The counter-revolutionary
IF history repeats itself — first tragedy, then farce — what comes next is Boris Johnson, a shape-shifting politician who embodies the contradictions of our age. Johnson is a tribune of the people who grew up with the privileges of the 1 percent; a child of immigrants who campaigned for closed borders; a Conservative who wants to upend the political order; an erudite man who mocks expertise; and a cosmopolitan who casually calls black people “piccaninnies.” Johnson did more than anyone to bury Britain’s European future; but his ultra-flexibility may yet prove to be its salvation.
In his first public appearance after being appointed foreign secretary, Johnson compared the Brexit vote to the French Revolution. Provoking boos at the French Embassy’s Bastille Day celebration, he hailed the referendum as “a great popular uprising against a stifling bureaucratic ancient regime (sic) whose democratic credentials had become very far from obvious.”
But the Brexit vote — with its promise to recreate the Britain of yesterday — is less revolution than counter-revolution. Boris and his band of Brexiteers have more in common with Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, who overturned the French republic to create a new monarchy, than with Danton or Robespierre.
If anyone or anything has a claim to embody the progressive ideals of 1789, it is the EU. The EU has driven a revolution in how countries live together — advancing individual rights, international law, and the pooling of sovereignty. Its transformative power springs from the promise of potential membership, a “neighborhood policy” that exports European values, and its facilitation of global institutionbuilding and copycat regional integration.
Indeed, the most troubling thing about Europe today is not the United Kingdom’s departure, but the fragility and disunity of the remaining 27 states, where the domestic consensus for Europe has all but evaporated. The UK’s “Leave” campaign channeled a widely felt desire to restore past certainties, not to establish new rights. And all member states are subject to the economic insecurity, cultural anxiety and political alienation that new political forces are exploiting by using referenda to recast politics as a fight between the people and self-serving elites.
Britain’s post-referendum economic and political travails will make other EU member states think twice before holding their own popular votes on membership. But make no mistake: The EU is well into an era of disintegration. A slow slide into ungovernability can be just as devastating as a breakup.
Rather than banding together, each new challenge has divided the EU into ever-smaller groups. The euro has divided north and south;