The 12th century chronicler Henry of Huntingdon tells us the story of King Canute the Great attempting to hold back the waters of the sea. Canute was indeed a great warrior king, succeeding in conquering and ruling over England, Denmark and parts of Norway. He was also reputed to be very humourless and vain. So this apocryphal story about Canute, egged on by sycophantic courtiers, trying to command the waves is probably a way of poking fun at his vanity.
Canute may have been the first English leader to have ideas above his station, but he was certainly not the last. For many years Britannia did indeed claim with some justification to rule the waves. However the gradual erosion of her empire, dealt a death blow by World War 2, put paid to those claims. But there have always been some who refuse to accept this.
In 1956 Prime Minister Anthony Eden, in secret collaboration with the French and Israeli governments, launched an invasion of Egypt in response to the Egyptian government’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal. Historians largely regard this as a total disaster. It was not supported by the USA and was condemned by the UN. It led to an almost total loss of British influence in the Middle East. President Nasser of Egypt was widely regarded as a hero across the Arab world for his resistance to the British. A year later Eden announced his resignation as Prime Minister on health grounds. The hubris of a post-colonial nation and Prime Minister was clear for the world to see.
Shortly after this, in 1961, the UK first applied to join the European Union, a move which at the time was vetoed by France. Some in the Conservative Party (and to be fair some on the left of politics too) wished that that had remained the case. However in 1973 a Conservative government took us into the EU, and in 1991 a Conservative government renegotiated the terms of our membership under the Maastricht Treaty. This was a running sore in the Major Government of the early 1990s and arguably it was the Eurosceptics (the “bastards” as Major called them) who finally brought down his government and ushered in 13 years of Labour rule.
The Eurosceptics continued to be a thorn in the side of the next Conservative PM, David Cameron, until he came up with a Baldrickesque “cunning plan”. He would have a referendum on membership of the EU and once the public voted overwhelmingly to remain that would shut the Eurosceptics up for a generation. Unfortunately for him the public voted the “wrong” way which led to a swift end to his premiership.
In the ensuing campaigning the Brexiteers (Eurosceptics) got the upper hand, mainly through peddling a lot of obvious untruths contained in slogans like “taking back control” and “restoring the sovereignty of Parliament”. Oh, and, arithmetic was never their strong point either. Apparently our membership of the EU cost us £350m per week, which by my arithmetic is £18.2bn per year, which could be spent on the NHS. Only, our assessed contribution to the EU budget was actually £17.8bn or £342m per week. But who cares about the odd £0.4bn? But this was the assessed contribution, not what we actually paid. When you deducted our specially negotiated rebate of £4.9bn., plus the funds we received back in EU grants of £5.8bn., you arrived at a net cost for our EU membership of £7.1bn. or £136m. per week. But who cares about an odd £11.1bn. or £164m per week inaccuracy eh?
This fantasy approach to sums spread to their economic prognostications about the effects of leaving the Single Market and erecting barriers to trade with the largest single trading partner right on our doorstep. Contrary to the predictions of most respected economists that this would lead to a 4% contraction in our GDP, the Brexiteers breezily predicted that our economy would grow because of all the trade deals we would do with other countries outside of the EU. Once we had restored our sovereignty, we would be free of the shackles of the EU and all its regulations and restrictions and would be free to pursue our own path. It turned out these mythical trade deals would come at a cost, if they were available at all.
Now the Brexiteer in Chief may have been deposed. But in his place the Conservatives have foisted on us someone worse – a true believer. Someone who truly believes in her own myths of the sovereignty of the UK to do whatever we want. Someone who truly believes that slashing taxes, especially for the already very rich, will lead to economic growth (in the face of all the evidence to the contrary). Someone who truly believes in trickle down economics – she has even managed to provoke the Archbishop of Canterbury into saying she is wrong about this. But that is water off a duck’s back to the true believer. She believes in her creed and nothing can shake her faith. She truly believes she can turn back the waves.
From the look on her face at her press conference on Friday you can see that the cognitive dissonance has begun to set in. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. The waves were supposed to stop, not keep on rolling in. For some of the other true believers the problem is now being rationalised as she didn’t go far enough and fast enough in implementing her slash and burn economics.
Perhaps Ms. Truss is just beginning to realise what has been obvious to many of us for some time, that, to change the metaphor, the Emperor’s new clothes are really no clothes at all.