The NYT's coverage of the UK has been a joke in the UK for a long time.
This article is the US equivalent of a New York writer flying to the midwest, talking to a few Trump supporters, going home, and penning an article for the Guardian to confirm what all it's readers 'know' - Americans are all a bunch of boring, xenophobic white supremacist 'deplorables', nostalgic for the 1950s, and deserve everything they get. Case closed. Now let's all work ourselves to a self righteous lather in the comments section.
Brexit is a disaster. Like most major disasters, its causes are multiple. Yes, certainly poor public education and nationalism. Terrible right wing newspapers. But also (and this may have been critical) the hard left takeover of the Labour Party, which has left us with an opposition leader that is a closet Brexiteer (as well as a multure of other unsavoury attitudes), did nothing to campaign for Remain, and has acted daily since to thwart any efforts to avoid the disaster. Funny how that is not mentioned at all in this piece.
But no surprise to those who knows this writer, who has made his name, such as it is, in the UK penning long, partisan, left-wing essays about 'austerity', to readers of the London Review of Books.
As the British child of two immigrants, who regularly travels to, and enjoys, the US, I feel I have to call out the endless, boring tone that the NYT has adopted to the UK. Widen your perspective, and your range of authors.
6
Too many Britons still think they are empire builders. And dreams of empire die hard.
Benito Mussolini used the same yearnings to get Italians to support him in the 1920s ... 1500 years after the fall of Rome.
6
History of the relationship of the UK to the rest of the Continent is more fraught with baggage from long before the Nazis came to power. A good measure of the antipathy is from the centuries of misrule of Ireland and the gerrymandered partitioning of Ulster. It's the source of all the noise over the Irish border. Reverend Ian Paisley's thundering about papists and control from the Vatican differs only in kind from the current dysfunctional hysteria from the conservatives. The irrationality of it is the same.
8
A really insightful article that does a good job explaining the contradictory nature of the Brexit situation. I would add to the conclusions that nationalism with borderless capitalism is one that Thatcher knew to be false, but knew would play with the idiot plebes. The very same thing is happening in the US where the under educated, poorly-informed, and unread voters are sold an appealing mixture of nationalism and aggrievement in order to vote against their own basic personal economic interests. The winners in Britain, the US and other parts of the world? The rich. The very many have decided to subjugate themselves to the interests of the very few, in return for nothing. You can't blame the rich for trying to turn issues and debate towards their side....they're acting in their own interests. Why the lower and middle classes jump on their bandwagon remains a mystery.
52
The word is not “dreaming”, it’s delusion.
7
By changing a few words this could describe MAGA Trump supporters wishing they could return to the 1950s days when white people enjoyed unlimited privilege. It is the same false narrative propagated by politicians who seek power and treasure. And lurking behind the scenes in both situations is the Russian bear.
5
Quite soon, Queen Elizabeth shall uncharacteristically take it upon herself to speak of the U.K.’s current confounding issue: Brexit!
"I dislike seeing our Empire brought to such a calamitous and disagreeable position! We must remain in the EU for at least until 100 years from the end of our last Great War has elapsed!" the U.K.'s longest ruling monarch will exclaim into the public microphones for all to hear from the Royal Review Porch of Buckingham Palace!
"Doing otherwise," the Queen continues, "Would be a great disservice to the peace within Europe and our dominance of Germany which Daddy and Winnie strived so bravely to construct!"
This, an apparent reference to her father, George VI, and Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of the U.K. from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955.
"All we, actually all I, are saying is give the EU a chance!" she sang liltingly to the tune of John Lennon's song "Give Peace a Chance." – recorded inspiringly enough in room 2045, Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
"And if we all lucky," Her Highness concludes, glancing menacingly at Prince Charles, "I shall still be your Queen in 2045!”
And then, throughout London & England & Britain & the United Kingdom comes, "The 2019 Royal Give the EU a Chance Proclamation," a movement so large it will be touted by liberal, conservative, labour, business, royals, and rapscallions alike in support of the Queen's only official Brexit position, despite what The Sun may often report!
3
What a load of blather. Just another layer of blab atop the endless articles about Brexit in the British press. Not a word about this will horribly damage Ireland and the fragile peace that exists in the North of that country. Do you want the horrible, evil Troubles back? Do you want the Good Friday agreement destroyed, the one that has given peace and prosperity to Northern Ireland for 20 years gone?
This is a crucially important part of Brexit. Ireland is still part of the EU, a new hard border would be a tragedy. This article didn't even bother to address this. Re-igniting the Northern Irish conflict and war is something worth addressing, Because Brexit will make it happen.
5
Men are the supreme beings, they are frightened of their power and demand loyalty. So here we are between MAGA and Brexit, sheer stupidity defending their thrones. Encapsulated by other men too maligned to discern truth from nonsense. They fear the loss of power.
For this planet and mankind to survive, we need intelligent women.
3
An article that reports on the gaps, reading between the lines; things that were left unsaid. Jeez. I can make stuff up too.
