By Dalibor Rohac, American Enterprise Institute
No less a foreign policy than Donald Trump Jr. opines that the failure of Brexit shows that “democracy in the UK is all but dead.” It is, supposedly, “an example of how the establishment elites try to subvert the will of the people when they’re given the chance.” An anonymous op-ed writer in the same newspaper concurs: “Large parts of the Whitehall machine are systematically working against leaving the EU.”
This is grotesque. The ongoing shambles, culminating in the expected extension of Article 50, cannot be blamed on the European Union nor on the “deep state.” They are entirely predictable results of the fact that the 2016 campaign to leave the EU presented voters with a fantasy of a Brexit in which the UK enjoys all of the benefits of independence (its own trade policy, full control over immigration from the EU, etc.) without any of the costs (disruption resulting from leaving the single market). Those illusions are now being pierced through by economic and political realities.
In that way, the UK today resembles the aftermath of the 2015 bailout referendum in Greece. “EU tyranny finally crushes the birthplace of democracy,” one headline announced after Alexis Tsipras’ government agreed to the terms of the rescue package extended to Greece by the “Troika” of the European Commission, European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund — notwithstanding that 61 percent of voters said “no.”
But just like in the UK today, the story of Greece was not about European institutions stomping on the will of Greek voters. It was about policy choices made by generations of Greek politicians who defied economic reality. Instead of using Eurozone membership to improve Greece’s competitiveness through domestic reforms, Greek politicians immersed their country deeper and deeper into debt, refusing to come to terms with the ever-harsher economic reality. The Greek “no” at the polls was not a rejection of EU money — it was a no to any strings attached to it.
There is nothing inherently illegitimate about the desire of some British voters and politicians to seek a new relationship with the EU, just as there was nothing objectionable about a public scrutiny of an EU-prescribed austerity program in Greece. The cardinal sin involved in both of those exercises in popular sovereignty was the denial that the relevant choices involved trade-offs.
In Greece, Syriza promised voters a fantasy of unchecked government spending that somebody else would pay for. Likewise, the British vote to leave the EU in 2016 was a vote to reclaim political autonomy, without foregoing the benefits of being part of an integrated Europe. It was a vote to have the cake and to eat it too.
Instead of being “one of the easiest in human history,” as the secretary for international trade Liam Fox suggested, the withdrawal agreement with the EU ended up being a complicated, highly technical compromise that satisfies nobody. Those who believed that the UK “[held] all the cards” seemed surprised that the EU behaved as an entity interested primarily in defending the interests of its own members, instead of giving away freebies to a country heading to the exit.
In fact, Theresa May’s withdrawal agreements did a fine job balancing the perceived imperative to restore control over EU immigration and UK laws against the risks of economic disruption involved in leaving the single market. Would the UK be better off remaining in the single market, e.g. through membership in the European Economic Area? Of course. But given the UK government’s red line on movement of labor, it is hard to imagine the EU’s extending a better or a more generous deal.
To be sure, there is plenty of blame to go around, beyond the extremism of the most hardline Brexiteers organized in the European Research Group. They have come to dominate the conversation because those Conservatives who knew better — whether they’d supported Leave or Remain — decided to stay silent. In the Labour Party, in turn, Jeremy Corbyn’s cult of personality has neutralized any effective opposition or scrutiny of the plans to withdraw from the EU.
In the coming days, expect more grandstanding and silliness along the lines of Trump Jr.’s opinion piece. According to some, even the arch-Leaver Michael Gove “is now betraying Brexit.” The risk of miscalculation and of bad political choices — namely of crashing out of the EU and/or opening a pathway toward a Jeremy Corbyn premiership — is running extremely high.
Yet, there is a silver lining. The inability of Syriza’s colorful figures, such as its firebrand finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, to deliver on their hubristic promises prompted a rethink within the party, which has since become far more moderate and has even made meaningful strides to reform Greece’s sclerotic economy. One can only hope that being “mugged by reality” will ultimately have a similarly salutary effect on British Conservatives.
