simplistic

populism and lessons of Brexit

“Brexit Backlash: Brits Now Regret Their Populist Revolt” blared the first page of the today’s ‘Review’ section of the Wall Street Journal. Britain voted narrowly to depart their forty-three year marriage to the European Union eight years back but the Journal reports 65% of the population now sees this as a mistake.

Well, duh, that was clearly the outcome the Brits should have expected. The EU may be horrible for individual preferences but bigger blocks are more successful yah small, individual entities.

Conservative Party Prime Minister David Cameron blundered into this mess by announcing a referendum on the question of EU membership as Britain struggled with unemployment which perpetually plagues the country these days. Frustration with foreigners in Britain was growing as a result not only from Islamic extremists periodically launching terrorist attacks but also a sense of brown, black, Asian and other immigrants overwhelming the country. Probably most commonly a reason Brits welcomed Cameron’s snap decision was the hated EU mandates which governed contemporary life: the European Parliament in Strasbourg seemingly never met a regulation it did not want to impose on all aspects of life. This was just too much for many people to tolerate.

Coincident with Cameron’s call for public response was the rise of an ultra-nationalist named Nigel Farage whose “United Kingdom Independence Party” actually took seats in the Parliament. Farage’s persona is flamboyant a la Trump, blaming all of society’s woes on foreigners and “Europe” as if it were a single entity rather than hundreds of millions of people with dizzyingly different views. Farage advocated for the “divorce” because it would give Britain back to the British. How noble and grand! Churchill must have been sitting up in his grave at the propsect of the Empire rising again.

Except that the Empire was a huge place as well. Britain’s decline, if one considers the evidence, was tied clearly to becoming an island nation, without an empire, of fewer than 70 million people—a smaller population than twenty other countries. According to the National Statistics Office, Britain in 2023 was 83% “White British“, compared with the United States which was 61.6% White in the 2020 Census. In short, Farage stoked racist fears over immigrants and how Europe undermined Britain’s successes but on studying the history sees a different story.

When Britain led a global empire, the population and the market for goods was many times higher than Britain’s 67 million people today. Jobs varied, resource availability expanded, and complementarity of economic forces made Britain one, if not the, of the most prosperous countries in the planet.

Please do not think I am advocating or defending the exploitation that Empire facilitated and demanded. That most definitely is not my point but it was a considerably different context than that was operating in Farage as the 2016 vote neared.

The “Brexiteers”, as they became known, portrayed the benefits in grandiose terms. Britain would have its sovereignty back on who got in and who did not. It could negotiate its own and better trade agreements with the United States (and others). Investors would flood back to this lesser-regulated London. Food or medicines would no longer have the ridiculous EU requirements. In other words, Britain would solve its deep structural problems by being out from under Brussels bureaucrats. Nirvana, people, nirvana.

We were in the Outer Hebrides immediately prior to the referendum. Scots tend to be pretty independent in their thinking, if not in their political links to the Aanglish, while also pretty stubborn and practical. I was therefore surprised to see an equal number of “Remain” and “Get Out” signs plastered all over Stornoway, Tarbert and surrounding towns on the Isle of Harris in July 2016. I took that to mean Brexit would likely pass. On the mainland, the vote differed according to location but what should have been a hands down “are you kidding {or a less polite verb} me??” discussion became a narrow victory for the old world of Ruling Britannia

I have a dear, dear friend of more than 40 years who voted to leave while her husband advocated remaining. When we discussed it, her explanation was a bit vague, admitting she had struggled with the choice but ultimately thought exiting Europe would be better for Britain as a whole. No detailed reason or specific steps came into the conversation but an overall sense. On a binary question, however, a vote is a vote is a vote.

