britain, he now says, must be free to interpret key parts of the Northern Ireland protocol as it pleases.

Daniel made three points.

First: he says that I blame British negotiators entirely for the Brexit deadlock. Not always. But in this case — yes. The withdrawal agreement is a carefully drafted, legally binding international treaty. It took three years to negotiate. Armies of expensive lawyers have pored over every word. The government signals its intention unilaterally to ditch crucial bits of it two days before Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, arrives in London for crucial talks. This is done not face to face, but by leaking the story to the press.

Second: to suggest this was a diversionary tactic ahead of the long, dark tunnel of winter with rising Covid cases is misleading. Is it? Boris Johnson is in serious trouble at home. If Keir Starmer is Captain Hindsight, Johnson is General U-Turn. Tories are not happy, especially not at the sight of their man getting a weekly pasting at PMQs. This ploy successfully shifts attention back to familiar, vote-winning ground: Brexit and those stubborn, intransigent EU negotiators. I’ve spent a lifetime watching the political animal at close quarters. I can spot a gimmick when I see one.

Third: Daniel asked if, as a (qualified) Europhile I was “happy to be cast in the role of General Galtieri?” I had written that the Falklands war proved to be a decisive moment in Margaret Thatcher’s rehabilitation when she was fighting for her political life. Washington was working towards a diplomatic solution. She rejected this for the toughest, swiftest, most uncompromising approach. I supported this at the time. Galtieri was a thug who ran death squads. Argentina was a dictatorship. But to say she had no choice is incorrect.

Endless drama is exhausting. This government seems to thrive on it. Confrontation is its favoured stratagem. Boris Johnson won the election by being feisty. He clearly enjoys the adrenalin rush. He loves campaigning. In a sense he hasn’t stopped. But is he governing?

To be clear: I am a fully paid-up member of the awkward squad. A journalist’s most important job I believe is to probe, challenge, harass, shake the tree until the facts fall out. It’s not our job to be reasonable or supportive of whatever government is in power. This is especially important in a post-truth era in which rich men (or foreign states) with an axe to grind spend vast sums on shaping false narratives to support their interests.

I have some sympathy with mavericks like Dominic Cummings —  if not with his ethics. A good shake-up of how things are done can be useful.

But breaking with tradition and breaking the law are not the same thing. The government now admits that yes it intends to break the law “in a specific and limited way”. But the law is not a coat to be worn when it suits and discarded when it is inconvenient.

I am reminded of this exchange in Robert Bolt’s “A Man for all Seasons” between William Roper, a lawyer and MP and his father-in-law, Thomas More:

“William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper?”

To those who support the Johnson/Gove/Cummings wrecking-ball approach, I’d pose the same question.

Since the story appeared in the Financial Times that the government is planning to break its own agreement, it has sparked a remarkable depth of concern. Theresa May asked in the Commons: “How can the government reassure future international partners that the UK can be trusted to abide by the legal obligations of the agreements it signs?”

There is also alarm across the Atlantic. Senior US Democrats have warned that fiddling with the Northern Ireland agreement could endanger the stability of the province and sour relations with Washington — especially if Joe Biden wins the presidency in November. Congressional leaders have warned that a future US-UK trade deal could be blocked by the US Congress if Brexit affects the Irish border or jeopardises peace in Ulster. Supporting Ireland, in case Johnson hadn’t noticed, is an article of faith among Democrats.

More than two decades after the Good Friday agreement and despite a healthy economic revival, trust between communities in Northern Ireland is still threadbare. Boris Johnson has never, it seems, understood how fragile the province is.

I was there in the 1970s, stepping over body parts in the Short Strand. I sat with perfectly reasonable people who were ready to take up arms at the slightest provocation. Fiddling with this for domestic political gain or marginal negotiating advantage is extremely foolish.

The government’s manoeuvring also triggered the resignation of Sir Jonathan Jones, the head of the government’s legal department. This, according to the FT, follows months of acrimony between on the one hand Sir Jonathan and the Cabinet Office and on the other Suella Braverman, the Attorney-General over the importance of abiding by international law.

The row has hit sterling hard for the second consecutive day as traders bet that the Bank of England may have to cut interest rates to cushion the economic blow of a disorderly Brexit. The pound has shed 1.75 per cent against the US dollar.

This is serious and yet more evidence that this administration operates on the principle that the means — any means — justify the ends. It disdains the hard grind of working through a problem in favour of simply blowing up obstacles in its path.

Successful deal-making hinges on certain crucial moments. Deal-making is not an abstract concept. Deals are not crafted by algorithms. They are struck by people, face to face, mind to mind. Trust in the person on the other side of the table to play it straight and keep their word is an essential prerequisite.

The international order that emerged out of the Second World War is a rules-based system that embodies certain liberal, Western values. But it’s under sustained assault. For the first time since the collapse of the Iron Curtain we are witnessing the rise of more autocracies than democracies. Countries like China and Russia, Hungary and Iran are cheerfully tossing the rule of law onto the scrap heap.

When we finally leave the EU, we will be on our own. We will need as many friends as we can get. Our partners will want a Britain that is steady and reliable, faithful to shared values.

Now, more than ever, Britain should abide by the rule of law not flout it. That’s what Margaret Thatcher would have done.