Brexit minister Steve Baker. Image: BBC, fair use.
As I crawled through our new Brexit minister’s asbestos-lined maze of corporate lobby links, something became more obvious than ever. Most of the liberal commentary on Britain’s negotiations to leave the EU has fallen for the first lie of nationalism: that there is such a thing as a coherent national interest.
While the right wing press waves its union flags as it cheers ‘our’ negotiating team, left and liberal commentators have largely lined up to sneer at how incompetent and underprepared Britain’s government is for such a complex process. But, while it’s largely true that David Davis and his junior ministers seem not to have much idea what they are doing, it’s not their incompetence that we should be worrying about.