3
You listen to Rees-Mogg and the rest of the ERG lunatic fringe (no not the ERG's lunatic fringe, the ERG is the lunatic fringe) and you think you're watching a Monty Python skit. Then you remember that the ERG won the referendum. Then you remember further that the Leavers' spiritual brethren in the US put you-know-who in the White House. The horror, the horror!
6
It's not necessary to travel to England to understand Brexit. Just ask any Irishman.
3
This, above all, reflects a failure of the British education system, which is in itself a failure of national introspection about its own history. All nations have national myths and they are entitled to it. Whether it is America's national myth about being "the greatest country in the world" or India's about being an apostle of peace, nations tend to have myths about themselves which have no basis in reality. There is nothing inherently wrong about having such ideas about yourself, until it starts harming you. Similarly the British have convinced themselves about the goodness of the colonialism project. It was good for them no doubt, but it was a tragedy on par with the holocaust for those in India, Africa or for the Aboriginals. When your childhood bully meets you in adulthood and talk about how great friends you were in childhood, it somewhere pinches you in the gut. Britain needs to learn this lesson. Because Global Britain ain't happening. EU was the best thing to happen to them and they have given it up. Had they been more aware about their own history and how it is seen across the world, they would never have believed that these "special relationships" can act as a counterweight to the EU.
12
Ironic that the Brits, who so resent what they see as the EU bossing them around, yearn for the days of empire when they got to do the bossing. No fun when the shoe's on the other foot, eh?
6
What caused a majority of Brits to vote for Brexit? the answer is simple: ignorance, and blind faith in self-serving Elmer Gantries like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. Not unlike Trump's base.
8
Reagan & Thatcher were both masterful story-tellers of fiction who totally misrepresented reality but really resonated with many voters' primitive brains.
Reagan pushed his faux economic ideology of "trickle-down economics," de-regulation," and government isn't the solution--it is the problem.
Thatcher famously said "There is no such thing as society," and devolved into her idiotic follow up that we were all individuals, families, but not a society.
No thinking required; just follow the fairy tales that basically translated into let the filthy rich and big corporations keep all of their money, work their will however they choose, and be absolved of all responsibility and accountability for the damage done to society and people.
The right-wing is constantly pitching moving backward to the good old days of: the Dark Ages (to appeal to the religious zealots and Crusaders of their particular religion); slavery (keeping people of color and immigrants in servitude to serve the deserved superior white people); the greedy, selfish Robber Barons (who stole from everyone in the quest for personal ego, wealth and power); and imperialistic nationalism (that conquered and bent the rest of the world to its will).
In other words, the right wins because it glorifies a past that never was. But for people at the top, fantasy sells and maintains the $$ status quo. For those on on their way down, fantasy elevates the aggrieved and beats reality every time.
Trump is the tabloid version.
5
In addition to Brexit breaching the Good Friday Agreement (an international treaty lodged with the UN), there is another nightmare which wakes us Brits up sweating. By putting the two Irelands on a path to unification when the majority of the people in each Ireland wished it, the GFA brought peace in the northern province; to breach it by pulling NI out of the EU against the consent of the majority there would put it in jeopady.
They have fallen off their pedestal and can't get back up. They are now with the rest of humanity. That just won't do.
4
Donald Trump and his supporters were for, and encouraged, Brexit............... What more do the British need to know?
3
I fully agree with the author. Having lived in the UK for a long time, I can certainly subscribe to the notion of "casual racism" and hazy dreams of empire. There is little doubt that this is what is mostly animating the Brexiters. I am at little dubious about the Maggie Thatcher connection. There is a contribution, based on the "English exceptionalism" that she had cultivated with her opt-outs and rebates, but one should remember that the Tories "evicted" her precisely because of her anti-European fervor. A major contributor to all of it has been by the gutter press, which has cultivated a brand of jingoism not easily found anywhere else in the western world. It found that the only way to sell papers in the industrial heart of England is to try to enliven the grey days of the working class with images of bare breasts and dreams of glory!!
6
Your surprise that dreams of empire have not passed itself surprises me. While I am a "white" man in my sixties, I am strongly pro EU, and find rooms full of white men utterly boring and worthless, preferring to work in culturally diverse environments.
But when I was being educated in an old English private school - as a working-class scholarship student - it was very obvious that in the 1970s, we were being prepared to rule the Empire. There are many people of my generation for whom this is true, however absurd. I abandoned England due to the ravages of Margaret Thatcher, but believed that Tony Blair - despite his idiotic following of George W Bush - had defined international liberalism for Britain.
Sadly, we were wrong. Perhaps Blairism was seen as benefiting only "the elites". The Empire lay sleeping, dreaming perhaps. I am unequivocally an anti-Empire liberal, but I appreciate that many supporters of Empire are not ugly racists. Instead they are proud of the many international achievements of Britain, and believe the country could go back to a place of cultural leadership in the world. This is unrealistic of course, but in many people it is a rather good-hearted dream, if rather patronizing.
2
Yes, the Brits survived WWII but only with the help of allies: European as well as American. They prevailed in both World Wars with the help of soldiers from the same colonies whose emigrants they despise today.
