If democratic aliens came down from Mars and looked at the EU referendum result, they’d be compelled to take the view that the UK, hopelessly fragmented by de-industrialisation and neoliberalism, is now finished as a political entity.
The debate will rage on about the extent to which leave voters gave the smug, complacent neoliberal establishment a kicking, or were duped by toytown fascists into swallowing the same policies of the past 30 years, only significantly amped up. Whatever side you come down on, the process has bolstered a toxic, chauvinistic right wing, not just in England, but also Europe and beyond. The EU referendum redesignated the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as Little England. Scottish voters, favouring the emotional and practical investment in the European ideal, decisively rejected this approach. The end result is a mess, but a strangely inevitable and even curiously beautiful one.
We live in an era of great turbulence, with economic decline running in paradoxical tandem with technological advance. It is only to be expected that our antiquated institutions haven’t been able to keep up, and our nation states, political parties and supranational bodies are starting to unravel. Politicians now seem perennially in the business of chaos management, and the suspicion must be that this process has only just begun. The inevitable chorus of voices crying out for “a period of stability” sadly misses the point: we aren’t at that place in our history, and trying to impose inertia on those fluid times may only be inviting further discord.
As has been postulated, with much hand-wringing, it was obvious to many that the leave campaign didn’t believe it would win, merely wishing to register a protest, and was thus left thinking: what have we done? But let’s remember that no democrat can defend the commission-led EU, and nobody in the remain camp had a serious reforming vision of Europe, any more than those in leave offer much of clue as to what they’ll do with their increasingly hollow-looking victory.
Remain’s leaders would have kept us straitjacketed into the EU’s current death-by-a-thousand-cuts version of corporate neoliberalism. At least now, shed of that distraction, we have our governmental elites much more clearly in our sights. How smaller, shabbier and curiously more vulnerable they look, without that EU cloak they avowed to detest draped around their shoulders. And this is as it should be, as they’ve basically put everything into play.
The process of European integration, for the first time, has emphatically been reversed. Since the US in the 19th century, no big political mass in modern history has expanded so spectacularly, but 23 June marks the end of this era. The EU must consider how they stop this retreat turning into a rout. The UK departure has set a precedent, and the EU will be compelled to play hardball in the negotiations as its own future depends on it. Make it too easy and advantageous to quit its floundering project and other member states might be inclined to take the English lead.
Internally, it also needs to quell the xenophobic fallout from worthless austerity politics, the hubris of Brussels and the incessant rise of economic inequality. Already Poland and Hungary have moved away from liberal democracy towards an authoritarian nationalism. The English nationalist revolt is sure to provide further succour to such forces within EU borders.
In the UK, the Tories will find that their hiding space is diminished, with decisions subject to greater international scrutiny than they’ve grown used to from their compliant and supine media. They must be thinking that this was all a bit unnecessary. David Cameron will be prime minister no more. An ultimately hollow, two-faced man (who promised that the NHS was safe in his hands while running it into the ground; that Scotland could have “as much home rule as it wants” while delivering road signs), his departure will be no great loss.
That the original frontrunner to replace him was Boris Johnson, his Old Etonian (ex) friend, brings into focus exactly what our real choices in that referendum were. The Tories might seem mortally wounded by this, but they’ll inevitably survive. After all, they basically exist to implement the wishes of the wealthy and powerful. They might differ on the best way to do it, but fundamentally their interests always lie on the same side.
Not so with Labour. De-industrialisation and the decline of capitalism have been harder on them and Europe’s old social democratic parties than those on the right of the spectrum. But it wouldn’t be a referendum, or indeed any poll, without their spokespeople warning us that this was “a vote of rage and frustration against an out-of-touch establishment”.
Of course, when the next one comes along, you can guess whose side they’ll be on, still issuing that gloomy caution, and wondering why they are making zero impact on the electorate. Only by following the logical conclusion of their own dreary advice will they stop their relentless march into irrelevance. Yes, Jeremy Corbyn’s performance was as shallow and half-hearted as we’ve come to expect from his party, but every time Tony Blair and Gordon Brown showed their faces, the leave vote hardened. Replacing their leader with one of that ilk would confirm Labour’s inappositeness outside of London, while saying to the energised, youthful Corbynistas: sorry, but you aren’t wanted here.
So what becomes of Little England and its unlikely sidekick, Wales? The danger is that after 30 years of neoliberal rule, we witness an even further lurch rightwards, overseen by Ukip, with or without Nigel Farage. Under anti-establishment posturing, they’ll be urging the Tories to keep it real, burn the Brussels “red tape” and play hard and fast with our freedoms and rights. And they will get a good hearing. Long unable to develop an inclusive, civic, progressive nationalism, England is stuck with an imperialistic brand that harnesses the darker powers of animosity and racism. A new pro-Brexit PM means acrimonious negotiations, as the leave constituency will expect bulldog truculence towards a European Union that gains absolutely nothing by playing nice.
The poll also highlighted not just the gap between the old and young, but their level of political engagement. Britain’s youth will feel they have been turned over by the Captain Mainwaring tendency from that most selfish and narcissistic generation, the baby boomers. After 60 years of relative prosperity, the older vote is strewn with reactionary bedwetters; massively in denial, and easy prey for any opportunistic demagogue who advocates turning the clock back to a golden era that scarcely existed. We have to engage with those unedifying fears. Obviously, the short answer for young people is to just get out and vote more. The bigger conundrum as to why they aren’t already doing this lies in the egregious education system and the general demoralisation regarding long-term prospects in neoliberalism’s debt economy.
So let Farage indulge his Ronald McDonald fantasy that future generations will celebrate 23 June as Independence Day. But, if we divorce leave’s voters from the campaign’s contemptible leaders, its victory in England (coupled with remain’s in Scotland) is a win for political diversity and genuine change, both in the UK and the EU. In the short term, the EU will be ruthless out of necessity, but ultimately those voters might have done it a big favour.
If the EU has a future as the driver of European integration, it has to reform its structures, shelve its neoliberal myopia, rediscover its social mission, stabilise its dysfunctional currency, and genuinely assist, rather than punish, its ailing member states. Otherwise it will simply fall apart. Ironically, England and Wales, though perhaps forcing this wake-up call, are unlikely to be benefactors of it, and have perhaps taken one for the team. So the vote in the south and west of old Britain, while undoubtedly tainted by 30 years of state- and media-sponsored ignorance and xenophobia, has paradoxical underlying nobility.
What’s ahead now won’t be so exciting for the leavers. We’re set for a long series of fractious negotiations; expect plenty of posturing, bluster, horse-trading and media-generated hysteria. Civil servants will work overtime, lawyers will get richer and taxpayers poorer, as politicians have the almost impossible task of coming up with constitutional and economic settlements that our volatile times ensure could be out of date as soon as they’re agreed, far less implemented.
But the biggest fantasy we can hold on to, in both these islands and on the continent, is that the pre-23 June status quo is, or ever was, a viable option. Just like us, the Martians would be a little perplexed, if we ever considered letting them land.
