Brexit may be just the beginning

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/06/2016 (3485 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

‘The EU is dying. I hope we’ve knocked the first brick out of the wall,” exulted Nigel Farage, leader of the U.K. Independence Party. He proposed June 23, the date the United Kingdom narrowly voted to leave the European Union, should be a new national holiday called Independence Day.

But Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, who wanted Scotland to remain in the U.K. and the U.K. to remain in the EU, sadly tweeted: “Scotland will seek independence now. Cameron’s legacy will be breaking up two unions. Neither needed to happen.”

Soon-to-be-former Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to hold a referendum on Britain’s EU membership has assured the dismantling of the United Kingdom. In England, 58 per cent voted “Leave,” while 62 per cent of Scots voted “Remain.” It is “democratically unacceptable” for Scotland to be dragged out of the EU by the English, said First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, and a second independence referendum in Scotland is “highly likely.”

It remains to be seen whether Cameron’s historic blunder will also trigger the disintegration of the EU itself, but there are plenty of right-wing nationalists in other EU countries who hope there will be a domino effect.

Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s Front National, called the referendum “a key moment in European history,” and said, “I hope the French also have a similar exercise.” And a possible “Frexit” is just the start.

Geert Wilders, whose anti-Muslim, anti-immigration Freedom party is predicted to win 46 of the 150 seats in the Dutch parliament in next year’s election, promised if he is elected, the Netherlands will hold its own “Nexit” referendum. Italy’s anti-immigrant Northern League and the populist 5-Star Movement both called for a referendum on Italian membership of the EU.

Kristian Thulesen Dahls, the leader of the Danish People’s Party, said Denmark should follow Britain’s lead. Nationalist leaders in Eastern Europe such as Poland’s Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Hungary’s Viktor Orban indulge in harsh anti-EU rhetoric all the time. And so on.

But most of the people who might vote for these nationalist leaders are not seeking the destruction of the EU, just big changes in the way it works — in particular the reform or abolition of the euro currency and much stricter controls on immigration. Unlike the “Little Englanders” who voted for Brexit, they see the EU as an essential bulwark against a return to the old Europe of beggar-my-neighbour trade policies and savage wars.

The EU’s leaders will have to take a very tough line in the negotiations about the EU’s post-Brexit relations with the U.K. A horrible example will be required to show the nationalists and populists in other member states that leaving is hard and painful. And to preserve the EU, they will have to abolish or drastically restructure the euro (but that had become necessary anyway).

The odds are, however, the EU will survive. Its biggest problem will not be the loss of the U.K., its second-biggest economy, but rather the fact post-Brexit Germany will dominate the union even more than it does already.

As for the British, they have made their bed, and they will have to lie in it. The pound sterling has already lost much value and will probably lose much more. The last of the three major global ratings agencies, Standard and Poor’s, will downgrade the U.K.’s AAA credit rating. Foreign investment will dry up in recognition of the fact the country will probably lose duty-free access to the EU’s “single market.”

Further down the road, more pain will follow, as jobs disappear abroad, the British economy goes into recession and the City of London starts to lose its status as a global financial centre rivalled only by New York. That will make domestic politics nasty enough, but the anti-immigrant fervour and outright racism that disfigured the “Leave” campaign are unlikely to dwindle in the ugly aftermath.

Scotland will vote to secede from the U.K., but it will face major legal and political barriers in its campaign to remain a member of the EU in its own right. Spain, in particular, will give it a hard time, as Madrid does not want to provide a precedent for Catalonia seceding from Spain and painlessly re-emerging as an independent EU member.

Northern Ireland will face an even harder time, as the Republic of Ireland will continue to be a EU member, and so it will have to re-establish border controls. One alternative would be for Northern Ireland (which voted in favour of staying in the EU) to unite with the Republic, but Northern Irish Protestants would still fiercely resist such a proposal, and in that context a revival of armed conflict is not unthinkable.

The triumph of Brexit is a most regrettable outcome for everybody involved and possibly even for the world economy. But perhaps it isn’t really all that shocking: Charles De Gaulle vetoed British entry to the Common Market, the EU’s ancestor, for five years on the grounds it didn’t really have a “European vocation.”

Turns out he was right.

Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are

published in 45 countries.