When the Queen’s Government tallied those votes, 51.89% of the voters said to depart. The Tories maintained control over Westminster, though Cameron’s stupid move immediately forced him from Number 10. How could he have assumed he know this would fail when he had spent five years in a coalition government, meaning Tory policies (and the Party was split deeply on Brexit) were hardly uniformly adored across the country? This was unquestionably one of the colossal errors in political assumptions of the twenty-first century (and we are accruing some competition on that score). A minor question today is how did David Cameron, that same guy who unleashed this insanity, become Foreign Secretary seven years later? His judgment is obviously impaired but that is a different column and I don’t get a voice in another country’s affairs.

Britain goes to the polls for Rishi Sunak’s snap election next Thursday. Current polling indicates historic defeat for the Tories, not the least because of the consequences of the Brexit decision. Britain is now formally out but the promised benefits by Cameron’s successor once removed, the politically immortal Bojo annd by Farage (now of the U.K. Reform Party) are few and the pain has been great. The Journal cites Goldman Sachs’s estimate of a 5% decline in the U.K. economy as a result of getting out of Europe, along with a per capita decline of annual income in excess of $1000. Investment is down more than 20% though that investment is gradually returning to The City, as London’s economic hub is known. Britain is negotiating other trade agreements, as Brexiteers proposed, but the global distrust of free trade is hindering those negotiations, thus undermining trade benefits.

Most troubling, as true in our own country on a number of topics, is the loss of hope and trust in the political class. If the Conservatives do indeed reap tremendous losses in Thursday’s vote, popular support eroded by a sense of being sold down the river will be a major reason. Wages are not significantly better than in 2015. The overall economic growth remains anemic, at best. Inflation is a challenge. Health care is a disaster. Energy is more expensive, not less. And immigrants still make up a significant portion of Britain’s working class, though they tend to be Eastern European rather than from Africa or other former colonial areas. Those are not all results of Brexit but the same people proving inept at handling Brexit are governing the other messes.

The Tories are not responsible for all of Britain’s problems by any stretch. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown led a thirteen year Labour run in Parliament, putting into place many policies with unsatisfying effects as have the Tories since 2010. In any parliamentary system, parties shift their relative roles in society over a period of time as voting preferences and conditions move. But it’s hard to overstate the promises that many heard and believed as they supported Brexit in 2016. A substantial number of those promises simply were infeasible from the beginning because they assumed that sovereignty affected everything. Turns out Britain is affected bymany things as well as affecting things. Populism, of course, tells people what they want to hear, almost invariably with little evidence of why it will produce the promised outcomes.

Those who hated membership in the European union likely still feel the same. Those who vascillated, like my friend, may wonder about what might have been had Brexit failed in 2016. Probably many of the 65% I cited at the beginning hold their heads to ask “What were we thinking???” and “Who are these people we elected as they are failing us”.

Actions create consequences. Those actions are too often built on unexplored assumptions or, in this case, understanding of how and why a change will transform conditions into the desired outcome. Most importantly, we need all consider that if it seems so easy, why wouldn’t it have been done before? Perhaps because the promised outcome is not feasible as advertised. It doesn’t mean it can’t be achieved but likely not nearly as simply as stated or without tremendous, paiful costs. I suspect millions in the U.K. feel that way today as they approach their opportunity to register their preferences for the future.

I welcome your thoughts on this column. I need rebuttals, questions, and proposals for thinking about this type of question. Thank you for reading this or any column. I appreciate your time which is irreplaceable. Thank you to the subscribers who make such a difference for me.

Not the fresh, cool air this morning but a hazy, at times cloudy Saturday instead. The flowers are pretty, however, and Harry is sleeping outside on the balcony.

Be well and be safe. FIN

Max Colchester, David Luhnow and Josh Mitchell, “Brexit Backlash: Brits Now Regret Their Populist Revolt”, wallstreetjournal.com, 29 June 2024, retrieved at https://www.wsj.com/world/uk/brexit-british-regret-uk-election-837cbf4c?mod=world_lead_pos4

"Ethnic group". Office for National Statistics. 28 March 2023. Retrieved 28 May 2024.

“Race and Ethnicity in the United States, 2010 and 2020”, www.census.gov, retrieved at https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/race-and-ethnicity-in-the-united-state-2010-and-2020-census.html