Could the UK Brexit vote spell an entirely different future history?

July 2, 2016 9:17 AM

One week has passed since the UK Brexit vote, and the world outside Britain has been either surprised, confused, or disinterested (or possibly all three) by the whirlwind of political developments inside the UK and the almost complete lack of reaction from the EU. Here is why I think we are at a turning point in history.

Following the twists and turns of the UK's seriously dislocated political landscape over the past week has been breathtaking. The narrow outcome (48 to 52 percent) and geographically (town vs. countryside; Scotland and NI and London vs. England & Wales) as well as age- and education-related (young vs. old; university educated vs. vocationally trained) diverse voting patterns have properly upset the apple cart in this corner of Europe which had always been convinced of its uniqueness. Division right down the middle in so many ways does not square readily with the British self-image, and "keep calm and carry on" no longer seems a viable option.

The Prime Minister who had previously said he was going to stay on regardless of the outcome, promptly resigned so that the poisoned chalice would fall to his Oxford mate and main nemesis - Boris Johnson, the former Mayor of London who had become the leading voice for Brexit primarily (most observers agreed) in order to achieve the pinnacle of his political ambitions. Yet out of the blue, BoJo fell at the last hurdle when his own most prominent supporter stuck a political knife in his back.

At the same time the main opposition party, Labour, which had been led in a less than entirely convincing way by Jeremy Corbyn, its hard Left stalwart elected by a popular landslide unexpectedly 9 months ago against the party's centrist leadership, went into meltdown. It is now hopelessly divided between its mainly centrist Westminster MPs (who stuck the knife into Jeremy's back) and the vociferous left-leaning grassroots, and may well end up spitting down the middle 116 years after its foundation. 'Shakespearean' does not begin to describe the sequence of events at Westminster ...

Meanwhile the early adverse economic consequences of a Brexit vote - which had featured heavily in the Remain campaign dubbed "Project Fear" by Brexiteers - duly came to pass (Sterling lost 10 percent of its value and many multinationals headquartered in the UK are starting to make plans for a move to the Continent), leading to much handwringing among many Brexit voters whose decision had been less than fully through through, and widespread speculation that ways and means might be found to reverse the (admittedly advisory) vote outcome by either a repeat referendum (moves to this end have gathered 4 million signatures in a week) or a long delay (and perhaps eventual refusal) by Westminster/the government to fire the "starting gun" of the Article 50 invocation which triggers a 2 year countdown to EU exit.

The other 27 EU states are of course facing the existential threat posed by demands for Leave referenda in several other member states and hence - despite the admitted economic importance of trade with the UK - are less than sympathetic towards calls for an easy exit for Britain. From the Brussels point of view, a divisive and painful UK Brexit experience would provide an instructive lesson for prospective Nexit (NL) and Frexit (France) movers that should serve to dampen their enthusiasm.

However it is becoming very clear that today's European 'huddled masses' have been hit hard by post-2008 financial Austerity and - admittedly almost uncontrolled - immigration, and now find it easier to blame the EU rather than their national elites and geopolitical events outside the control of Brussels. They demand change, and they are clearly not getting it as long as Merkel and Brussels insist on no adjustments or changes to the 4 Freedoms (of movement of people, goods, capital and services within the Single Market).

So both the UK and the EU are currently exposed to political turmoil beyond anything experienced in recent decades. Westminster is effectively a headless chicken, as it will take until September to see who the new leadership of both main parties will comprise and what stances they propose to take (Brexiteers had promised vast gains with zero compromise and no pains).

Scotland under the SNP's Nicola Sturgeon has indicated that should Brexit go ahead, a repeat independence referendum for Scotland is on the cards and may well succeed this time round - Scotland is unwilling to be dragged out of the EU against its clearly indicated will (no voting district in Scotland voted for Brexit, and the "Auld Alliance" with France against England is still fondly remembered almost 4 centuries after it faded into history). Sinn Fein are now holding out the hope that Northern Ireland might prefer unification with the Irish Republic to an enforced exit from the EU (formerly unthinkable but a distant possibility in the new Millennium). The United Kingdom certainly looks imperilled more than ever before. However no one can say how formal border security along the NI border and/or Hadrian's Wall would be implemented, never mind financed, and how a smooth switch from Sterling to Euros for NI and/or Scotland could be undertaken.

To many people's minds, the bizarre political situation in the UK has a number of parallels with the upcoming US presidential elections - Boris was always seen as a bit of "Trump lite", and Trump's proposals for building a Cold War-style border against Mexican immigration, and for open discrimination against Muslim immigration and travellers on security grounds, touch exactly the same gut feelings that decided the Brexit vote outcome. The Brexit "battle bus" and Nigel Farrage's posters displayed slogans and images that were widely condemned as outrageous by the mainstream political establishment and media outlets, and certainly would have been censored by the Advertising Standards Authority if they had been used in a commercial context - but because this was politics, virtually any claim was deemed admissible. Political discourse and public debate reached new lows, and the country is more divided than at any point since Margaret Thatcher's war on the trades unions and miners.

The interesting thing, though, is that much as Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump threw the political rule book out of the window, here in Britain the old way of doing business in politics is also dying. The 'First Past The Post' electoral mechanism which worked well enough in the context of a two party system is no longer fit for purpose, and fundamentally undemocratic - at the 2015 general election, David Cameron's Conservative Party gained a narrow absolute majority of 330/650 parliamentary seats with 37% of the popular vote, while Farrage's UK Independence Party (whatever one might think of their democratic credentials) gained only 1 seat with 13% of the vote. In contrast, the Scottish Nationalists won 56 seats with under 5% of the vote. There is a strong movement underway clamouring for the introduction of a proportional representation voting system - but perhaps the UK is going to break up into its constituent parts first ...

