Brexit has made the right-wing political groups to come forward against the failure of the EU. Today Italy, France, Sweden, Belgium, Poland, Germany, Spain and Hungary, all have their right-wing parties voicing the inevitability of their own countries emulating the UK. This all deeply reflects the restlessness and a sense of rejection of the very identity of the EU
With Brexit vote on June 23, the majority of the Britons have made it crystal clear that they are longing for their independent status outside the European Union (EU). Approvingly, the Eurosceptics have won their day and to many the gradual crumbling of the “Great European Project” has started. It is not just about referendum, but the inbuilt frustration and decade’s long urge to come out of the clutches of “Brussels Bureaucracy” have finally guided the historic Brexit vote this month. Economically, it is a big leap in the dark. Politically, Britain is on its way to witness a sharp upheaval of internal clashes within and outside both the major political parties --- the labour and the Conservatives. For the Bremain camp, spearheaded by Prime Minister David Cameron himself, this referendum was an utter insult to the entire nation and it has shown the great divide between Britain and the EU.
First of all, the Brexit vote has brought many of us to believe that it is an indication of the surge of the Right in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. As we move on across Europe, the Brexit has made the right-wing political groups to come forward and all of them equally voiced either the declining of the EU or at times complete failure of the Union. Today Italy, France, Sweden, Belgium, Poland, Germany, Spain and Hungary, all have their right-wing parties who are voicing the inevitability of their own countries hitting the road shown by the British people.
Ironically, the Hungary Prime Minister and president of the ruling party “Fidesz”, Viktor Orban, came out openly in support of Brexit and said, “Brussels must hear the voice of the people. This is the biggest lesson from this decision… Europe is strong only if it can give answers to major issues such as immigration that would strengthen Europe itself and not weaken it. The EU failed to give these answers.” Further Alberto Garzon, the chief of the United left (Opposition) in Spain, argues, “The referendum is not the problem, it is the symptom of an EU made for business and built against the people. I think I represent the feelings of the vast majority of the Spaniards when I defend Spain’s commitment to the European integration.”
In France, chief of the far-right National Front Marine le Pen says, “Victory for freedom. As I have been saying for years, we must now have the same referendum in France and other EU countries.” From all these we can say that the right-wing political parties across Europe are broadly making a chorus about the failure of the EU and setting a stage for more and more referendums in the continent. Those were the days when Britain had its own identity and it ruled many parts of the world as a major and dominant colonial power. But then, with the process of fast decolonisation and the birth of the United Nations on October 24, 1945, most of the colonial giants, including Britain, had lost their imperial assets and were barely limited to their old earlier status. At a time when xenophobic nationalist politics is raising its ugly heads once again in Europe, the continent and its people must not forget that the core credentials of democracy alone have made them rule the world, not for their past records of war mongering.
Secondly, Britain widely symbolises the cracks in the postwar foundation of Europe which indeed came at a heavy cost to all. The war in Europe had killed 36.5 million people. In many countries, more civilians had died than soldiers. In his epic account of the aftermath, “Postwar”, historian Tony Judt records that in Yugoslavia, war destroyed 25 per cent of vineyards, 50 per cent of livestock, 60 per cent of the roads, 75 per cent of railway bridges, 30 per cent of industry, and 20 per cent of homes.
Today Britain’s choice to retreat into, what some critics of the vote suggest, a little England status is just one among many loosely linked developments suggesting the potential for a reordering of power, economic relationships, borders and ideologies around the globe. Since the end of the Second World War, Britain has been a pillar of promoting global peace, security and economic prosperity around the world. It has played a crucial role at multilateral and regional forums like that of the UN, NATO, IMF, World Bank, etc. To many, with its exit from the EU, the UK’s role in global affairs would reduce significantly in the sense that the EU is the world’s biggest single market and an anchor of democracy, wherein Britain used to play an oversize role.
Third, the growing fashion of referendums in Europe to start with the latest Brexit purely unleashes nothing but petty fights instead of delving deep into the real issues. The amount of unknowable consequences started by the Brexit could easily tell us how Britain is experiencing an atmosphere of confusion and chaos despite voting for an exit from the EU. This could be gauged from the atmosphere created by both the camps during the entire pre-referendum vote. While reading the tone and tenor of the voters before June 23, one could do a plain-speaking by noting that the whole process had virtually forced the voters into two opposing tribes. Thus The Economist rightly notes, “The Brexit campaign has been a carnival of bad-tempered distortion and exaggeration; even the brutal murder, one week before the vote, of Jo Cox, an anti-Brexit MP, failed to shame many partisans into dialing down the invective.”
This all deeply reflects the restlessness and a sense of rejection of the very identity of the EU in the country. Nevertheless, Greece’s quixotic referendum on a bailout offer one year ago set the country’s pro-European elite on a collision course with the majority, whose resounding “Oxi” (No) was promptly ignored by the rest of the Eurozone. In fact, later this year, a referendum on constitutional reform in Italy threatens to unsettle the delicate mood, not least because Matteo Renzi, the Prime Minister of the country, has already promised to quit should he lose. Despite the surge of referendums in many EU members, including Brexit, most of the countries in the club like France, Germany, etc, want Britain to remain part of the Union.
Around the Brexit, the leaders from these nations cautiously avoided either a discussion on Britain back home or offering open support to Cameron. Rather the French Government is consistently working on ideas to breathe life into the European project that will focus on defence and security cooperation. It has been quietly observed that leaders like Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel felt a foreign warning could boost the leave campaign, so she was maintaining her unusual silence till June 23. But once the Brexit came into reality, she says, “There is no point beating about the bush. Europe has reached a turning point and more and more often we encounter basic doubts about ever greater union.” In the post-Brexit scenario, when Britain is supposedly taking time for a final exit, many in Brussels are asking the country to leave as early as possible. It would be worth watching how Britain would come out of its union of more than four decades.
