Those unsympathetic to Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and/or Boris Johnson might think that both seem to lack principles, but they have adhered to certain quite fixed ideas with consequences for their countries. In AMLO’s case, one might cite two examples: energy independence and the conviction that Mexico’s ills have been created by corrupt conservatives who have ruled the country for their own benefit. In Johnson’s case the slogan “Get Brexit done” sums up the credo he has espoused, whether out of conviction or political pragmatism is not entirely clear. From both of these positions flow a number of significant consequences.
AMLO’s devotion to energy independence appeals to an episode that is a soure of great pride for most Mexicans. In the early decades of the 20th century US, British and Dutch petroleum companies were enormously powerful in Mexico. They bullied weak Mexican governments and treated Mexican workers less favourably than their foreign employees. Their behaviour wounded Mexican national pride to its very core.
Workers in Mexico City demand the expropriation of petroleum. The banner to the right reads: Mexican petroleum for the greatness of Mexico
Article 27 of the constitution of 1917 states that the Mexican nation owns all rights to the subsoil, and therefore to petroleum and mineral deposits. For two decades Article 27 was a dead letter, but then in 1937 the Sindicato de Trabajadores Petroleros de la República Mexicana (Union of Petroleum Workers of the Mexican Republic), the oil workers union, demanded a 40 hour week and full sick pay. The companies refused and the workers went on strike. When arbitration failed, on 18 March 1938 President Lázaro Cárdenas signed a decree that nationalized the oil industry, and on 7 June he created a state company, Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), to manage it. 18 March is now a public holiday and the expropriation is commemorated by a monument on the main boulevard of Mexico City, the Paseo de la Reforma.
The Fuente de Petróleos monument as it looked in 1952
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| The Fuente de Petróleos as it looks today from the air |
PEMEX was for a long time the largest oil company in Latin America and one of the largest in the world. It was, alas, also systematically robbed by corrupt managers, union bosses and politicians. It is now enormously indebted and inefficient. Despite its large oil reserves, Mexico imports petroleum because PEMEX lacks refining capacity. AMLO’s predecessor (one of his corrupt conservatives – and, alas, he deserves the label) Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN) attempted to reform the Mexican energy industry (oil and electricity) by opening it up to foreign investors and competition.
To AMLO this was anathema. He has taken steps to reverse EPN’s reforms of both the oil and electricity industries. AMLO has plans for PEMEX to build a new refinery in his home state, Tabasco, to end Mexico’s dependence on petroleum imports. This decision has a number of significant consequences. Firstly, PEMEX, deeply in debt, lacks the capital to fund the project: the solution is to incur yet more debt. If PEMEX had a track record of efficiently building and managing refineries (it does not), was investing in an energy sector of the future at just the right time (it is not), and was free of the corruption that AMLO denounces (it is not), this might be a wise decision. Instead, it would be no great surprise if the refinery were to be a financial and environmental disaster.
A PEMEX refinery
Energy independence also has consequences for the electricity industry. You might think that Mexico is a country in which solar generation of electricity could flourish. However, when Jan and I lived in Zamora, Michoacán, I was surprised to look out from our flat roof across our neighbourhood to see not a single solar panel. Nor are solar panels much in evidence in the Bahía de Banderas region of the Pacific coast where our son Chris lives and sunshine is abundant. There were hopes that international firms might create a renewable energy boom in Mexico, but this falls foul both of AMLO’s energy independence and of his faith in the future of PEMEX and oil. He has excluded international investment from renewables, and shows no interest in encouraging the Comisión Federal de Electricidad (Federal Electricity Commission) to create a renewable enegry sector. The consequences of energy independence will be increased debt and increased carbon emissions at a time when the world may at last be about to reduce CO2 emissions, and as oil companies themselves beging to talk of investing in renewables.
