Post-mortems and jeremiads in the wake of Britain’s decision to leave the EU offer an object lesson in the dangers of extemporized politics. In the post-Brexit ‘omnishambles’ the UK struggled with simultaneous leadership crises in its main parties while the pound slumped 8 per cent in a day (to a 30-year low), bank stocks lost a third of their value, and the Governor of the Bank of England announced hasty plans for a stimulus to offset the economic shock and financial uncertainty caused by the referendum.
Common search engine queries in the days after the referendum indicate that millions of British voters did not understand what a departure from the EU would entail. A surge in xenophobia and a spate of hate crimes also suggests that the Leave campaign’s provocative conflation of race and immigration — one notorious propaganda image showed Syrian immigrants trying to enter Slovenia – has activated nationalist passions that won’t be easily calmed. Crucially, a sizeable portion of the British electorate has just experienced its first real taste of populist democracy. As a Serbian friend of the Guardian columnist Timothy Garton Ash recently told him: ‘“Now you know what it felt like to be us,’ explaining that not all Serbs think that way … ”
And yet, despite the confusion of motives and messages, the Brexit vote has also illuminated some of the country’s internal quarrels, most notably its deep-seated mistrust of elites, and the exasperation of ordinary people with the half-explained and often misunderstood consequences of globalized markets. As the political reporter Gary Younge explains, “When leaders who you believe don’t care about you – and can do nothing for you – tell you what is in your best interest, it’s reasonable to ignore them.”
For many Britons the Leave vote was a long awaited counterstrike against rising inequality and the disappearance of manufacturing jobs. Their economic pain was exacerbated by the perceived indifference of Europe’s bureaucrats and a deep-seated mistrust of their own uncaring elites. A desperate wish to be free of these problems ultimately trumped more rational economic arguments. While the referendum has made Britain more vulnerable, economically and politically, and its dearly bought ‘independence’ all but ensures Scotland’s secession, the Leave campaign’s most strident voices have treated these problems as minor inconveniences, speculative difficulties that will be dealt with at some point in the future.
Post-colonial Britain has never been entirely certain of its role in the grand scheme of international politics. Gary Younge observes that after the Suez crisis, the country has grappled with conflicting impulses: “Nostalgic about its former glory, anxious about its diminished state, forgetful about its former crimes, bumptious about its future role, it has lived on its reputation as an elderly aristocrat might live on his trust fund – frugally and pompously, with a great sense of entitlement and precious little self-awareness.” This longstanding ambivalence about its role in the wider world has always been most vivid in its tug-of-war with Europe – desiring benefits, yet wary of responsibilities.
At the height of the Brexit campaign, Conservative MP Michael Gove declared that “people in this country have had enough of experts.” Now, after dispatching Boris Johnson, frontrunner for the Tory leadership race, Gove demonstrated what politics without experts might look like. His opening pitch in the leadership campaign included the astonishing phrase: “whatever charisma is, I don’t have it.” Rambling on about the calmness of his head and the goodness of his heart, Gove proved this assertion beyond any doubt. And yet Gove clearly believes that he can lead Britain through what may well be its most challenging political crises. Meanwhile, the Labour party’s leader has refused to step down despite losing a confidence vote. As backroom intrigues settle the fate of its major parties, the most immediate practical consequence of Britain’s referendum seems to be that it has chosen to rid itself of one set of bumbling bureaucrats and clueless politicians in order to appoint another.