Fourth, is it the idea of the ‘Super-State EU’ which creates a deep-seated anxiety among some of the nations of the bloc like that of the UKIJ Enforcing a super-State would lead to the coopting of all the nation-States across the continent. But to be precise, very few of these nations would either surrender or willingly agree to such a situation. It has been felt and questioned by many that in the wake of Britain’s choice, the entire Europe is facing a parallel challenge of holding itself together. If this comes true, Europe would face a situation worse than the one that brought chaos to the continent after the First World War.
Surely, minus Britain, the EU would lose much of its influence as a global power bloc as it has a special relationship with America, unlike many of the other nations of the continent. With the coming of Angela Merkel as the Chancellor of Germany, the country is playing a leading role in global affairs and she has increasingly become the “indispensable European statesman” of the continent. This indirectly hurts the once powerful imperial Britain which makes her feel as if she has been gradually marginalised both within and outside the continent. However, Germany has always been reluctant to play a diplomatic and military role rightly commensurate with her massive size of the economy. This largely irks countries like Britain which in no way tolerate an EU dominated by a German leadership in the days to come.
Finally, the incessant saga of migration both from within the EU and outside, particularly from the restive West Asia proved to be catastrophic for creating the great divide between the Brexit and Bremain camp. Most of the Britons were literally paranoid about the coming of the migrants from the rest of the EU members, particularly from the East European nations. Fear of losing jobs, social welfare benefits, especially lowering the standard of the public services, has caused a great uproar in Britain. However, almost all the European countries erected border fences despite the bloc system of open internal borders.
Populist parties raised heads against immigrants. Britain was relatively insulated, yet the British politicians campaigning to leave the European Union depicted an island under siege, mixing the very different issue of immigration from other European States with the perceived threat from an influx of poor Muslims. This anti-immigrant strain twinned with the economic anxieties of many Britons who felt left out of the global economy to drive support for the country going its own way. During the whole saga of migration in the recent past, the way Merkel was welcoming the migrants to her country, and mindful of the country’s Nazi past, she desperately wanted to demonstrate a pacifist instinct which many like Britain thought purely a misfit to her personality. Thus her repeated urge to share the migrants across Europe and particularly asking Britain to accept a huge number of migrants was snubbed by the Cameron Government.
Above all, Brexit creates a new divide in British politics today. It has shown how both the major parties and their leadership were badly insulted and ignored by own party men. The British voters largely proved how deceitful and self-centred they were around this campaign. Also, being a part of the crisis in democratic edifice, the Britons have developed smoulderingly low opinions of their leaders and they have shown utter disrespect to them this time. Indeed, the larger part of the Brexit was dominated by the toxic eco-chambers of social media which was nothing but mudslinging and degrading the esteem of the British lawmakers. It is high time, the Britons may once again recast their leaders belatedly and somberly, in perhaps a kinder light so that the post-Brexit Britain would be able to survive the heat of the exit.
Britain’s exit from the EU also marks the resurgence of the nation-State and a step back in the ever greater forces of globalisation. This in fact was more than just a protest movement against the career opportunities that the young Britons are craving for and the affordable homes that never get built by the State. Precisely, the Brexit vote was a strong protest against the economic model that has been in place for more than three decades but was failing to serve the varied interests of the continent. It has to happen. When the European Economic Community was created it had six members, four languages, 177 million people whereas today the EU has 28 members (including the UK till it leaves formally), 24 languages, 505 million people and GDP of $19 trillion. Over the years, the EU has failed to a considerable extent to grow more out of the so-called European pocket while working out the differences of a lot many members, including Britain. Thus in another way, the EU is culpable.
When the East European nations joined the EU, the Union was supposed to give them the shelter their nation-States once used to. The nation-States had guaranteed full employment and warfare. Besides the nation-States heavily controlled the market forces so that the respective trade unions could bargain for better jobs and pay packages for the natives. The result was no work was outsourced and there was hardly any cheap labour coming in from other parts of the world. But this had changed overtime and the grand waves of globalisation had almost crushed the boundaries of nation-States, both in terms of physical access and through ever wider connectivity of information and communication technology. Then it was felt that an integrated Europe under the EU could work as a bulwark against the transnational capital that nation-States could no longer provide.
However, the EU failed in many fronts to carry out the grand design of building one community and one identity encompassing the needs of most of its members. On a more pessimistic note, economics editor at The Guardian larry Elliot writes, “The reason is obvious. Europe has failed to fulfil the historic role allocated to it. Jobs, living standards and welfare States were all better protected in the heyday of nation-States in the 1950s and 1960s than they have been in the age of globalisation. Unemployment across the eurozone is more than 10 per cent. Italy’s economy is barely any bigger now than it was when the euro was created. Greece’s economy has shrunk by almost a third. Austerity has eroded welfare provision. labour market protections have been stripped away.”
So is Brexit a signal enough to the rise of the nation-State or small national identities that once ruled EuropeIJ
The iconic words of Winston Churchill in May 1947 largely bear the testimony of what the Brexit vote has brought to the international community as of today. On that fateful day, he asked, “What is EuropeIJ” To him Europe was “A rubble heap, charnel house, a breeding ground for pestilence and hateIJ” May be after almost 69 years, Europe is slowly experiencing a bitter ground wherein many of its States reflecting their disdain for the very idea of a “European Super State”. And hence, a feeling of hate and war-mongering (not in earlier sense) may revisit as Churchill once prophesied. But probably the resilience of democratic creed that still and once the mainstay of the continent may all the way continue to enrich and strengthen the Europeans whatsoever it may come on the way-Brexit, Grexit, Frexit, Swexit and so on.
(The writer is Senior Editor, The Pioneer)