Valdai Club

The British political and constitutional crisis has now become a crisis for European unity in its entirety. It is also a moment of opportunity to reforge the UK’s relations with Europe and the world, and for the EU itself to face up to some of its own failings and to shape a positive vision of peace and development for the whole continent.

After months of hectic and inflamed campaigning, the vote is now over and the result is known. It’s out! This was not the result that was anticipated. Although the polls had long shown that the result would be close and impossible to predict, as the polling day of 23 June 2016 approached, the general view was that Remain was pulling ahead. There were far too many undecided voters, and turnout would be a critical determinant of the outcome. The dreadful murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox, a passionate and eloquent supporter of Remain, influenced a lot of people to make up their minds to stay in. Even Nigel Farage, the head of UKIP, on the eve of the vote thought that Remain would win.

In the event, the vote showed a clear but not decisive majority to leave. On a 72 per cent national turnout, 51.9 voted to leave and 48.1 per cent to stay in. In numerical terms, this is 17.4 million people voted out, while 16.1 voted to stay in, giving the outers a 1.3 million majority. There were significant regional and class divisions. While England and, surprisingly, Wales, voted to leave, Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to stay. In Scotland the Remain camp won emphatically, opening the door to a second independence referendum. In England, London voted to stay in, whereas the Southeast and most industrial heartlands and areas of high labour migration voted to leave.

Why did the majority vote to leave. Immigration and trade issues became the dominant themes in the campaign, which ultimately turned out to highly parochial. There was little discussion about how Britain could contribute to Europe. This reflected the harsh reality that since 1973 Britain as a whole had never really joined what became the European Union, in psychological terms of engagement with a project that was bigger than itself. Instead, there was endless carping and criticism, and the attempt to gain unilateral advantages and opt-outs. At the same time, Britain’s status as an ‘awkward’ partner is grounded in genuine issues of a distinctive national identity and historical relationship with the continent.

The precipitate enlargement to the east and the opening of borders to labour migration from regions where wages and opportunities are by several orders of magnitude lower than in the UK has imposed enormous stress on housing and opportunities in the UK. That at least was the argument of the Brexiters, although Remain stressed how much labour migration from the EU has benefitted the British economy and society. Nevertheless, communities outside of London perceived themselves to be under stress for jobs, housing, schooling and services, and these concerns were too often dismissed by metropolitan elites. These genuine fears were shamelessly played on by the Brexit campaign, including suggestions that the country would imminently be inundated by Turkish migrants.

It did not help to be lectured by a range of European leaders as well as by Barack Obama, arousing traditional British feelings of heroic defiance. The UKIP leader Nigel Farage played on these feelings brilliantly, declaring that 23 June could become ‘British independence day’. The fact that in an interdependent world no country can be an island sufficient unto itself was not given substantive meaning and purpose by the Remain camp. For over four decades British leaders have never presented European integration as a positive vision of an interdependent future through the creation of a new political community. This allowed the Brexiteer populists to shape the popular discourse.

The result has provoked a political crisis of the first order. In his dignified speech the morning after, David Cameron insisted that he would respect the will of the people, and reflecting the common view that his position had become untenable, he offered his resignation. This will trigger a discussion in the parliamentary Conservative Party and the top two names will then go to the vote in the party in the country. By the time of the party conference season in September, the UK should have a new prime minister. At the same time, the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has come under intense criticism for his lacklustre engagement in the Remain campaign, and his position will come under even more attack from the Parliamentary Labour Party.

He represents the long tradition of leftist euroscepticism, critical of the way that the EU has been perceived to have become an instrument of neoliberal corporatism. The secrecy with which the EU has been negotiating the epochal TTIP agreement with the US has exacerbated these fears. However, the socialist argument for Brexit was tempered by fear that actually leaving would expose Britain to a right-wing Conservative government, the scenario, which now looks most likely to happen. Britain is now in danger of losing so much positive in environmental and other social protections, including clean water along the coasts, delivered by the EU.

