Britain strikes historic blow to EU

Decision to walk could create domino effect

LONDON • Britain will go it alone — turning its back on decades of integration to control its own borders and free itself from the European Union’s spider web of rules and regulations.

It is a bold and risky move for this proud island nation. Few countries have walked away from such a large, prosperous and peaceful alliance in favour of a solo path.

The impact on Europe will be momentous — and won’t be clear for several years at least. Britain’s action comes at a time of maximum peril for the EU, which finds its liberal founding principles under pressure as never before. With one brisk step, Britain has ended the EU’s growth phase and, perhaps, started it on a path of decay and possible dissolution.

Until the last few years, which have been marked by financial and immigration crises, there seemed to be a certain historical inevitability to the expansion of the European Union.

It grew from the rubble of the Second World War, binding together former enemies whose common history was marred by centuries of bloody warfare.

United against a common Soviet enemy, and backed by the considerable firepower of the United States via the NATO alliance, the Western European nations that formed the EU prospered under remarkably liberal trade and immigration policies. Symbols of union abounded: The British and French co-operated to build a formidable Channel Tunnel that forever linked the two nations. Most countries jettisoned their national currency (and a bit of their sovereignty) in favour of the euro, and physical border crossings were dismantled.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and its Eastern European satellites were finally set free from Kremlin control, it seemed only natural that the leaders of the newly liberated countries would look to the EU for inspiration.

So the union grew, moving beyond its core in Western Europe to the edge of the Black Sea.

The situation today is dramatically different. The euro — never adopted by Britain — has faltered badly, emphasizing the splits between wealthy countries and indebted nations like Greece. Europe has been taxed by the unplanned arrival of well over 1 million immigrants fleeing warfare and poverty in the Middle East and Africa, and Islamic communities have come under rhetorical fire following major extremist terror attacks in Paris, Brussels, London and Madrid.

The chaos has led to a reversal of sorts in Eastern Europe, with some leaders rejecting the free movement of people, and to wellgrounded fears in Western Europe that right-wing leaders hostile to the EU are gaining ground in France, Germany and other countries as well.

Britain’s withdrawal must be seen in this context.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s invocation of the brief Article 50 clause curtails the Utopian vision that 28 disparate countries can find common cause that trumps nationalistic concerns. It comes as the EU’s liberal principles are quickly falling out of vogue.

The tests will come quickly now. There will be a presidential vote in April in France, where far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, strongly opposed to the EU and its currency, looks formidable. Vital German elections are set for September.

The future is impossible to know, but the start of Article 50 proceedings puts a merciful end to Britain’s ambivalent relations with the EU bloc after decades of indecision.

Now Britain — no longer imperial, and perhaps to be shorn of Scotland as well — will stand apart once more.