IRMO Institut za razvoj i međunarodne odnose Institute for Development and International Relations I R M O Ured u Zagrebu B R E F 06 2019 I Britain’s uncertain Brexit march By Dr. Marko Attila Hoare Introduction Roots of Brexit The popular vote of the UK on 23 June 2016 to Britain’s relationship to Europe is traditionally leave the EU has been politically an earthquake ambiguous. Britain’s identity - of a Protestant island-state formed in 1707 from the Anglo- Retrospectively, the outcome was likely, given Scottish union - was cemented during the for the first and a shock to the second. the structural factors both within Britain and eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in wars between Britain and the EU. Yet these same against the Catholic powers of continental factors have obstructed a clear British post- Europe. It was successively reinforced by referendum strategy for secession: Britain Napoleon’s anti-British Continental System; does not know what kind of Brexit it wants, or by nineteenth-century imperial ‘splendid isolation’; and by Britain’s ‘Finest Hour’ in examine the causes of the Brexit revolution and 1940, standing alone against Nazi-dominated whether it wants one at all. This briefing will the reasons for its uncertain execution, before Europe. But to maintain the European balance considering the likely outcome. of power, Britain had to be closely involved in IRMO BRIEF 06/2019 1 Europe’s politics. When Britain became too radical free-market, small-state vision clashed detached from Europe, as during the American with the more regulated economic model that Revolution and the Boer War, it found itself in peril. European revolutions, she supported rapid Brussels favored. Following the 1989 Eastern entry to the union of the new democracies to Britain eventually joined (the EEC) counteract EEC centralization. Her growing in 1973, but the union remained Euroscepticism split her party; more moderate centered on the Franco-German axis. the hard right was increasingly opposed. figures remained committed to the EEC while Britain, in sharp imperial decline after World War II, sought to promote both its special Maastricht also prompted the relationship with the US and its European foundation of two new parties ties. But France twice vetoed British EEC campaigning for Britain’s EU membership, in 1963 and 1967; the ‘non’ from exit, one of which became the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in 1993. Britain eventually joined in 1973, but the union the hereditary enemy ruffled British feathers. remained centered on the Franco-German axis. The rift helped topple Thatcher in 1990, and EEC membership was principally championed bedeviled her successor, John Major. He took by centrist, consensus politicians, already in Britain into the Exchange Rate Mechanism later decline when Britain joined. The Labour Party that year and signed the Maastricht Treaty in February 1992, establishing the EU and on a pledge to leave the EEC, prompting some moved to the left, fighting the 1983 election increasing the European Commission’s powers. centrist Labour MPs to secede and form the This prompted a Tory backbench rebellion Social Democratic Party - the split helped keep - the Thatcher-backed ‘Maastricht Rebels’, the Conservatives (Tories) in government who labelled the ERM the ‘Eternal Recession until 1997. But the Tories, too, moved away Mechanism’. The UK had to leave the ERM in from the center under Margaret Thatcher, who September 1992, with a collapse in sterling’s value (‘Black Wednesday’). Maastricht also by Ronald Reagan, whose New Right economic prioritized ties with the US - in the 1980s led prompted the foundation of two new parties policies were closer to hers than those of her campaigning for Britain’s EU exit, one of which EEC partners. became the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in 1993. Thus, a pro-EU Conservative Party was but became concerned at its implications; her Thatcher signed the Single European Act in 1986 threatened with outflanking from the right. IRMO BRIEF 06/2019 2 Drivers of Brexit The nationalism in question was principally English, not British; the Blair government had The 1997 electoral landslide of Tony Blair’s established assemblies for Scotland, Wales and New Labour catalyzed the Brexiteers’ rise. Blair’s centrist-europhile politics provoked a Northern Ireland in 1998-99. England, with tribalist right-wing reaction. When eight Central one. English nationalist reaction was catalyzed 86% of the UK’s population, remained without European and Baltic states joined the EU in by the cosmopolitan, left-liberal worldview 2004, Britain, unlike other EU governments, of the ‘metropolitan elite’ that preferred a eschewed a migration-free transition period multicultural to an English identity and seemed and permitted the immediate free entry of ready to celebrate every culture except that workers from them. Overseas net migration of the indigenous White English majority. The promotion of later motherhood had caused to the UK jumped from 185,000 in 2003 to legalization of abortion in 1967 and the official after which it never fell below 2004 levels, the median age of the population to rise from the unprecedented figure of 268,000 in 2004, Polish guest workers became particular the electoral weight of more conservative older except in 2012, and peaked in 2015 at 332,000. 