On the Chaos of Brexit: What the US Should Note

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The dysfunction of the UK government as it struggles to come to some decision as to how to proceed given the upcoming deadline for European Union exit is readily apparent.  Hari Kunzru provides an article in the New York Review of Books that discusses the reasons why the nation placed itself in such dire straits.  It is titled Fool Britannia and was generated as a review of a book by Fintan O’Toole: Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain.  What emerges from Kunzru’s piece for the reader in the United States is that we are only slightly less dysfunctional than the UK, and the reasons for our problems are quite similar.

The US has its blue states and red states, and all 50 have differing views on social and political issues.  The United Kingdom is not nearly as united as it might appear to the casual observer.  It is dominated by England in terms of size and population, but it includes Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, all of which have historical and cultural differences with England.  It is the border shared by Northern Ireland and the nation of Ireland that produces the major sticking point between the UK and EU.  How can one maintain a free and open land border between the two entities and at the same time accommodate two different sets of regulations on trade with other nations?  That issue could, and probably should, torpedo Brexit entirely.  The US has similar problems with, for example, red states and blue states moving in different directions on the regulations of firearms and environmental issues. Will open borders between states be maintained, or will we need border checkpoints for detecting the transport of illegal weapons?

The US, with its centuries of slavery and Jim Crow regulations, continues to struggle with racial issues.  African Americans still must deal with forms of discrimination that complicate their lives.  The Hispanic population has grown considerably in recent generations with that growth being augmented by undocumented immigrants who penetrated the border or have overstayed a visa.  More recently, refugees from both Central America and the Middle East have been added to the flow and caused considerable political strife.  The analogous situation in the UK involves its history as a colonial power.  The British Empire became the British Commonwealth and allowed many natives of former colonies to obtain residency in the UK.  Joining the EU required the UK to welcome residents of other EU countries, a growth of foreigners analogous to workers leaking through the US border.  Finally, the UK was faced with accommodating the more generous EU treatment of the many refugees pouring out of the Middle East.  It was issues related to the growing multicultural nature of society that contributed to Brexit and the election of Donald Trump.

Kunzru provides this perspective on race in the UK.

“In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, one of a body of thrillers that are also among the most acute literary portrayals of the British establishment’s experience of postwar decline, John Le Carré’s hero, George Smiley, goes to see Connie Sachs, a motherly drunk who was once a secret service librarian and is now a repository of institutional secrets. ‘Poor Loves,’ she says of George and his colleagues, her ‘boys.’ ‘Trained to Empire, trained to rule the waves. All gone. All taken away. Bye-bye, world.’ Many of those who took it away were, of course, foreigners, particularly those former colonial subjects who unaccountably agitated for decolonization. Their arrival ‘over here’ was one of the most visible changes to postwar Britain, and as O’Toole points out, the rhetoric—’swamping,’ being a stranger in one’s own country, strain on public services, and so on—that was once used to demonize new arrivals from the Commonwealth has been repurposed for use on EU migrants. O’Toole argues provocatively that the decline of what might be called traditional British racism made room for a new anti-Europeanism, as if there’s a fixed national quantum of xenophobia that must find an object if the United Kingdom is to maintain its integrity.”

An important aspect of support for Brexit comes from conservatives who resent the decline in influence and power of what was once the mighty British Empire.  Brexit is an attempt by many to “Make England Great Again” (MEGA?).  Note the use of England rather than Britain or the United Kingdom.  Kunzru makes it clear that it is England that is driving Brexit.  Analogous to the situation in the US, there is also a rural/urban divide in England.  London dominates England and its economy, and it is tightly coupled to the EU.  It was the non-urban rural voters who carried the day for both Brexit and Trump.

Both the US and the English think of themselves as “exceptional” nations with a history and culture that sets them apart and makes them superior to other nations.  Kunzru tells the reader that England is beset by a “deep sense of grievance and a high sense of superiority,” a description that fits well the diehard supporters Trump has generated.  When the decision to join the EU was made, many thought the English would rise to their natural role as rulers of the union.

“For many commentators writing at the time of Britain’s entry into the Common Market in 1973, dominance in Europe was to be compensation for the loss of empire. ‘What about Prince Charles as Emperor?’ asked Nancy Mitford, facetiously expressing the secret belief of many British people that Europe could be a new vehicle for old global ambitions. The discovery that the role of ‘first among equals’ wasn’t on offer led to a loss of enthusiasm for Europeanism, which suddenly appeared in a different and sinister light, as a form of subordination to old enemies.”

Surprisingly, many Brits see themselves as having defeated the Germans in WWII only to lose the nation to them in peacetime.

“Though the Suez Crisis and imperial decline loom large in the imagination of Brexit, O’Toole writes that it’s ‘the war’ that is ‘crucial in structuring English feeling about the European Union.’ For half a century, English soccer fans have lamely taunted their more successful German counterparts by chanting that their country has won ‘two World Wars and one World Cup.’ Since the 1960s, comic books with names like Commando, Warlord, and Battle Picture Weekly have kept World War II alive in the minds of British boys with violent stories of ‘daring bomber raids over Germany, through close-combat jungle fighting against hard-as-nails Japanese, and depth-charge blasted submarine warfare, to hard-hitting battles across North Africa, Italy and northern Europe’.”

“Crucially, the equation of a ‘European superstate’ with a project of German domination is part of what O’Toole calls the ‘mental cartography’ of English conservatism. In 1989 Margaret Thatcher showed François Mitterand a map (taken out of her famous handbag) outlining German expansion under the Nazis, in order to demonstrate her misgivings about German reunification. On January 7 of this year, the pro-Remain Conservative MP Anna Soubry was forced to pause a live TV interview outside Parliament as protesters sang, ‘Soubry is a Nazi, Soubry is a Nazi la-la-la-la.’ The European Union is, to these people, just a stealthy way for the Germans to complete Hitler’s unfinished business.”

This sense of exceptionalism and superiority has even driven some to welcome a disastrous No Deal Brexit, which would generate shortages of many materials and significant economic disruption, as a means of regenerating the presumed more heroic British character of times past.

“On December 16, the former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab tweeted, ‘Remainers believe UK prosperity depends on its location, Brexiters believe UK prosperity depends on its character.’ Faith in Brexit does indeed seem to correlate with belief in the existence of national character, an innate and invariant set of shared qualities that apparently includes an aptitude for governance. On December 30 an editorial in London’s Sunday Times spluttered: ‘After more than four decades in the EU we are in danger of persuading ourselves that we have forgotten how to run the country by ourselves. A people who within living memory governed a quarter of the world’s land area and a fifth of its population is surely capable of governing itself without Brussels’.”

“The underside of nostalgia for an imperial past is a horror of finding the tables turned. For the more unhinged Brexiteers, leaving the EU takes on the character of a victorious army coming home with its spoils.”

The decline in importance of the UK as a nation produced a “deep sense of grievance and a high sense of superiority,” leading to the Brexit dilemma.  The US shares many of the characteristics, both historical and cultural, of the British.  As our influence and ability to dominate the world inevitably diminishes, we are also seeing arise a “deep sense of grievance and a high sense of superiority.”  Donald Trump feeds those emotions.  One can only hope that we will learn from the UK lesson to tame our ambitions and make them consistent with the changing world in which we live.  The US does not need an equivalent to the foolishness of Brexit in its future.