‘Brexit’: The beginning of the end?
As storm clouds darkened dramatically over Washington this week, the clouds also were gathering over London and Europe.
Prime Minister Theresa May sent a five-page letter to the European Union this week giving formal notification of Britain’s intention to withdraw from the EU, thus setting in motion a historic event.
Two years of intense negotiations will now begin, with no guarantee of a successful outcome for either Britain or Europe. Great Britain itself remains a deeply divided country, with England having voted to withdraw — an event known as “Brexit,” while Scotland and Northern Ireland having voted decisively to remain.
The Scottish government, dominated by the Scottish Nationalists, is so upset that it has demanded a second independence referendum, something that is unlikely to happen as London, which has the final say, already has said no.
We need to put the Brexit negotiations in a wider context to grasp what really is happening.
It is clear that a wave of nationalistic populism has rolled across Europe and America during the past year, although its peak might already have passed.
Moderates have won recent elections in the Netherlands, Belgium and Austria, indicating Europe’s electorates have already begun to move back to the center.
Great Britain, however, is in a somewhat different position.
Following World War II, Britain and the U.S. became the main architects of the postwar Western world order. Together, they fashioned NATO and the Marshall Plan, and together, along with the French, formed the Berlin Airlift.
Although most of the money and material came from the U.S., the postwar alliance could not have succeeded without the immense political and moral prestige of the British in the wake of World War II.
In the dark days following the war, the close intelligence relationship between the United Kingdom and the U.S. was formed. It remains a robust and intimate relationship even today, including Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
This relationship, upon which was built the liberal world of Western Europe and America, is now endangered, partly because of the pronounced skepticism of President Donald Trump and partly because of the rise of angry and discontented European conservatives who see their countries being snatched away by the recent waves of migrants from the Middle East and elsewhere.
The British and the Americans on the one hand, and the Europeans on the other, see the world in very different ways. The European view of the social contract that binds nations together is far more statist than that of the U.S. and the U.K. This is why the Europeans have always referred to the British and Americans as “les AngloSaxons.”
While the Europeans may always have wanted — and still do — the British as members of the EU, they also have remained skeptical about British membership, regarding the British as, at best, reluctant Europeans. In this, they are largely correct. The British have never really seen themselves as Europeans except in the geographical sense. This attitude on the part of the British has moderated somewhat over the past 40 years of British membership in the EU. And it is no doubt true that young Britons are much more comfortable as Europeans than were previous generations.
Nevertheless, the British as a whole voted last year to leave the EU, and the formal process of leaving began this week.
Right now, Parliament is debating the Great Repeal Bill in which thousands of European laws passed during the last 40 years will become British laws, and the U.K. will no longer recognize the European supreme court.
From now on, it is British law and British courts that decide legal matters in the U.K. Negotiations over the next two years are expected to be complex and contentious.
European negotiators do not want to make it easy for the U.K., for fear this will encourage other EU members who are lukewarm about their membership. The British will fight especially hard to retain London’s position as Europe’s financial capital and to prevent a flight of banks from London to Paris and Frankfurt.
No political party in London wants to see the end of the old world order that Britain helped to establish after World War II.
Neither do Republicans and Democrats in Washington.
But the rise of nationalist populism and the skepticism shown by Trump to the established order that has kept our world together for the past 70 years has raised profound questions about the survival of that order.
The Brexit negotiations that began this week make the challenge even more difficult.
Bill Stewart writes about current affairs from Santa Fe. He is a former U.S. Foreign Service officer and worked as a correspondent for Time magazine.
We need to put the Brexit negotiations in a wider context to grasp what really is happening.