The UK Leaves the EU

THE UK LEAVES THE EU

 

in IP Watch at http://www.ip-watch.org/

After a long, lively, disputed and sometimes acrimonious campaign, the British people chose to leave the European Union. Over seventeen million people (52% of voters) stated their will to leave the euro-mess and go it alone.

Here are some notes on the referendum:

1- David Cameron is the most visible loser. He set the bar high when he committed to revamp the United Kingdom’s relationship with the EU and then to put the British membership of the bloc up for a vote. Negotiations with the other 27 Member-States soon proved to be difficult (Treaty change was quickly set aside) and Cameron chose to settle with relatively meek concessions. The fact that he considered these were relevant enough to defend the “Remain” vote, showed that he was more committed to staying in the organisation than to bring home some substantive reforms. This way, he lost credibility among Conservative euro sceptics and did not acquire any from other sectors, such as Labour supporters. On the day after, he naturally resigned.

2- The Leavers (Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Nigel Farage) were the big winners. They assembled strong, focused and appealing campaigns in which the EU bureaucratic non-democratic behemoth, the recovery of sovereignty and national identity and immigration were the main messages hammered away. This message cut across the political and geographical spectrum, from Tories in the South of England to Labourites in the North and in Wales. Johnson and Gove can conceivably be the architects of the actual exit and their day-after posture was serious and reassuring.

3- Fearmongering and Foreign admonishments were among the main tools of the Remain campaign. I always found it incredibly stupid to use foreign meddling for domestic political gains. It is a tried and failed tactic. Most people are not keen on having foreigners tell them how to vote. Notwithstanding, this was used ad nauseam in this referendum: the EU, the Commission, the European Central Bank, the IMF, the OECD, France, Germany, the United States, all chipped in with dire warnings of an impending apocalypse. This was obviously construed to be a gross self-interested exaggeration. Actually, this exorbitant concern scantily hid a more sincere worry: the impact of Brexit in their own countries. As the stock exchange downturn in Milan, New York, Paris and Frankfurt (all considerably sharper than in London) showed, this fear seemed to be warranted. Anyway, most voters did not buy into the notoriously overblown forecasts. This, eventually, undercut even the more realistic negative analyses.

4- Labour and Jeremy Corbyn were the outsiders of the referendum. The party still battered by last year’s devastating electoral defeat and the leader mostly aloof and ambivalent on the EU question. So much so, that the ever fundamentalist and intolerant “The Economist”, accused Corbyn of sabotaging the “Remain” campaign. The fact is that a great share of the Labour voters voted to leave and Jeremy Corbyn is already facing a leadership challenge.

5- In the UK, for the time being, most of the turmoil is political with both the Conservative and the Labour parties facing leadership change and challenge, respectively. Although that is a bit unsettling, it is not really out of the ordinary.

 

in “The Guardian” at http://www.theguardian.com/international

The British people’s decision to leave the EU is one of the most relevant events in International Relations in the 21 Century. Like most events of this magnitude, they entail risks, challenges and opportunities.

Going forward, it is clear that the risks are multilateral and not confined to the UK. However, even outside the EU, the United Kingdom has many assets and advantages which, coupled with some reforms to make her more competitive and shedding some of the more stifling European regulations, could make Brexit more of a winner than a setback.

I believe it to be more unlikely that the EU will be able to implement the huge changes it needs to leave the stasis it finds itself in.