A Brexit Roundup

Ivan Plis, Marjorie Romeyn-Sanabria

Politics, Europe

TNI contributors weighed in on the possibilities of Britain's future after the referendum.

British voters have spoken: they have chosen, by a narrow margin, to leave the European Union. The National Interest has carefully covered both sides of the debate for months, including predictions of a British future with or without the EU.

Analyzing the Remain and Leave campaigns in terms of real-life British politics, Peter Harris writes in TNI’s May/June 2016 issue that “Britain’s participation in the European project is highly susceptible to changes in the electoral calculus of the political parties.” Since Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s 1961 petition to join the European Economic Community—seeking “to find new avenues to promote British trade and industry and to outflank the opposition Labour Party”—partisanship has always taken precedence over permanent and enduring beliefs about Britain’s role in Europe.

This means that last night’s vote was anything but guaranteed:

“Policy towards Europe—including the very decision to hold a referendum on Brexit—has long been set by politicians whose primary concern is how their stance on Europe will play with key constituents, and by party leaders eager to keep their disparate electoral coalitions intact. This means that, even if the British people ultimately opt to remain within the EU, uncertainty will continue to plague cross-Channel relations. Simply put, British politics is too fluid to support a stable relationship with Europe right now; coalitions that were once reliably pro-European are now frayed, perhaps fatally so.”

By contrast, Matt Purple suggested that “there’s also a deeper cultural dimension at work. The Brexit issue penetrates to the heart of the British identity crisis, which began after empire and proceeded through Suez, Reagan-Thatcher and the Iraq War, to the present day.”