'Something resembling hell': how does the rest of the world view the UK?
China: ‘The Brexit farce has encouraged the nationalists in China, especially the young generation’
Liu Ye, editor of international affairs at Sanlian Life Week magazine in Beijing
I remember the day of the referendum. It was very hot in Beijing that morning and I had gone to a meeting with my publishing agent. I kept checking the BBC app on my phone for news. Finally, after leaving the meeting, while waiting for a taxi, my phone buzzed – the UK had chosen to leave.
Suddenly I was reminded of an old Yugoslav film, Walter Defends Sarajevo, which was very popular in China in the 1970s. There is a famous line that many Chinese people will remember: “The air is shaking, as if the sky is going to burn. The storm is coming.”
Within a few hours, I published an article titled “The storm is coming”. It was read by more than 100,000 people in just one hour. Later, I persuaded my editor to do a cover story on Brexit. We put that out within 72 hours, under the headline: “Brexit: are we facing the reversal of globalisation?” That edition sold almost 200,000 copies – even more than our report on Donald Trump’s presidential win.
Not many Chinese people care about the technical or legal details of the Brexit deal, but the saga has made an impression. The reputation of British democracy has suffered. If you ask someone on the streets of Beijing what they think of Brexit, they might say: “Democracy only leads to confusion.” I know that’s not true, but it is difficult to change their impression.
For the past two or three decades, the US and Britain have been cultural symbols in Chinese people’s eyes: the US powerful, rich, enviable; the UK exquisite, elegant. Public intellectuals, especially liberals, talk about the British style of constitutionalism, comparing it to our Soviet-style totalitarian regime. Students know more about Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher than JFK or Bill Clinton. That is real “soft power”.
But now this image has collapsed. In the Brexit farce, there is no Churchill or Thatcher, only a dozen mediocre politicians, none of whom want to take responsibility or unite the nation.
This has encouraged the nationalists in China, especially the young generation born after 1989. With the “help” of the great firewall, they knew little about the inner crisis of their own country. But they see that China now has more aircraft carriers, more missiles and more hi-tech fighters, while the UK is trapped in the wallows of Brexit. There is an inner voice in their hearts: “Now we are strong. They are weak. We have nothing to learn from them.” That’s the danger.
Today, no one really cares about Boris Johnson, but since he was the one who called for Brexit at the beginning, Chinese people will be interested to see how he can turn his commitment into reality.As told to Lily Kuo
France: ‘Once, we used to hold up British parliamentary life as the Rolls-Royce of liberal democracy’
Sylvie Kauffmann, editorial director and contributor, Le Monde
First, I should say that we French Europeans are grateful to our British friends for making sure one word has exited our vocabulary: Frexit.
For Brexit has made Frexit impossible. Four years ago, Marine Le Pen could still float the Frexit temptation and lead some of her supporters to believe that leaving the EU would somehow solve France’s problems.
By the time she launched her campaign for the 2017 presidential election, the Brexit referendum had already had one effect: the Front National leader no longer dared push her Frexit argument any more, confining herself instead to attacking the euro and advocating a return to the old franc. Even this proved a bad idea.
In the last TV debate between the two rounds of the election, Emmanuel Macron crushed Le Pen by proving how incoherent her idea of a French paradise outside the eurozone actually was. It took a year for her to recover, and two years for her party – now renamed National Rally – to produce a programme admitting that leaving the euro was “not a priority any more”.
But for us, this has been the only silver lining of the Brexit saga. Watching the long descent of Westminster into something resembling hell has been an exhausting experience. Theresa May’s very British resilience was impressive, but we ended up pitying her. Nigel Farage’s type was all too familiar to us: we well understood just how dangerous he was. Some of us once found Boris Johnson funny; we long ago stopped laughing. John Bercow’s ties and desperate calls for order made a good show, but on the whole, this was a cast with too many villains and too few heroes.
Once, we used to hold up British parliamentary life as an example, and watch prime minister’s questions in the House of Commons with envy: for us, accustomed to semi-monarchical presidents of the Republic, this was the very Rolls-Royce of liberal democracy. Now that Rolls-Royce looks more like a dodgem.
We have come to dread seeing old British friends, now so obsessed with Brexit that it is all but impossible to talk of anything else. We wondered how it was possible for such brilliant public servants and such a legendary diplomatic service to be unable to come up with better plans and bring them to the negotiating table.
And we could not understand how a former empire could dream of becoming “Singapore-on-Thames”. All our myths, in short, have been destroyed. Khuê Pham,staff writer, Zeit magazine
It has been difficult to write with the eye of a neutral observer about an event, Brexit, that can feel like a personal affront. After Berlin, London was my second home town, a place where I had gone to university and lived for four years. Yet the vote to leave made me realise that perhaps there was a side to Britain I had overlooked.
I learned a lot since then – not just about Britain, but also our blindspots as reporters. I saw parallels to Brexit not just in Donald Trump’s election victory later that year, but also in the rise of Alternative für Deutschland at the 2017 elections in Germany. All three raise questions of social inequality that we have failed to address until now. The problem is that we are still looking for ways to resolve them. People are more disillusioned about politics than ever, and yet we are nowhere nearer to cleaning up the mess.
For our readers at Die Zeit, Boris Johnson is by far the most intriguing character in the Brexit drama. He makes them come out in a rash – it’s as if they are allergic to him. They feel he has been disdainful towards Europeans, treating Europe as a big joke. That view will stick around even as prime minister – quoting witty lines in Latin won’t change that.
