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Opinion
Inside Out
by David Dodwell
Inside Out
by David Dodwell
Boris Johnson’s election victory in Brexit Britain shows the way for a gridlocked Hong Kong
- The sweeping Conservative victory shows that people tire of uncertainty, and that democratic processes can break political gridlocks
- Hongkongers, too, want an end to the uncertainty on the city’s autonomy come 2047 and the city desperately needs charismatic leaders to take up the conversation with Beijing
After months of railing against Boris Johnson and his Rottweiler campaign to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union (EU), I stand humbled. British voters have put their trust in a political opportunist who by reputation cannot be trusted. They have provided a clear and irreversible mandate to take the UK out of the EU.
But instead of being forlorn, I feel relief. The end to uncertainty is good. So, too, is the end to Remainers’ wishful thinking. One has to say: “Congratulations, Prime Minister … Now what?”
In a world riven by indecisive drift – whether over the largely theatrical impeachment of the president of the United States, the bunker paralysis of Hong Kong’s administration, the US-China trade war, or world leaders’ incapacity to wrestle with the existential challenge of climate change – the decisive closure on Brexit feels deeply cleansing.
For Britain’s endangered democracy, the Johnson landslide is profoundly important. After the biggest victory since Margaret Thatcher in 1987, Britain’s Conservative government now has an 80-seat majority to act freely on its own mandate. No fudge and muddle with uncomfortable coalition partners. No ruinous gridlock in Westminster or mind-numbing obsession with constitutional protocols.
That is the upside for Johnson. The downside is that he can no longer pin failure to progress on anyone but himself. As the SCMP’s editorial emphasised on Saturday: “A new era has begun”. After a weekend to savour his sweeping victory, Johnson returns to 10 Downing Street with a set of sobering political challenges that will test his government’s mettle.
Beyond getting the Brexit withdrawal bill through parliament – which should now be a doddle – he must begin to work on his core election promise to “Get Brexit Done”. But an impatient electorate that voted to get Brexit behind them, to get down to the urgent problems at home, in the health service, education and housing for example, are about to discover that Brexit will still dominate the agenda for a terribly long time.
Political leadership needs the kind of charismatic passion that Johnson brought to the British electorate
As the Financial Times noted on Saturday, the imperative must surely be the “banalisation” of Brexit – making the dreadful, controversial complexities of separation and the defining of the UK’s future relationship with the EU as technical, boring and bureaucratic as possible, as out of sight and out of mind as possible.
Johnson may have settled for now the civil war that shredded the Conservative Party for the past decade, but he has “betrayed” his Northern Irish allies, and is about to enter pitched warfare with the Scottish Nationalists, who have won as emphatically in Scotland as the Conservatives have swept England. With their “renewed, refreshed and strengthened” mandate for independence, and emphatic preference to remain in the EU, the challenge for the “Disunited Kingdom” is likely to be immediate.
At least there is relief that the catastrophic collapse of the Labour Party, even in areas of the UK that had voted Labour for a century, has fomented a full-blown civil war over Corbynism that will hobble Labour opposition in parliament for several years.
It was fascinating to hear Johnson explicitly acknowledge that those traditional Labour votes won over last Thursday were strictly on loan for the purposes of getting Brexit behind them. To stand any chance of retaining those votes, he will have to stand by grass-roots spending promises that most experts have said were financially impossible. It will be fascinating to watch how Johnson’s Faustian deal with Britain’s working poor evolves.
For those of us sitting in politically paralysed Hong Kong, Britain’s Brexit election can offer direct and valuable insights. First must surely be that robust democratic processes can successfully – and peacefully – manage gridlocked challenges. Hong Kong’s newly-elected district councillors lack the powers of British MPs, but there are many (non-violent) powers they can employ to positively influence the shape of Hong Kong’s political future.
Second, the UK elections have illustrated the value of charisma and theatrical articulacy in the political process. Political leadership needs the kind of charismatic passion that Johnson brought to the British electorate.
Jo Swinson, dull but a worthy and sincere leader of the centre-ground Liberal Democrats and campaigner-in-chief for the Leave cause, has much in common with the dull, grey administrators occupying Hong Kong’s top political offices. Small surprise she lost her seat, and left Britain’s moderate middle under-represented.
Small surprise, too, that our leaders in Hong Kong so sadly underwhelm. Where are those in Hong Kong with the capacity to energise and inspire? Will some emerge from among our new district councillors? Will Beijing allow the emergence of such local political leaders, so long as they do not cross the “red line” of calling for independence?
Britain’s call for full independence from the EU might never have emerged if its need for autonomy in key areas had been respected. Beijing must surely talk more openly and clearly about the details of Hong Kong’s autonomies under “one country, two systems” if it is to nip in the bud those radical, marginal voices calling irrationally for independence.
Beijing should clarify what happens to Hong Kong after 2047 to ease the fear
Beijing should clarify what happens to Hong Kong after 2047 to ease the fear
During Britain’s Brexit debate, economists and business leaders worried that Britain’s distinct strengths as, as the Financial Times put it, “an unusually connected country” would be jeopardised. That worry is still to be resolved. Surely Hong Kong’s key strength is that it is similarly a “uniquely connected” economy, and that this remains its key value to both China and the international economies with which China trades and does business.
For Hong Kong, a “Hexit” would clearly be catastrophic, but getting clarity and greater confidence over the details of Hong Kong’s long-term autonomy should probably be our single most important political priority. What a pity we do not at present have the political leaders to deliver it.
David Dodwell researches and writes about global, regional and Hong Kong challenges from a Hong Kong point of view
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Getting something done
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