Federico Fabbrini (Professor of Law, Dublin City University; Founding Director, Brexit Institute; Visiting Professor, Princeton University)

It has been repeatedly emphasized how Brexit has benefited Dublin, with the Irish capital attracting an ever greater number of talents in tech, finance and education — and becoming an ever more international and multicultural city. Yet, if Dublin is the new London, is London the new Rome? With the non-enviable record of 67 governments in the 75 years of the Republic (from 1948 to today) Italy has long stood as an unparalleled case of governmental instability among advanced democracies. Yet, the resignation of Prime Minister Elizabeth Truss in the United Kingdom on 20 October 2022 — less than six weeks after taking office — has caused as much consternation as Schadenfreude (at least from an Italian perspective).

Liz Truss, who had served as Foreign Secretary in the Johnson Government, had been elevated to Leader of the Conservative Party, and therefore Prime Minister of the UK, on 6 September 2022, following a vote by the 160.000 plus members of the Tory Party, prevailing over Rishi Sunak, who was the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the prior cabinet. After campaigning on a platform of low taxes, and limited spending — which echoed the late 1970s tones of PM Margaret Thatcher — Truss rapidly implemented once elected what she had promised. In particular, PM Truss and Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng put forward an aggressive plan of tax reductions for high earners, with new unfunded public debt, while keeping the independent Office of Budget Responsibility in the dark. As largely anticipated by analysts, this fantasy plan utterly failed the test of reality. With inflation surging and the Bank of England tightening its monetary policy, markets tumbled, sterling devalued and the yield on government bonds reached unprecedented heights.

To remedy this worrisome situation and tame the financial markets, on 14 October 2022 PM Truss sacked her friend Kwasi Kwarteng as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and replaced him with a mainstream Conservative, Jeremy Hunt. The new Chancellor swiftly shelved the ideological Truss-Kwarteng plan, with an 180° degree policy turn that left Truss the PM in name only. With the resignation of the Home Secretary Suella Braverman on 19 October 2022, however, it was hardly sustainable for Liz Truss to hang on — and the following day she eventually threw the towel.

The Truss Government will go down in history as one of the shortest in UK constitutional practice. The Truss premiership is also the 4^th in just over 6 years, with David Cameron Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss succeeding each other in short sequence. This is an incredible degree of instability for a country that traditionally praised itself for the solidity of its institutions. And the cause of this all can be blamed on Brexit — the decision of the UK to leave the European Union.

As it has been extensively pointed out in scholarly research, Brexit was an ideological project largely driven by the unproven assumption that, by leaving the EU, Britain could solve its structural problems and be Great again. As such, the Brexit rallying cry combined on the one hand anti-globalist euro skeptics, who blamed challenges like migration, unemployment, and the loss of identity, to Europe and its elites; and on the other hand pro-empire nostalgic, who dreamed of a Britannia unshackled from the EU corps ruling the waves 2.0. As it happened, these contradictory forces joined together were strong enough to prevail in the June 2016 referendum, but have been unable to coexist politically ever since.

In fact, political parties — including Labour — have been internally torn on the matter of Brexit, with especially the Tories — in government continuously since 2010 — unable to chart a clear course forward. Famously, Cameron was decapitated by the fateful referendum he called in the hope to quell rightwing backbenchers of his party. May struggled to govern her unruly parliamentary majority — which three times voted against her draft Withdrawal Agreement brokered with the EU. Johnson, despite securing a landslide in the early general elections of December 2019, had to go in 30 months, his administration (and personal life) mired in scandal. And Truss lasted only 6 weeks.

Ironies aside, however, the instability of the UK is not good news for the EU, Ireland and the rest of the liberal world. Not only are there local problems that require British cooperation to be solved — including restoring power-sharing institutions in Northern Ireland, which still lack a functioning executive 5 months after the watershed May 2022 Legislative Assembly vote. But also the global security and energy challenges posed by the illegal Russian war of aggression in Ukraine have raised the stakes for the west. And this requires a reliable UK.

Nevertheless, none of that will be attained until the British political and cultural elites reckon with the leftovers of Brexit. The decision to leave the EU was largely driven by ideological fantasies which have very little bearing on reality. Whether the UK is inside the EU or not, it will have to maintain a sound budgetary framework; a comprehensive rulebook from finance to agriculture; and close alignment with the EU and its partners on matters such as sanctions and diplomacy. Boasts in favor of bonfire of regulations, Singapore-on-Thames and Global Britain, are slogans that can win you an election, but will not get you very far with the financial markets and the international community. It’s now time for the UK to accept that even if it has left the EU, it will have to go about with very EU-like ways of doing things. And that means also working closely with, rather than against, the EU to settle for good the controversies around the Northern Ireland Protocol.

While observers of Italian politics know that Rome is always a source of Machiavellian excitement, we now need London to return a more boring and predictable capital.

 

Image credits: GOV.UK