‘Brexit’ confounds Britain, confuses U.S.
What is an American to make of “Brexit,” the hard-to-pronounce movement in Britain to exit the European Union, which will have its dénouement in a national referendum June 23?
With some polls favoring an exit vote, President Obama, trying to exert American self interest, recently wandered into this increasingly bitter debate. In an effort to help the remain side, Obama rather casually opined that the EU works well enough for the U.S., and seemingly well enough for Britain, so why rock the boat? And he added, if Britain does secede from the EU, it shouldn’t look to the U.S. for help.
This immediately prompted controversy about his perceived condescension and for the sense that many Brits have long had that, unlike past presidents, Obama had no particular loyalty to the mother country.
Boris Johnson, the popular conservative politician, London mayor and possible future British prime minister, suggested this had to do with Obama’s Kenyan ancestry and antipathy to historic colonialism, which promptly plunged Johnson into a round of accusations of racism from the left.
Johnson also brought up the bust of Winston Churchill in the White House that had unceremoniously been shipped back to the U.K. when Obama became president.
That in turn led to more fact checking of contradictory statements the White House had made about the disappearing bust. He had replaced it, Obama now said, after various different accounts from the White House, with a bust of Dr. Martin Luther King. Churchill, he said, had been sent back only in the interests of avoiding clutter, which rather seemed to confirm his minimal affection for Winston — and, in general, the U.S.’s waning regard for Britain.
And yet, a British exit from Europe, however marginal an issue in the U.S., could indeed upend the world order. It might presage further exits from the EU, give Russia various new and trouble-making diplomatic openings, set trade wars in motion and result in Scotland finally leaving the U.K..
Or not. As likely, nothing dramatic will happen. Or put another way, it is a curious referendum in that the Brexit side does not really know what it is voting for.
Without knowing what the vote is actually for, and not even really opposing what it’s against — the pro-Brexits have lived peaceably and prosperously in the EU — the arguments have largely played out in subtext.
Part of that subtext is immigration. Angela Merkel’s government in Germany, which the Brexit Brits regard, no doubt rightly, as the dominant force in the EU, has opened EU member states to an unprecedented level of immigration — giving most everyone in the U.K. some pause.
But since Brexit, and its implied opposition to EU immigration policies, is supported by the far right British parties, this has helped push the left and much of the establishment center right, including the Cameron government — all heretofore ambivalent about EU membership — firmly into the remain camp.
It is this establishment, the true north of the Cameron government, that most hotly and logically opposes Brexit.
That center is deeply probusiness — that mostly means pro-financial industry, which might face the most disruption from leaving the EU.
It is that sort of elite, globalized banking class — remote, unaccountable, self-interested — that, as part of the subtext, the Brexits are in part standing against. In this regard, Brexit inclinations intersect with Trump and Sanders emotions.
Brexit, with its strong streak of nativism, is about a narrative or fantasy of British exceptionalism. Still, it is hard not to also interpret Brexit, in a Trumpian context, as “Make Britain great again.”
It is too an effort against the platform hegemony of modern life — what the Brexits call the fundamental sovereignty issue.
In a sense, the Brexits seek to reject Brussels as Brussels itself, in the form of increasing antimonopoly, seeks to reject the ever-greater dominance of Google.
To which Obama said fat chance. The world is as it is. So suck it up.