34.2 years in 1970 to 40.2 in 2015, increasing objects of anti-immigration obsession: by 2016 people with nostalgic views of the pre-EEC they numbered 911,000, making them the era, at the expense of younger people with UK’s largest foreign-born community. Thus, more stake in the opportunities offered by free the Brexit movement was powered by the movement within the EU. leadership’s right-wing, small-state opposition Finally, although Britain prospered to the EU’s economic regulation; the rank-and- anti-continental nationalism that united them. economically under Labour until the 2007-2008 file’s hostility to immigration; and a resurrected financial crisis, the prosperity was unevenly further than the Conservatives had; the Bank Brexit movement was powered spread. Labour deregulated the financial sector of England was freed from government control by the leadership’s right-wing, immediately following the 1997 victory. Labour small-state opposition to the EU’s kept the Thatcherite economics favoring the economic regulation; the rank- and-file’s hostility to immigration; manufacture, concentrating economic growth financial and service sectors over traditional and a resurrected anti-continental in London and the South East, with much of the nationalism. North, Midlands and Wales neglected. Many ‘left- IRMO BRIEF 06/2019 3 behinds’ concluded that economic prosperity nationalist message centering on a referendum for Britain as a whole did not necessarily mean on continued EU membership, overtook the prosperity for their own communities. That LibDems to become the third-most-popular leaving the EU would worsen the UK’s economy was not therefore decisive for them, set against votes. party in the 2015 general election, with 13% of questions of identity, immigration and anti- Cameron sought to quiet his fractious MPs establishment anger. in January 2013 that, if his party won the next Cameron tried to renegotiate with and deflect the UKIP challenge by promising general election, his government would hold a Brussels the terms of Britain’s referendum on continued EU membership. He EU membership, but his meagre hoped this would stop the pro-Brexit Tories results allowed Brexiteers to claim ‘banging on about Europe’, but miscalculated no meaningful renegotiation was Leave’s appeal. After the Tories won the May possible without Brexit. 2015 election outright, by December the poll The ambiguous general election of 2010 saw of polls put Remain ahead of Leave by only 51- David Cameron’s Conservatives emerge as the that the UK would not be disadvantaged by 49%. Polls suggested voters wanted to ensure largest parliamentary party, but without an measures taken by the Eurozone states; that overall majority, leading them into coalition with migrants from the EU would not receive in- the Liberal Democrats (LibDems). The Tory right resented the constraints this partnership placed would be safeguarded vis-a-vis Brussels. work benefits; and that Britain’s sovereignty on their agenda, causing the coalition steadily Cameron tried to renegotiate with Brussels to fracture. Cameron’s economic austerity the terms of Britain’s EU membership, but his caused much pain among the population, while meagre results, announced in February 2016, the socially liberal, modernizing, Blairite image allowed Brexiteers to claim no meaningful he cultivated - he cancelled Heathrow Airport renegotiation was possible without Brexit, expansion for green reasons and legalized gay particularly regarding immigration. marriage - made him the butt of right-wing anger, as Blair and Gordon Brown had been. Why did Leave win? Under Nigel Farage, UKIP rose as a populist alternative; some viewed it as less right-wing Having won the referendum on Scottish than the pro-austerity Tories. UKIP, with its independence in 2014 and an unexpected IRMO BRIEF 06/2019 4 Putin’s Russia, which consistently supported Cameron approached the 2016 EU referendum populist politicians and groups in the West that absolute majority in the 2015 general election, undermine Euro-Atlantic institutions. One of Brexit’s negative economic consequences - the Leave campaign’s founders, Arron Banks, overconfidently. His campaign focusing on ‘Project Fear’ - failed to excite voters. He failed to articulate a strong, coherent case for EU donation in British history. Foreign funding for donated £8.4 million to it - the largest political membership. By contrast, the Leave campaign, political campaigns is illegal under the British directed by Dominic Cummings and Matthew law, and a parliamentary enquiry subsequently Elliot, effectively attracted hitherto non-voters: expressed doubt that Banks’s money had come ‘Take back control’ was a slogan unmatched by Remain; the claim that the money spent on eleven times in the run-up to the campaign and from UK sources.