One year from today, the United Kingdom will be a fortnight into its journey on the outside of the European Union it has spurned. On 29 March, it will cast itself adrift for good at 11:00 p.m. – London time, naturally – its moorings on the continent to be permanently consigned to the bad memories drawer. There is no reason to doubt this inevitable ‘liberation’ of a country with a splendid history which, when it threw in its lot with that of the continent in the first place, was only ever stoking its ambition of providing its interests with a playing field that is closer and more economically promising than that of a Commonwealth that had grown faded due to decolonisation.
There is no reason, today, to doubt the inevitability of this scheduled divorce. No reason because, as our colleague, the columnist Zoe Williams, reminds us, “the people have spoken”, immediately adding this very clear warning: “the referendum was an earthquake, a revolution, a surge of anger against the establishment by an honest and passionate populace. Defy them on a technicality? There’ll be blood on the streets if you do” (The Guardian, 26 March). She is not alone in this point of view. In his speech on St Valentine’s Day, the credibility-lite Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, no doubt had a point when he observed that not going through with Brexit would be a “disastrous mistake that would lead to permanent and irrevocable feelings of betrayal”.
Some may be tempted to point out that opinion polls are showing that the tides are changing. Certainly, they all indicate that from 52% of the British people voting to leave, it is now around 48% who share the position which was that, on the evening of the referendum of 23 June 2016, of those in favour of leaving the EU. It is even said that as many as 77% of Labour voters would be in favour of a referendum on the specific terms of Brexit and that 68% of them would then definitively take a position in favour of staying in the EU. All of this may be true, but it will not change the essence of the problem.
This problem is that, as Martin Wolf so lucidly observed, the UK currently finds itself “in the middle of a civil war”, the victim of a “schism between irreconcilable opponents” (Financial Times, 8 February). It is by no means certain that its unity can ultimately be preserved, particularly if the Brexiteers should have their victory snatched away from them, because as columnist Jonathan Freedland put it, “their motive is purely ideological, born of the fetishist desire to be rid of anything that carries the taint of ‘Europe’” (The Guardian, 9 February). Even if it could be shown that their victory may have been caught up in fraud that can be laid at the door of populist extremists acting under the cover of social media, they would still not allow that victory to be called into question and no rational argument could shake their militant faith.
For a long time now, the United Kingdom has undoubtedly been divided: “more than by social category, the divide is based on age – 73% of 18-24-year-olds voted against Brexit – level of education – 72% of non-graduates voted for Brexit – by geography – cities voted for Europe, towns against – and, in particular, societal liberalism”, said journalist Philippe Bernard (Le Monde, 7 February; our translation). The idea that such massive divisions could be healed by waving a democratic magic wand, in the form of a fresh referendum, would be unrealistic.
The United Kingdom is therefore cruelly divided – but the leaders of the 27 other countries of the European Union would do well to remember that they are not immune from the ills that have infected their island neighbour. Quite the reverse, they should start looking at how they can eradicate these ills from their own countries, or, most unfortunately, Europe will gradually fall to bits. Simply being on the defensive or, even worse, in denial, has never been a winning formula: the members of the European Council would be well advised to bear this in mind.
In this context, the small band of rational thinkers in Great Britain and on the continent are starting to hope that good sense will once again prevail in Westminster. They are dreaming of a breakaway group of MPs to arise when, in the autumn, Theresa May’s government presents the results of the negotiations carried out by London with ‘Brussels’. These results will, fatally, be desperately vague, as they will provide very little idea of what trade relations with Europe will actually look like. Given the doubts, might not some bold MPs step forward, ignoring their party whips, to demand that the result is ultimately validated by Westminster, or even by the people themselves in a second referendum?
No doubt there are some Labour MPs who will dare to adopt this attitude of defiance towards their reluctant leader, Jeremy Corbyn, but how many Tories will be brave enough to rebel against May? Will most of them not rubber-stamp their government’s decision with, as Timothy Garton Ash wrote, “a heavy heart and a bad conscience, because the whips have gripped them by the most sensitive parts of their anatomies, because they fear deselection in their constituencies and character assassination in the Daily Mail, because ‘the people have spoken’ and because they are told the alternative is Jeremy Brezhnev” (The Guardian, 29 March)?
As Winston Churchill is no longer with us and has no clear successor nowadays, it is unfortunately likely that reason – and, with it, Europe, and therefore the welfare of the British citizens, of all the British citizens – will be sacrificed on the altar of party politics.
Michel Theys