Brits bought the line about a return to former glories... in reality, they were sold a pup
HAVING endured a chaotic, overwrought and deeply divisive referendum the British decision to leave the EU has left the European continent in turmoil. An organisation originally established to ensure peace, harmony and economic development out of the carnage of World War II is now in grave danger of sundering itself as nationalist movements across Europe clamber to be allowed have their say on EU membership.
For reasons that are entirely tied up with internecine conflict within the Tory party the British now find themselves having to negotiate their way out of the EU – while the EU itself has to figure out how to hold itself together.
The result underlines the fact that, uniquely of all electoral contests, referendums are unpredictable.
Voters are happy to ignore party ties and loyalties safe in the knowledge that they can go back to the comfort of the party in a subsequent general election.
At its heart this explains the reason why vast swathes of England and Wales voted to leave the European Union, despite the desperate attempts by David Cameron and George Osborne to paint the grimmest of economic pictures of such a decision.
Their dire warnings of flights of capital and multinational firms, the collapse of the pound, increases in taxes and decreases in standards of living as Britain would inevitably become an economic wasteland cut off from the rest of the developed world left millions of Britons unmoved.
Conservative voters in the heartlands and shires, always suspicious of the European project, felt quite comfortable in voting against their party leadership. They didn’t buy into the notion from the purveyors of doom on the Remain side that Brexit will be the end of civilization as the British know it.
This led to the deeply ironic situation that Cameron was desperately looking to Scotland, long a wasteland for the Tories, to keep Britain in the EU.
But Scotland and London could not prevent a Leave vote and the enormous political consequence is the resignation of the British prime minister over a needless referendum and huge economic uncertainty both in Britain and the EU.
If we can say one thing clearly about Britain’s exit from the EU it is that nationalism is still a potent force in British politics.
All the symbolism around the Leave campaign was bound up in a yearning for the glory days of the Empire. The imagery of hail Britannia, the pound, the Queen was as potent as the root belief of many Brexiteers that withdrawing from the EU was not just about immigration but the idea that Britain could do better outside of the EU.
If one was to take the purveyors of boom on the Leave side at their word, Brexit will result in an economic nirvana where British firms and multinationals will be free from the shackles of EU regulation and bureaucracy; British spirit and ingenuity will see the land of hope and glory reassert itself; warm beer and good weather will return and the British will be able to pick and choose the best migrants from the whole world.
THIS, however, is a fantasy land and the British will realise it pretty quickly. Brexit campaigners are placing an awful lot of faith in Britain’s ability to renegotiate deals with other nations and trading blocs. Moreover, the Brexiteers’ call for Britain to negotiate its own deals with various private companies like Apple, Google and the large car manufacturers – as some of the more excited Leave campaigners suggested during the campaign – sounds like an awful lot of wishful thinking.
But Britain’s exit from the EU cannot simply be laid at the feet of the Little Englanders with their Union Jacks. The EU itself and its member governments must shoulder a considerable amount of the blame.
Post the 2008 economic crash, a militant, ideological austerity has been imposed on ordinary citizens across Europe, which has brought deep economic and social distress to millions of Europeans.
However, there has been very little consequence for the individuals and groups who were largely responsible for the crash. Banks and the reckless speculators sit serenely by as misery stalks the European landscape and the increasing consolidation of wealth in the hands of a small elite has fomented a rise in both rightand left-wing alternatives, all deeply hostile to the way the EU has developed.
David Cameron, having unexpectedly won a decisive victory in the May 2015 British general election, went to Brussels to renegotiate Britain’s terms of EU membership. Stuck with a pledge to have a referendum on EU membership by the Tory manifesto he came back in triumph with a new deal. Or at least that was the way he saw it in his own mind.
Instead that deal has turned out to be the 21st Century economic equivalent of Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 ‘peace for our time’ declaration.
Cameron’s deal clearly did not see any substantial change in the British-EU relationship and was met with supreme indifference by most British citizens.
But for the Little Englanders and that significant rump of the Tory party who have always been against EU membership that non-deal gave their campaign significant ballast and ultimately led millions of Britons to feel that exiting the EU was the better alternative.
The Remain campaign was also fatally hampered by the woeful performance of the Labour party and, particularly, its increasingly marginalised leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has always temperamentally been against the European Union – and campaigned as if still stuck in that thought process.
The once great British Labour Party has never looked so hopeless, even in the grim days of the Michael Foot leadership in the early 1980s.
Recession or rejuvenation for Britain? There is no guarantee either way.
The only guarantee is that Cameron, who called the referendum in the hope of securing his legacy as a great Briton and, indeed, European, is for now its greatest and most needless casualty.
Millions of other Britons and Europeans could well follow him into the casualty ward.