Even viewed from the land of Magritte and its once famously dysfunctional government, the Brexit paralysis gripping British politics verges on the surreal, according to Charles Michel, the Belgian prime minister.
Mr Michel looks across the English Channel and sees Theresa May’s administration immobilised, normal politics ceasing to function and a civil service increasingly forced to step into the breach. Is Britain turning into Belgium?
“It’s more and more for us a very strange soap, a very strange movie — this impossibility for the British parliament to find clarity about what they want for the future,” the Belgian prime minister told the Financial Times.
While emphasising his respect for Mrs May’s efforts to find a way out, Mr Michel said there had been surprise on the EU side that “the British government was not really prepared for what would happen” after the Leave vote in the country’s 2016 EU referendum.
Belgium is familiar with this kind of paralysis, although the 189-year-old country has also given Europe masterclasses on how to reach across party boundaries to broker compromises of the kind the British prime minister is now trying to reach with Jeremy Corbyn’s opposition Labour party.
The 2010 Belgian elections, which marked a breakthrough for the Flemish separatist N-VA party, brought the country to a political impasse that left it without a federal government for a world-record breaking 541 days.
Mr Michel said his country “paid the bill for this immobility”, which he added cost Belgium international credibility, in spite of its position at the heart of the EU. He characterises his premiership as, in part, a mission to restore his Belgium’s reputation as a solid, reliable partner.
Britain still has some way to go to match that level of stasis, although Mrs May’s floundering efforts to secure a Brexit deal have in effect brought Westminster to a standstill and turned the country — according to one British diplomat — into a “laughing stock”.
The UK government is often in a state of war with itself. The prime minister’s sacking last week of Gavin Williamson, defence secretary, for allegedly leaking details of national security meetings was indicative of a cabinet in disarray. Mr Williamson denies any involvement in the leak.
Mrs May, who runs a minority government, has almost run out of laws to pass and MPs — accustomed to working into the night — now often knock off halfway through the afternoon. On Thursday the House of Commons adjourned at 2.57pm.
With Downing Street unable to find a way forward on Brexit, the only piece of legislation facing MPs in the whole of this week relates to wild animals in circuses. On Friday they have another day off.
The prime minister is scrambling to find minor bills to keep MPs busy, knowing that if she tries to bring forward another full programme of legislation — presented by the monarch in the Queen’s Speech — it would probably be defeated.
This session of parliament, which began in summer 2017, is on course to be the longest in postwar history. Politics is on hold as Mrs May tries to work out how she can resuscitate her Brexit agreement.
Although talks with Labour are scheduled to continue this week, a breakthrough does not appear to be imminent. Legislation that Mrs May had promised — including plans to shake up of social care — has been put into the deep freeze.
Philip Hammond, the chancellor, had hoped to conduct a three-year public spending review this summer to allocate resources to Britain’s cash-strapped public services, struggling after a decade of austerity.
But he is now likely to settle for a simpler one-year rollover of spending plans, arguing that he cannot take long-term decisions until he knows how Brexit is resolved.
“My own view at the moment is that, if we had not clearly found a solution to the Brexit conundrum that put us on our way to delivering an outcome, it would probably not be appropriate to go ahead with a three-year spending review,” Mr Hammond told MPs.
During such moments of turmoil, countries such as Italy have in the past turned to technocrats and civil servants to step up and steer the ship of state, while Belgium has made extensive use of caretaker governments and relied on its powerful regional assembles. In Britain, the unelected bureaucratic machine is starting to assert itself.
One sign of this came in March when Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary, sent a 14 page letter to each member of the cabinet, warning that a no-deal Brexit would lead to 10 per cent price rises in food and direct rule in Northern Ireland.
According to many officials, Sir Mark’s letter was pivotal in turning Mrs May and her squabbling ministers away from a no-deal policy towards an extension of the Article 50 exit process. The country is now not scheduled to leave the EU until Halloween, October 31.
“There’s a robust approach here which you need to see right now when there is so much drift happening in cabinet,” said one official.
But in Brussels, Mr Michel confessed himself confused, as he elaborated on the “feeling for us of surrealism” provoked by the UK’s travails. He added: “It’s very difficult for us to understand because of the thing, Brexit, but also this impossibility for the British parliament to find clarity about what they want for the future.”
As Magritte might have observed of the current curious state of British politics: “Ceci n’est pas un gouvernement.”
