Britain’s
Brexit Leap in the Dark
Roger
Cohen JUNE 24, 2016 LONDON —
The
British have given the world’s political, financial and business establishment
a massive kick in the teeth by voting to leave the European Union, a historic
decision that will plunge Britain into uncertainty for years to come and
reverses the integration on which the Continent’s stability has been based.
Warnings
about the dire consequences of a British exit from President Barack Obama,
Britain’s political leaders, major corporations based in Britain and the
International Monetary Fund proved useless. If anything, they goaded a mood of
defiant anger against those very elites.
This
resentment has its roots in many things but may be summed up as a revolt
against global capitalism. To heck with the experts and political correctness
was the predominant mood in the end.
A
majority of Britons had no time for the politicians that brought the world a
disastrous war in Iraq, the 2008 financial meltdown, European austerity,
stagnant working-class wages, high immigration and tax havens for the superrich.
That
some of these issues have no direct link to the European Union or its muchmaligned
Brussels bureaucrats did not matter. It was a convenient target in this restive
moment that has also made Donald Trump the presumptive Republican nominee — and
may now take him further still on a similar wave of nativism and anti-establishment
rage.
David
Cameron, the British prime minister prodded into holding the referendum by the
right of his Conservative Party, said he would resign, staying on in a
caretaker capacity for a few months. This was the right call, and an inevitable
one.
He
has led the country into a debacle. The pound duly plunged some 10 percent to
its lowest level since 1985. Global markets were rattled. Mainstream European
politicians lamented a sad day for Europe and Britain; rightists like Marine Le
Pen in France exulted. The world has entered a period of grave volatility.
Ever-greater
unity was a foundation stone since the 1950s not only of peace in Europe,
putting an end to the repetitive wars that had ravaged generations of
Europeans, but also of the global political order. Now all bets are off. A
process of European unraveling may have begun.
A
core assumption of American foreign policy — that a united Europe had overcomes
its divisions — has been undermined. Geert Wilders, the rightwing anti-immigrant
Dutch politician, promptly tweeted: “Hurrah for the British! Now it is our
turn. Time for a Dutch referendum!” The European Union is more vulnerable than
at any point since its inception.
The
sacred images of old — like French President François Mitterrand and German
Chancellor Helmut Kohl handinhand at Verdun — have lost their resonance. The
travails of the euro, the tide of immigration (both within the European Union
from poorer to richer members and from outside), and high unemployment have led
to an eerie collective loss of patience, prudence and memory. Anything but this
has become a widespread sentiment; irrationality is in the air.
The
colossal leap in the dark that a traditionally cautious people — the British —
were prepared to take has to be taken seriously. It suggests that other such
leaps could occur elsewhere, perhaps in Trump’s America. A Trump victory in
November is more plausible now because it has an immediate precedent in a
developed democracy ready to trash the status quo for the high-risk unknown.
Fiftytwo
percent of the British population was ready to face higher unemployment, a
weaker currency, possible recession, political turbulence, the loss of access
to a market of a half-billion people, a messy divorce that may take as long as
two years to complete, a very long subsequent negotiation of Britain’s
relationship with Europe, and the tortuous redrafting of laws and trade treaties
and environmental regulations — all for what the rightwing leader Nigel Farage
daftly called “Independence Day.”
Britain
was a sovereign nation before this vote in every significant sense. It remains
so. Estrangement Day would be more apt.
The
English were also prepared to risk something else: the breakup of the United
Kingdom. Scotland voted to remain in the European Union by a margin of 62
percent to 38 percent. Northern Ireland voted to remain by 56 percent to 44
percent. The Scots will now likely seek a second referendum on independence.
Divisions were not only national. London voted overwhelmingly to remain. But
the countryside, small towns and hard-hit industrial provincial industrial
centers voted overwhelmingly to leave and carried the day. A Britain fissured
between a liberal, metropolitan class centered in London and the rest was
revealed.
Europe’s
failings — and they have been conspicuous over the past decade — are simply not
sufficient to explain what Britain has done to itself. This was a vote against
the global economic and social order that the first 16 years of the 21st
century have produced. Where it leads is unclear. The worst is not inevitable
but it is plausible.
Britain will remain an important power. But it
will punch beneath its weight. It faces serious, long-term political and
economic risk. Anger was most focused on the hundreds of thousands of
immigrants coming into Britain each year, most from other European Union
nations like Poland. Farage’s U.K. Independence Party, abetted by much of the
press, was able to whip up a storm that conflated E.U. immigration with the
trickle from the Middle East.
Wild
myths, like imminent Turkish membership of the European Union, were cultivated.
Violence entered the campaign on a wave of xenophobia and takeour-country back
rhetoric. In this light, it is not surprising that Trump supporters were
delighted. Sarah Palin welcomed the “good news.” One tweet from a supporter
read: “I’m thrilled with U.K. 1st step — time 4 all the dominoes 2 fall, every
country to leave & end the E.U.”
Trump
arrived in Britain on Friday, a timely visit. He said the vote to quit the E.U.
was “a great thing” and the British “took back their country.” He did not say
from whom, but the specter of our times is a dark, controlling global force
stealing national identity. It is quite likely that Cameron’s successor will be
Boris Johnson, the bombastic, mercurial and sometimes fact-lite former London
mayor with his trademark mop of blond hair. Johnson was a leader of the
campaign for “Brexit”; he may now reap his political reward. The Era of the
Hair looms.
Timothy
Garton Ash, the historian, paraphrasing Churchill on democracy, wrote before
the referendum that: “The Europe we have today is the worst possible Europe,
apart from all the other Europes that have been tried from time to time.” It
was a wise call to prudence in the imperfect real world. Now, driven by myths
about sovereignty and invading hordes, Britain has ushered in another time of
treacherous trial for the European Continent and for itself. My nephew wrote on
Facebook that he had never been less proud of his country. I feel the same way
about the country I grew up in and left.
