Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss… This is the list of victims of Brexit. One by one, Conservative leaders and prime ministers have been engulfed by a party that doesn’t know what it wants. Needing to carve out a gap between Farage’s populism and Clegg’s modernity, they fled forward by proposing a referendum to leave the European Union. And they went to the vote divided, because many of the conservative leaders and voters supported it as a negotiating tool before the community partners. A bit like Mas in Catalunya. But there the pitcher broke on the side of the outlet. And since then they don’t know what to do. Life outside the EU, in the jungle that Borrell says, is very hard, especially if you have lived in the garden. The foundations of the British consensus (the crown or the confrontation with Brussels) are faltering. Nobody wants to take responsibility for the problems of the British. And the magical solutions with which Truss gobbled up Johnson have been eaten by the financial markets with potatoes. For a few hours, the British pound fluctuated to the rhythm of Greek debt in 2009 or 2010. Faced with the risk of default, the City wants scissors and a heavy hand, not low-intensity Thatcherism. These are the rules that British Conservatives have praised so much, precisely.
What happened in Great Britain provides lessons for many other countries in Europe. Some are these: no matter how badly the EU works, life outside is much worse; blaming a third party for one’s own ills ends up taking its toll: there are no easy solutions to complex problems such as the pandemic or war-derived inflation; discrediting people for the failure of their policies leads to cainism and the self-destruction of the political class; if you want to negotiate, you have to negotiate and not extort, this applies to political support, government coalitions or business partners; Putting the one who shouts the loudest in front of the projects does not ensure their viability. The ‘Tories’ have been committing political suicide for years. Now they have few outlets left. Perhaps the one that would give them the quickest death is to call an election that, for the first time in a long time, could be won by Labour, exhausted by the dalliances of Tony Blair. It can still be worse.