AMLO is certainly correct to identify corruption as a serious problem. He has concluded that: “When there is no corruption we can finance the budget. As we are demonstrating, the country doesn’t need to get into debt, we don’t need to increase taxes or increase the price of gasoline.” AMLO calls “republican austerity”. The problem is that he seems to believe that by declaring that corruption will be eliminated it simply disappears. Unfortunately, it has not, in part because his own government is not entirely free of corrupt practices. Nevertheless, he has refused to increase the national debt, even in the face of the pandemic. With the notable exception of PEMEX borrowing to fund the new refinery. The result has been depressed growth and severe budget cuts in sectors such as higher education and cultural institutions such as the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (National Institute of Anthropology and History), which managed Mexico’s numerous public museums, archaeological sites and monuments. And the public health system continues to be underfunded.
Since AMLO is convinced that corrupt conservatives are his enemies, it follows, in his mind, that anybody who criticizes him is a corrupt conservative. Now, one of the words that Mexico has contributed to the international lexicon is feminicidio (femicide). On average 10 women are killed violently every day in Mexico. Police and prosecuting authorities have taken no effective action to punish these crimes effectively or to reduce the numbers of women subjected to violence with impunity. Women’s groups have protested vigorously against the crimes and lack of government action to protect women. Since these protests are directed against AMLO’s administration, the protesters are, by definition, corrupt conservatives. AMLO is absolutely unperturbed by the deaths of thousands of Mexican women, but he is absolutely indignant that women should protest against his inaction. Rather as Donald Trump surrounded the White House with fencing to keep out protesters, AMLO surrounded the Palacio Nacional (his residence and office) with fencing to keep out women protesters. The protesters promptly decorated the fencing with portraits of murdered women.
The names of murdered women displayed on the fence outside the Palacio Nacional in Mexico City. The cardboard sign reads "If we don't fight together they will kill us separately"
Rather as AMLO’s energy independence appeals to nationalist sentiment and a vision of a glorious past, Get Brexit Done is a promise to free Britain from the supposed control of dastardly foreigners and for sovereignty to flourish: one might say to Make Britain Great Again. Johnson’s argument has been that this requires a complete break in order that the UK exercise its sovereignty untrammelled in any way by EU restrictions. In particular, the UK negotiators refused to accept anything that would subject the UK to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice or that required the UK to conform to EU rules and standards. The professed goal is to turn the UK into a Global Britain (Johnson likes slogans that mask complex realities).
By “Getting Brexit Done” Johnson has been able to claim that he is a brilliant negotiator who succeeded where his predecessor, Teresa May, failed dismally. The result, he boasts, is one of the largest free trade deals in the world, negotiated in record time. This is not entirely untrue, in that the trading arrangements with the EU impose no tariffs on British goods, but Johnson’s boast conveniently ignores the non-tariff barriers that have been erected in order to surrender not a scintilla of sovereignty to the EU.
Before Brexit all British foodstuffs could be exported without any restrictions to the other 27 countries of the EU because, as an EU member, the UK had agreed to observe EU food sanitary standards. However, Global Britain requires that the UK no longer accept EU standards as a given. Each exporter, therefore, must prove for every delivery that the exported foodstuffs meet EU standards. One example will suffice. A large proportion of British bivalve shellfish (mussels, oysters, clams, cockles, scallops) are (or rather were) exported to EU countries. Immediately after they had been harvested the shellfish would be delivered to the customer, who would then prepare the bivalves for consumption in purification tanks. Since the UK is now a third country, the EU states that this is no longer possible. The shellfish must be purified in the UK before they can be sent to the EU. This poses two problems. Because the EU portion of their production had never required purification in the UK, the UK industry has insufficient purification capacity. Moreover, purifying the shellfish in the UK shortens the shelf life of the product in the EU. All exports to the EU have now been stopped by Johnson’s free trade deal. The relevant government minister has told the shellfish producers that they must either invest in more purification tanks, or freeze the shellfish and sell it to more remote markets.
A large assortment of such third party costs, which impose an equally large assortment of new costs on exporters, such as veterinary inspections, rules of origin certificates and other certifications, have been imposed on businesses in the name of sovereignty.
However, perhaps the most consequential concomitant of Brexit sovereignty is the possible dissolution of the United Kingdom itself. Scotland, a thoroughly anti-Brexit, anti-Boris Johnson part of the UK, has already considered independence in 2014. The issue has not gone away and a sovereign Brexit will likely increase support for independence in Scotland.