As for the process of departure, it is not clear when Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty will be invoked, starting the disengagement process that is stipulated to last up to two years. Cameron argues that this will only take place after a new prime minister is chosen. As for who that may be, Boris Johnson, who took the biggest political gamble of his career in placing himself at the head of the Exit camp, will undoubtedly be a strong candidate. He is popular among grass-roots Conservatives, and thus looks most likely to succeed.

The vote will also provoke a constitutional crisis. This was already identified by Anthony Barnett in a series of brilliant chapters of a book called ‘Blimey, it Could be Brexit’ (which I have echoed in the title of this article), published in openDemocracy. In particular, Barnett identified the ‘English question’ at the heart of the constitutional crisis, and now that we know that the UK is leaving, the English question will emerge with a vengeance.

Another aspect of the constitutional crisis is that referendums have no place in the British constitution, and thus are purely advisory. The majority of MPs wish to remain in the EU, as do the majority in the House of Lords. In Britain, parliament under the Queen is sovereign, so it is not inconceivable that if the exit negotiations become intractable, parliament may reassert its prerogatives and argue that in the national interest it would be better to stay in. In any case, it will be an arduous process to see through the adoption of the great mass of legislation required to disentangle the UK from Europe, after 43 years of membership.

The constitutional crisis will also affect the integrity of the state. Although Scotland has traditionally had a strong eurosceptic tradition, the fact that all Scottish regions bar one voted to stay in demonstrates once again how fast the British political landscape is changing. Labour for a century had been the dominant party in Scotland, yet in the 2015 election won only one of the 59 Westminster seats – the Scottish National Party won an astonishing 56. We always knew that a strong differential between the Scottish and English votes in the referendum would trigger demands for a second independence referendum, and this is now happening. Why, the Scottish Remainers argue, should we be dragged out of an EU in which we voted to stay. The same argument is made in Northern Ireland, where now the UK’s only and border with the EU will be restored.

There is now also a crisis in relations with the EU-27. The EU can take a hard line against the UK in negotiations to discourage others from heading to the door. On the other hand, it is in the interests of all to negotiate a smooth transition where the UK could still remain part of the common market as well as retaining a stake in its educational, scientific and financial spheres. It is unlikely that Brexit will provoke the unravelling of the EU in its entirety, but this certainly is the biggest shock to the idea of European integration since the body was established in 1957.

One of the peculiar features of the referendum debate was the question of whether Russia stood to benefit from Brexit. Moscow officially remained studiously neutral in the course of the campaign, but this did not prevent the Remainers to claim that the only one to benefit from Britain’s departure would be Putin. This reflected the intellectual bankruptcy of much of the Remain campaign. While many could agree that it would be a mistake for Britain to leave the EU, there was a strong constituency arguing that enlargement to the east had brought a group of countries into the EU who have not been socialised into the EU as a peace project. Instead, countries like Poland and Lithuania use the EU as an instrument not to overcome but to amplify historic grievances.

The EU has failed in the biggest challenge of our era, to create an inclusive peace order from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Instead, it has become an instrument of discord, and is perceived to be little more than a subordinate element in the US-dominated Atlantic system. This system has historically delivered major public goods, but the question now becomes whether it can continue to do so. A divided continent, with a new ‘Berlin’ wall now being built from Narva in the Baltic to Mariupol in the Sea of Azov, can hardly be considered a success of the EU.

In promising a referendum before the last election and then offering one in February 2016, Cameron took not only the biggest political gamble of his career, but he also gambled with the future of Britain – and he lost. The UK will now be plunged in crisis for years to come, with an unclear final relationship with the remaining EU. The Brexiters were never clear which model of relations they sought. The terms renegotiated by Cameron and which he took to the country after announcing the date of the referendum in February 2016 now fall by the wayside.

The British political and constitutional crisis has now become a crisis for European unity in its entirety. It is also a moment of opportunity to reforge the UK’s relations with Europe and the world, and for the EU itself to face up to some of its own failings and to shape a positive vision of peace and development for the whole continent.