TODAY the commentariat, and practically no one else, hasactually been waiting excitedly for Boris Johnson to program his colours in Britain’s upcoming EU referendum. The fantastic minute came at 3: 30pm with the BBC’s verification of previous reports that London’s mayor would back a Brexit vote. This news is bad for the In project—he is the nation’s most popular politicalleader, after all—though not almost as much as some delighted Eurosceptics will claim in the coming hours. It positions Mr Johnson to run for the Conservative management must David Cameron lose the referendum, and possibly, though not as rightaway, if he does not. But shamelessly self-centered and mostlikely contrary to his genuine views on the EU though it is, the mayor’s relocation is maybe not totally disingenuous. He has constantly firmlyinsisted that his choice would turn on his issues that EU subscription is incompatible with British sovereignty. Expect him to concentrate on this objection in the coming days.
Mr Johnson has hence linedup himself directly with Michael Gove, the justice secretary with whom he consorted earlier in the week and who stated his assistance for Brexit on Friday in a 1,500-word declaration that extremely focused on nationwide self-rule. The “decisions which govern all our lives”, Mr Gove argued, oughtto be taken distinctively by “people we select and who we can toss out if we desire alter”. It is worth taking this range of Euroscepticism seriously—partly because it comes from the more thoughtful, liberal wing of the motion (Mr Gove is not the Little Englander of Europhile tradition, for example). But likewise because it will function really plainly in the arguments inbetween now and June 23rd, particularly as Mr Johnson will now probably endedupbeing the face of the Out project.
The Johnson-Gove argument goes something like this: unlike lotsof continental nations, Britain has an unbroken custom of liberty and agent democracy (a “golden thread”) dating back to Magna Carta and shared by other Anglophone countries. This custom is nearly distinctively uncompromising about responsibility, unfaltering in the conviction that power must rest just in the hands of leaders chosen by and answerable to a country makingup a demos, a neighborhood of shared presumptions and experiences. Thus the EU, responsible to immigrants as well as Britons, breaks the spiritual bond of shared power inbetween decisionmakers and those on whose behalf they act.
The defect in this case lies in the custom’s optimistic meaning of sovereignty. For Mr Johnson and Mr Gove, being sovereign is like being pregnant—you either are or you aren’t. Yet significantly in today’s post-Westphalian world, genuine sovereignty is relative. A nation that declines straight-out to swimmingpool authority is one that has no control over the contamination wandering over its borders, the requirements of monetary guideline impacting its economy, the customer and trade standards to which its exporters and importers are bound, the tidiness of its seas and the security and financial crises moving shock waves—migration, terrorism, market volatility—deep into domestic life. To live with globalisation is to acknowledge that numerous laws (both those developed by federalgovernments and those which bubble up at no one’s wish) are global monsters whether we like it or not. If sovereignty is the lack of shared disturbance, the most sovereign nation in the world is North Korea.
Thus the EU is simply one of thousands of invasions on the sort of sovereignty that the likes of Mr Johnson so value. Britain