But the first constitutional flashpoint is in Northern Ireland. It is worth reminding ourselves that the name of our country is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. There is a clue in the name: Northern Ireland is in some ways, and to some degree separate from, the other three constituent nations. Firstly, the other three nations together occupy one island, one space. Northern Ireland, also known as Ulster, shares a separate island, once a British colony, with Éire, the Republic of Ireland. The inhabitants of Northern Ireland are divided just as the island of Ireland is. Unionists are profoundly suspicious of the Republic and are fervently determined to remain constitutionally part of the UK. Nationalists want quite the opposite: a “border poll” or referendum, as provided for in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, and reunification with the Republic. These divisions are mirrored in religious divisions (Catholic/Protestant), schools (divided by religion), cities (the Belfast “Peace Wall” divides the capital’s Unionist and Nationalist communities), and names (the city that Unionists know as Londonderry is to Nationalists Derry), and community rituals (many Unionists are Orangemen, named for William of Orange, who parade on 12 July to commemorate the Protestant victory at the Battle of the Boyne; Nationalists have their own community events, most recently a mass funeral for a former IRA fighter).
Northern Ireland complicated Brexit since the Northern Ireland Act, which implemented the Good Friday Agreement, was signed by the British and Irish governments and is lodged with the United Nations. One effect of the Act was to remove the border that had separated the Republic and Northern Ireland. Since, at the time the UK and the Republic were members of the EU the abolition of the border was easy to implement since people and goods move freely throughout the EU. However, Brexit sovereignty removes the UK from all the EU’s arrangements and therefore requires that a border be drawn somewhere. The alternative of remaining within EU structures so as to avoid a border was anathema to Brexiters. This matter alone delayed the implementation of Brexit for three years and ended the political career of Prime Minister Teresa May.
Mrs May negotiated with the EU an arrangement informally known as the Irish Backstop. For my American friends, this is a cricket term that denotes a fielder positioned behind the batsman (or nowadays batswoman) and the wicket keeper. The backstop is the last line of defence to prevent the ball reaching the boundary and four runs being scored. The backstop kept the UK and the EU in a common customs territory until the two parties agreed an alternative arrangement, by means of a trade agreement. The alternative, Mrs May declared were a border on the island of Ireland or a border down the Irish Sea (i.e. between Great Britain and Northern Ireland). The former is prohibited by the Northern Ireland Act, the latter, Mrs May declared could not be accepted by any British Prime Minister. Very few MPs (even those of her own party) or political parties accepted the backstop.
Unable to secure support in the House of Commons Mrs May resigned and Boris Johnson “Got Brexit Done” by agreeing the very thing that May said no Prime Minister could accept: an agreement with the EU (the Northern Ireland Protocol) which creates border controls between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Johnson denied that this was so: there would be no border, no forms and if anybody was required to fill in a form to move goods to Northern Ireland from Great Britain Johnson himself would throw the form in the bin. Indeed, he told the people of Northern Ireland, they had their cake and could eat it too: they remained in the EU single market and customs union with free access to the world’s largets market, and would benefit from any trade agreements that the UK negotiated with and non-EU countries. Now, Johnson is not so stupid that he reached an agreement that he did not understand. He simply needed to “Get Brexit Done” and did so by agreeing a border between two parts of the UK and then falsely denying that he had done any such thing.
The lie was soon exposed. Some goods that had been sold from Great Britain to Northern Ireland could no longer be delivered. Shipping routes were diverted to import goods from the EU to the Republic and from there on to Northern Ireland. Supermarkets found that they could not obtain certain goods from Great Britain. And so on. This has infuriated the Unionist community and their political representatives. In the last week or so Unionists have staged riots daily in Belfast and the violence has now spread to Republican districts. Faced with the consequences of his lies, in January Johnson violated the agreement he had signed with the EU by extending the period for which the introduction of certain border controls would be delayed to ease implementation from a few months to 2023. This has not placated the Unionists.
Riots at the Belfast Peace Wall
Both AMLO and Boris Johnson have secured political power on the basis of slogans dressed up as high principles, without regard to the consequences of their decisions. Mexicans and Britons are now paying the price.
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