Will the French give heart to the architects of Brexit on Sunday evening by prising open the door to Frexit? All the indications are that they will not: the stuff of nightmares that would see Marine Le Pen the new president will not become reality. Not this time at any rate: we’ll see in five years’ time whether people’s bitterness and disenchantment have finally been addressed and assuaged by Emmanuel Macron and his soon-to-be counterparts in the European Council.
Let there be no mistake, while his will be a victory for Europe, for the European spirit of the people of France, the millions of votes cast for the National Front candidate are those of citizens disillusioned by the direction taken by globalisation and European integration, citizens guilty only of failing to see that protecting national borders is barely any more effective than the proud castles of the past that now stand in ruin. Healing their pain, the pain of many of their fellow European citizens, cannot fall to the new occupant of the Elysée Palace alone, it’s the whole of the EU that will have to deliver the life-saving prescription, bringing prospects of a better future for all of Europe’s citizens.
British citizens do not have even that hope to cling on to. One by one, the promises of the Brexiteers are turning to dust, consigning the acolytes of Nigel Farage to the sidelines of history, led there by their populist and xenophobic dishonesty.
Conservative “leaders” are discovering to their stupefaction the massive accumulation of problems that it is now up to them to try to resolve. Theresa May is astounded to discover that facing her are twenty-seven countries firmly determined not to allow her country to continue, as it had long and successfully done within the European Union, to “divide and conquer” (see EUROPE 11778). She is dismayed to discover a European Commission president who believes her to be “in a different galaxy” as withdrawal negotiations are about to be opened and a German chancellor who tells her plainly that “countries with a third country status – and that’s what United Kingdom will be – cannot and will not have the same or even more rights as a member of the European Union”. She is dumbfounded to realise that the “continent”, “the other side of the Channel” for which her predecessors have always had the greatest of mistrust, will not, this time, give her any rebate but rather in its turn wants its “money back” and will not back down. She is horrified to discover that her “precious Union” is under threat, from Gibraltar to Scotland by way of Northern Ireland, of splitting asunder, the anti-European nationalism of the English not being all British citizens’ cup of tea. In short, we could be looking at a Trafalgar in reverse.
With her announcement of a snap general election on 8 June (see EUROPE 11769), UK Prime Minister Theresa May said she wanted to have the political legitimacy to “take back control of our currency, our laws and our borders” – a litany of clichés that Marine le Pen would not be ashamed of. But, while Le Pen continues to listen to the “voice” of a traditional, unchanging France, like a Joan of Arc that most French people don’t want to hear, how much longer will Ms May be able to ignore the desolation of her fellow countrymen and women who voted to remain in the Union and now the regrets of those whose eyes have been opened to the scale of the disaster awaiting their country?
A poll in The Times of 27 April reveals that 45% of voters in the UK now believe the Brexit vote in the referendum in June of last year was the wrong decision, with 43% believing the UK was right to vote to leave the EU (see EUROPE 11776). In addition, 39% believe that leaving the Union will leave the UK – and thus they themselves – worse off economically, against 28% who believe the country will be better off.
Is it legitimate, therefore, to think, as Mrs May does and states, that “Britain is leaving the European Union and there can be no turning back”? To ask that question is, of course, to come back to the utter absurdity of taking a decision, constitutional in nature and scale, through a (consultative) referendum the legitimacy of which sorcerer’s apprentices, keener on politicking, failed to ensure by making provision for a requirement of more than 50.01% to achieve victory.
Following his recent visit to 10 Downing Street, European Parliament President Antonio Tajani said that Britain would be welcomed with open arms if, in the election on 8 June, the British electorate returned a majority that was prepared to reverse the withdrawal process. “If the UK wanted to stay, everybody would be in favour” was his enthusiastic assessment. He’s probably right. The only thing is that this scenario is even less likely than victory by Marine Le Pen given that the Conservative party, in its willingness to live with the baser instincts emboldened by the populists and their agents in the media, and the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn, with his innate antipathy towards Europe, have perverted the UK’s well-established democratic process when it comes to Europe.
However, out of a sense of fair play towards the British citizens who did not want to be torn from Europe or to have to wander in the wilderness, which ultimately and inevitably is the fate of their fellow countrymen and women, and also from a desire to prevent other European citizens surrendering to the siren song of the populists that leads inexorably only to a return to the horrors of a not too distant past – in all of history, 77 years is as the blink of an eye or the beat of a heart – it is right that other voices be heard to pave the way to a better future for Europeans. For all of Europe’s citizens. (to be continued)
Michel Theys