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Natalie Nougayrède is absolutely right in her Guardian column asserting that Germany cannot lead the free world. The country is hardly looking beyond its own borders. She notes this is very similar to the UK at the moment, but for different reasons. While the provincialism of the UK election was largely due to psychological factors, there is a genuine lack of interest in world affairs in Germany, where neither Europe nor the wider world play a role in the campaign. She believes that the deep reason for navel-gazing is the relative success of the German economy, which has led to an unprecedented level of complacency. This is her overall conclusion:

"To be sure, all politics is local. But the Germans will choose Merkel yet again because they believe she will protect them from external pressures, not help transform the world, or Europe, for the better. Most just want to keep things the way they are: an apparently placid, content country that likes rules to be strictly respected and doesn’t want to be troubled much by what’s going on beyond its realm. A Kantian village in a world that has become ever more Hobbesian. Can that be real?"

There is always entertainment value in watching UK politics, and we are once again in one of those wonderful backstabbing moments as Boris Johnson is trying to organise a palace coup against his prime minister. It came in the form of a 4000-word essay in the Daily Telegraph, which we would strongly urge readers not to read.

Rather, it is more fruitful to take a step back and ask about the political reality of Brexit. According also to the Daily Telegraph this morning, Johnson will try to confront May this week, presumably in the cabinet, demanding that the UK should not accept a Brexit bill. This would effectively mean a cliff-edge Brexit in 2019. Newspapers have been reporting that May is about to make just that concession when she sets out her vision of the transition agreement, in an eagerly awaited speech in Florence on Friday. What Johnson is proposing - not to pay any money beyond what is legally necessary from the British legal interpretation - would effectively mean Brexit without an Article 50 agreement, and without any hopes of a trade agreement in subsequent years. Even if there is a majority in the Conservative Party to replace May - which we don't believe - there is definitely no majority in the House of Commons in favour of such a hard version of Brexit. If Johnson were to become prime minister, the Article 50 talks would end. There would be enough Tory rebels to boycott the Repeal Bill by supporting various amendments, and there may well be a concerted attempt by both Houses of the Parliament to undo a hard Brexit - which, in the absence of an Article 50 agreement, can only mean undoing Brexit itself. The Parliament is legally in a position to call for a second referendum, and while we see no chance of this for so long as May is leader, we see a much bigger probability if Johnson were to become prime minister. 

We have been arguing all along that a Brexit reversal is not likely. The only scenario where we believe this is more than likely would be if a hard Brexit in March 2019 became a certainty.

The harshest version of Brexit does have its share of advocates in the UK. Among noted newspaper commentators, one is Dominique Lawson who raises a question we ourselves have been asking since just after Brexit: would manufacturers really relocate out of the UK to keep their supply chains in tact? An alternative is, of course, the very opposite strategy - they could concentrate production in the UK. Lawson said he spoke to advisers to multinational companies who seem to be more concerned about the UK's political climate than about Brexit as such. 

"...if there are to be post-Brexit tariffs on products manufactured here (such as cars) which have complex European supply chains, then they see a stark choice between locating more of those supply chains in the UK, or in the EU. A decision in favour of the former — which would actually move jobs from the EU to the UK — depends on Britain continuing to offer an increasingly more attractive corporate tax regime than that of the EU generally."