Speaking of breaking up, the old political parties are, for the first time in decades, seen for what they are - hopelessly divided. The logical development would be an open split into new entities, and this is quite likely to happen with Labour, slightly less so with the Torys (Conservatives). In any other country, the existing political middle ground should be hoovering up disenchanted centrist members of either major party - sadly in the UK the Liberal Democrats have been unable to shake their disastrous image as being too nice, too middle class, and ineffective in the 2010-15 coalition government (and yellow is just not the right theme colour for a major party). The Green Party, on the other hand, will probably grow significantly - but not sufficiently to start exerting real influence under the FPTP system (they won only 1 seat with a 4 percent vote share in 2015).

Part of the problem is personalities - the current crop of politicians are Lilliputians insofar as public stature and rhetorical powers are concerned. Even more sadly, Jo Cox, one of the most promising up-and-coming new faces of the Labour Party was actually publicly assassinated in the week before the Brexit vote, by a loner who shouted "Britain first" when he shot her, and stated his name as "Death to traitors" in court. This was another shock to today's UK, and probably propped up the diminishing Remain vote somewhat, but only put campaigning on hold for 2 days and did not materially sway the outcome.

Assassinations of parliamentarians are rare but powerful - from Lincoln to the Kennedy brothers, 3 Indian Gandhis to Sadat and Rabin, murder has long been the expression of political dissent by ultraviolent means. In the UK this had erroneously been thought to have become a purely historical issue (Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was killed by a madman in 1812, and even the Provisional IRA only managed to kill 2 MPs in their 28 year campaign). The violent death of Jo Cox, an intelligent, perpetually smiling young politician with a long track record in worldwide humanitarian work, was therefore a rude wake-up call. No matter how saintly you are, clearly no one is safe as long as politics can create s much hate and distrust. Following the Brexit vote, police records show that xenophobic hate incident reports now run at five times the usual level - yet anyone thinking that this is typically perpetrated by white Anglo-Saxon protestants is sadly wrong: Quite a sizeable proportion actually stem from earlier immigrants (such as Ugandan Indians deported by Idi Amin, Iranians who fled Khomeini's mullahs, etc.) loathing the latest wave of arrivals.

One of my recent reads has been business historian Robert Sobel's 1973 Pulitzer Prize nominated book 'For Want Of A Nail'. It holds a serious lesson for us, I think, but never achieved wide recognition because it is a rather dry academic account of the political development in North America following British General John Burgoyne's VICTORY at the 1777 battle of Saratoga (of course in reality he lost and capitulated with his army to the rebels).

The French never throw their military and financial support behind the Continental Congress, and the American Revolution fails. The greater part of British North America becomes the Northern Confederation while departing revolutionaries founded first the Republic of Jefferson and later managed a hostile takeover of Mexico. After clashing with each other in the Rocky Mountain War, the CNA and the United States of Mexico go their separate ways. The CNA becomes increasingly isolationist, and though a prosperous industrialized nation, suffers recurring bouts of internal civil strife. However, its parliamentary democracy stabilizes into a two party democracy - initially consisting of an urban Liberal Party and a rural populist Conservative Party, but the latter is displaced by a social democratic "People's Coalition." As in our world, multicultural diversity occurs due to immigrant exodus from the ongoing turmoil in nineteenth century Europe. The USM gives rise to a monopolistic corporation called Kramer Associates and enters into a period of imperialistic expansion and dictatorship in the late 19th century that sees it conquer Central America, part of South America, Alaska, Hawaii, and Siberia. A clash between the Mexican government and Kramer Associates in the early part of the 20th century results in the latter relocating to the Philippines in 1936.

Global War breaks out in 1939 pitting the British, French and Japanese against the Germans and Mexicans, with the CNA remaining neutral due to machinations from Kramer Associates. The war dies down (though it doesn't officially end) in 1948, with the Germans in control of Europe (apart from the United Kingdom) and the Middle East, the Japanese in control of China, Siberia and the western Pacific, Kramer Associates relocated to Taiwan, and the USM suffering a social breakdown and renewed dictatorship. Kramer Associates detonates an atomic bomb in June 1962, which plunges the world into a nuclear arms race. The British detonate their own bomb in 1964, the Germans do so in 1965, and the CNA in 1966. Attempts by the USM to acquire an atomic bomb remain unsuccessful as of 1971, as do global disarmament talks due to Anglo-German mutual mistrust.

A superb - if rather boring - counterfactual history account; yet there is only a single small historical change involved at the outset (military historians and Barbara Tuchmann have often argued that it was primarily intense dislike of the mixture of incompetence and deviousness displayed by his direct British Army and Navy colleagues that made Burgoyne decide to surrender). Sobel initially planned to entitle his work "Scorpions In A Bottle" but his publisher disagreed with this maxim (there can be at most one survivor). We will be looking back at 2016-18 in the UK and US as the moment when history pivoted in a different direction, I feel. Let's just hope it is for the better, and hold our politicians to account!

posted by kairab (1 comment total)

GYOFB
posted by lalochezia at 9:19 AM on July 2, 2016 [3 favorites]