I wrote a profile of him during the referendum campaign, and the impression I had then was of someone who doesn’t actually have a very strong opinion on Europe at all, and who isn’t really interested in the detail part of politics, which requires hard work. His stint as foreign secretary only confirmed that, so I am really surprised how many British commentators now endorse him as a prime minister.
Britain’s soft power has already started to diminish. Caught up in
Nobuyuki Suzuki, media and entertainment news editor, the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper
I’m very concerned about the prospect of Britain leaving the EU without a deal on 31 October. This is unprecedented. I’m afraid that Japanese companies will continue to rethink their investments in Britain, as Nissan and Honda have already done.
Japanese companies invested in Britain because it was a member of the EU. But agreeing a Japan-UK free trade deal after Brexit would take a very long time, and during that period it would be difficult for Japanese firms to continue operating in Britain.
With or without a deal, leaving the EU is a bad idea and I hope, somehow, that Brexit won’t happen. I don’t think David Cameron ever thought that Britain would vote to leave, but voters were influenced by fake news claims about membership of the EU and what leaving would mean. They were persuaded that Brexit would be easy.
I feel very sorry for British voters. A lot of people who voted to leave saw themselves as victims of globalisation. If I was a British factory worker and I had lost my job, I would have been tempted to support leaving the EU. The gap between rich and poor was growing. Immigration was also an issue. People looked around and thought: “I want to go back to the way Britain was.” I don’t think voters were given enough information about what the issues were before the referendum, and there should have been much more discussion of the risks and benefits of leaving.
The Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is considering calling for a referendum on revising Japan’s postwar constitution (to legally recognise the self-defence forces, Japan’s de facto military). If Brexit has taught us anything, it is that the media have to do more to ensure that the public has a proper grasp of both sides of the argument.
We run a lot of Brexit stories in the Tokyo Shimbun. It’s one of the hottest foreign news stories around. The tone of our coverage is almost always downbeat and we talk a lot about how chaotic British politics has become.
The Japanese have always seen Britain as a gentle, stable country, but that has changed, first because of Brexit and now because of the rise of Boris Johnson.
Johnson doesn’t fit the stereotype of an English gentleman. He reminds a lot of people in Japan of Donald Trump, both physically and in terms of his political style.
Johnson looks a little wild, and he speaks his mind. We don’t have politicians like that in Japan. What he says about politics doesn’t really matter to the Japanese… instead we are intrigued by the fact that he doesn’t speak or behave like a conventional politician.As told to Justin McCurry
India: ‘If Britain wants a deal with India, it will have to relax immigration. This is non-negotiable’
Mihir Sharma, author, Bloomberg columnist, and senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi
I visit the UK regularly and was there during the referendum. I was surprised but not shocked at the result. The Westminster system, which we share, is meant to conceal the real “will of the people”. It’s a bad idea to combine that with referendums. You might discover what people actually want, which is usually something politicians, and reality, can’t deliver.
The result, observing the saga unfold from afar, is high comedy: a political class that is trapped by its own promises and lies into delivering the undeliverable and which is now losing all credibility as a consequence. It’s been strange to watch the incredible arrogance on display in England (not Britain), which reveals itself in this belief that they will somehow be a desirable location or partner for other countries once they leave Europe.
Such a giant and inexplicable act of self-harm would be sad if it happened to a country less sure of itself, but when it happens to England, it is amusing as well.
Britain confuses its standing with that of London. London is a great global city. Britain is a small European country with ideas above its station. People will continue to shop in London. Companies will locate less in Britain. The Indian government will pay less attention to the British prime minister and more to Brussels and Berlin.
It seems to me that too many people in London seem to believe, deep down, that Brexit won’t happen. They don’t seem to realise they are now strangers in their own country.
As a political analyst, I have learned quite a few things from Brexit. For one, I see it as a warning of the danger in allowing a single issue to take over all politics, all economic planning, and in fact all conversation. Brexit has dumbed Britain down.
For another, politicians need to realise that in democracies like Britain or India, people are always angry: whether at austerity, or decreasing living standards, or immigration, or religious diversity. Anger just needs a target. The Brexit referendum gave them one: the EU. The country that invented the Westminster system, intended to control popular anger, seems to have forgotten how to run a democracy.
India, like others, has noticed for the first time that Europe exists independently of Britain. India thought of Europe as Britain’s backyard. Brexit means we will now develop independent relationships with European countries. Britain, and London, will become less important.
If Brexiters think that negotiating a trade agreement with India is going to be easy, they are in for a nasty shock. There is a far stronger belief in Britain than in India in the power of nostalgia and a “shared history”. It won’t impact trade negotiations at all. If Britain wants a deal, it will have to concede India’s demand for easier work visas for professionals and students. It will have to relax immigration. This is as nonnegotiable for New Delhi as it is for Brussels. I’m sure Brexiters will be fine with that!
Britain’s reputation for common sense and pragmatism has been severely damaged by Brexit. I doubt it will survive a Boris Johnson premiership.As told to Amrit Dhillon
South Africa: ‘There’s a gleefulness in watching the British realise the ineptitude of their own politicians’
Khadija Patel, editor-in-chief, the Mail& Guardian newspaper, Johannesburg
People find Brexit inexplicable and are getting bored by it. There’s some interest in the political spectacle, but the importance of Great Britain in