What is likely to be Britain’s next prime minister – Truss leads the British Conservatives by a huge margin in all polls in the race for the presidency of the British Conservatives – made a gaffe that is more than a linguistic slip.
The relationship between the two countries is not the best due to the dispute over fishing licenses and refugees who are trying to cross the English Channel to Great Britain in boats from French beaches.
In Truss’ statements, however, a shirt-sleeved nationalism is visible, for which the 47-year-old received applause from her right-wing party friends and Brexit supporters. In any case, the faux pas does not bode well for Britain’s relationship with its friends on the European continent, which is also of vital importance.
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Especially since “Team Truss” leaked to the British media almost at the same time that the new “Iron Lady” of Great Britain – Truss likes to see herself as Margaret Thatcher’s political heir – is thinking of overriding the controversial Northern Ireland protocol of the Brexit treaty, and apparently wants to accept a trade war with the EU.
One would have expected Britain’s most senior diplomat to resist the temptation to put her internal party ambitions ahead of her country’s interests in an atmosphere still emotionally heated by the UK’s exit from the EU.
Tough dispute over Northern Ireland
But it’s not the first time this has happened to her. The affront to Scotland’s regional head of government, Nicola Sturgeon, who attacked Truss as a “self-promoter”, could still take revenge. In any case, Truss did a disservice to the cohesion of the country. Scottish nationalists pushing for independence are rubbing their hands.
Politically, Truss’s reignited dispute over Northern Ireland is the most dangerous. With the threat she launched to repeal the Northern Ireland Protocol, the Conservatives turned another foreign head of state against her even before she is expected to move into 10 Downing Street: US President Joe Biden, himself of Irish descent, has repeatedly asked London to do so to settle the Northern Ireland conflict with the EU amicably.
Great Britain and the EU had agreed in the Brexit Treaty that the Northern Irish province would continue to follow the rules of the EU internal market in order to prevent a hard border with the Republic of Ireland.
The customs border therefore runs through the Irish Sea, making it difficult for goods to move between Northern Ireland and the rest of Britain and raising fears among provincial Unionists of being politically decoupled from the kingdom.
Truss, the new darling of Brexit hardliners, had already launched a legislative initiative in June that would allow British ministers to circumvent the Northern Ireland Protocol in individual cases. Should that push stall in the House of Lords, Truss, who was still campaigning for her country’s EU membership during the 2016 referendum, could scuttle the most politically sensitive part of the Brexit deal by using the suspension clause.
Macron’s lesson in diplomacy
The fact that Brussels is also fueling the conflict through its own mistakes makes it easier for Truss to follow through with her hard line. The EU’s refusal to date to allow British scientists to continue working on the European research project Horizon creates bad blood and can hardly be justified in the matter.
It is also hardly comprehensible that British steel producers will soon have to pay an import duty of 25 percent for their deliveries to Northern Ireland because the EU’s global import quotas have been exhausted.
The politician took the attack from Great Britain calmly.
(Photo: AP)
Such political stupidities only provide new ammunition for Truss and her hardliners. In view of the common threat to Europe posed by Putin’s Russia, it seems politically small-minded when the Europeans quarrel over customs borders, subsidy funds and steel quotas.
Truss has rightly branded Putin an “appalling dictator.” Her party colleague Alistair Burt condemned the fact that she cannot decide whether Macron is “friend or foe” as “a desperately serious mistake”.
Nevertheless, Macron reacted politically astutely and elegantly to Truss’ crude attack: “I can say with absolute certainty that the British people are a good friend and ally, regardless of who is in power, and sometimes despite the heads of government and the little mistakes they might make in their campaign statements.”
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