Brexit

Arguments that dominated the 2016 referendum campaign have roots that go right back to the post-war years. Winston Churchill was the first to call for a United States of Europe—but without Britain. British reservations about European unification took on a sharper profile as six continental states moved closer to founding the EEC. Concerns about a loss of sovereignty, of national independence, and of a trade policy that offers optimum advantages were first voiced in 1961—together with an explicit refusal to subordinate the national polity to any foreign authority. That was the year in which the United Kingdom submitted its first application to join the EEC. An almost blind confidence in the wisdom of the people as opposed to elites and experts surfaces at the same time. It paved the way for subsequent referenda. When Britain finally joined, it did so under unfavourable auspices. The EEC had created facts that ran counter to fundamental British interests, and the United Kingdom was on the threshold of a major economic upheaval, reinforced by the first oil crisis.

David Cameron hoped to heal the rift within his own party with the help of a referendum. He was under mounting pressure from UKIP. After winning the referendum on Scottish independence with a safe margin—against all expectations—he felt confident about winning an EU referendum with the same strategy of intimidation and unsettling threats. He kept stoking expectations that he was unable to fulfil. He remained isolated with his ideas of EU reform.

On becoming Cameron’s successor, Theresa May faced an unenviable task. She had to make sense of the referendum result and translate the people’s vague negative feelings into a concrete political programme that would be acceptable to a majority in Parliament, to the EU leadership, and to her EU colleagues. Cameron had forbidden any contingency planning. May needed to put together a cabinet that balanced the warring factions within her party. She had to formulate coherent, realistic goals and she had to develop a tactical concept, a timetable, a list of priorities and an eventual quid pro quo in negotiations. Above all, she had to build consensus within her cabinet and within her party about what Brexit was to mean. She failed to grapple with any of these challenges. Instead she repeated the vain formula ‘Brexit means Brexit’, which obfuscated the problem. She committed herself prematurely and without adequate reflection to a hard Brexit. In March 2017, she submitted the declaration under Article 50 that set the clock running. A snap election deprived her of her comfortable majority. In the summer of 2018, she published her first coherent but unrealistic concept of Brexit. Opposition within her own party grew steadily, and she lost almost half of her cabinet. The Withdrawal Treaty was approved by all EU members on 25 November 2018 but was thrown out by a majority in the UK Parliament on 15 January 2019.

The effects of Brexit will reverberate for a long time. The first attempt to leave the EU has resulted in a constitutional stalemate between government and Parliament. Instead of healing the growing rift within both major parties and within the population, Brexit has exacerbated antagonisms and injected venom and discord into a debate that had been simmering for a long time. It has become the defining political topic for the present generation. The referendum majority was thin, arguments incomplete, distorted and downright fraudulent. Presumably there will be a third referendum on EU membership, but only after the current political storm has calmed down. That could take years, if not decades. Until then, and probably even beyond such a third referendum, the disputes will go on. The EU is well advised to keep the doors wide open for the United Kingdom. It should ask some penetrating questions about its own raison d’être and its finalité.