Britain’s attack on its own protocol is one more exercise in Brexit gaslighting
Forget, for the moment, the technical details of the Northern Ireland protocol bill that seeks to renege on Britain’s commitments under its withdrawal agreement with the European Union. Forget – as the British government itself has done – old-fashioned principles of conservatism such as telling the truth, keeping your word and obeying the laws you yourself have made.
Think, rather, of the strategy that Johnny Depp’s lawyers employed against Amber Heard. It is called Darvo – deny, attack and reverse victim and offender. This legislation should be called the Darvo bill: deny the flagrant breach of international law. Attack the very thing you are purporting to defend, which is the political and economic stability of Northern Ireland. And blame others (in this case the EU) for the known consequences of your own choices.
The bill is not, as Boris Johnson claimed on Monday, “a bureaucratic change that needs to be made”. It is an exercise in gaslighting. Its purpose is to invent an alternative reality in which Johnson did not himself create the protocol, did not claim of it that “There will be no checks on goods going from GB to NI, or NI to GB”, did not call it “a good arrangement … with the minimum possible bureaucratic consequences” and did not insist that “it is fully compatible with the Good Friday agreement”.
And certainly did not win an election on the basis that this text was his magic formula that allowed him to get Brexit done. If you think you remember such things, you must be mad. In the pseudo-reality now being conjured, it is the EU that forced this horrible deal on a defenceless Britain. Self-pity has always been the dominant emotion in Brexit, and it has shaped the story the Brexiters are now telling themselves
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