Once upon a time, Britain and much of the world basked in the glow of the Emlightenment. Today, we struggle in the gloom of willful ignorance.
4
Isn’t it ironic that it is not just the EU that is galling to the extremist Brexiters? It is the centuries old British Empire problem of how to deal with Ireland. Despite the description of PM May’s deal as “fudge”, it has been the Irish border “Backstop” part of her deal with the EU that has served as the breaking point, with Northern Ireland’s Unionist political party (DUP) holding all the cards, as it has had all along, on the next up or down vote.
For those of us watching the Brexit melodrama from afar, it is fitting that during the past week in which Ms. May’s deal was voted down yet again because of the Irish border, the story of Bloody Sunday, which took 12 years to investigate the murder of 40 Republican Irish protesters, reared its head yet again. Only one soldier was indicted this week. Thus melding the two events, on this St. Patrick’s Day weekend, into one theme: Bloody Brexit.
4
'I used to be skeptical of the idea that Britain hadn’t come to terms with the loss of its empire.' What an admission.
The face-saving but self-deluding trick was to deny that they had actually lost it. That was achieved by pretending to have handed it over voluntarily, whole and nearly intact, to you Americans. You, of course, feed the delusion with misleading talk of a 'Special Relationship.' Actually, you were quietly turning their island fortress into a giant aircraft carrier. Then in 1956 you turned rogue and kicked them out of Suez. Small wonder that they’re so confused.
Come to terms with the loss of a whole Empire? Don't make me laugh. They’ve not yet come to terms with the lose of only two-thirds of miserable little Ireland. Which, as everyone now realizes, is why the whole silly Brexit fantasy unraveled.
2
I hate to say it, but the roots of Brexit can be found in those battered tea boxes that unwashed rabble in The Sons Of Liberty threw to the bottom of Boston Harbor in 1773. The metaphor of those boxes floating down signaled the start of the race to the bottom for the Empire.
Chin up, lads! It's nothing that a few verses of "Men of Harlech" and another pint couldn't brighten.
1
Wow, the author manages to blame Thatcher for Brexit.
Impressive logic but very twisty and sketchy.
On the other hand, maybe he could weave something similar as a gift for those in the U.S. that still blame Reagan for nearly everything?
1
Recently seen on the internet: "When you've been privileged, equality feels like persecution". That's what's happening here: Brexiteers remember Empire and now loathe walking on the ground and pulling the rope just like other people...of all colors, ethnicities and classes. Like the poor whites of America, they want to go back to being special and better off....with everybody else knowing their place. That's the past, and trying to recreate it will doom their future.
3
" Les bourgeois de Calais " by Auguste Rodin. Do people today have an idea of what this work of art expressed ? What it was about ?
Brexit is actually totally impossible because there can never again be a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, and definitely not be a hard border between Northern Ireland and the rest of UK!
UK will sooner or later be forced to come back as members of the democratic European Union! UK is just as totally integrated within EU as California is totally integrated within USA!
Brexit was based on lies and fear mongering against Polish/EU workers! Free movement of EU citizens is a totally integrated part of the internal free EU market, so UK can never ever get full access to EU free market without allowing full freedom of all EU citizens, including Polish workers, into UK! This is the same as in USA where California have to accept totally free movement of US citizens from every other US State into California!
2
This is penetrating. Thanks, James Meek.
What drives Brexit before and now is Putin's propaganda explosion for it. Putin gets what he wants because he knows how to wield propaganda via social media to manipulate huge populations of emotional people: those who are too lazy to ask questions and think for themselves.
1
Thatcher. Reagan. Same story.
The UK has become an island nation of corporate lawyers and welfare families, in fear of Eastern European labor and brown immigration.
2
Bosh! It's the same everywhere. Take away people's prospects, and they rebel. The empire fantasists and the racists, put together, don't have the votes.
To get over the top, Britain needed neo-liberal feudalism, privatization and austerity.
And the Tories, and Tony Blair before them, delivered in full.
2
It's not "dreaming" but a scrabbling delusion, delusion that an eventual house of cards built on colonial white and English supremacy and its hard-won hubris could be maintained indefinitely on maudlin sentiment and empty arrogance. It's Rees-Mogg's conceited "We..." and his and BoJo's "Rule, Britannia! ('What are the words again?')" as they mince down the lane in white breeches waving tiny Union Jacks, bleating "Vote for me!"
It's an attitude akin to the indignation of American neo-imperialists on Carter's "giving up" the Panama Canal: "But we stole it fair and square!"
And Thatcher's Restoration, as Reagan's, was a populace-deceiving figleaf for letting slip again the dogs of greed, looting the national treasury and economy by resurrecting gilded ages as the rightful entitlement of the plutocracies and kleptocracies, in league as always with stateless oligarchs in return for a skim off the top by the happy boys in the City and on the Street. Empire may have been won on the playing fields of Eton, but it was lost in the bowels of Bullingdon.
Between the dissolution of the UK and the devolution of US politics, we are seeing the denouement of Reagan/Thatcherism. It's not a pretty sight. But, if we can hold off both the looming authoritarianism in the rest of the world and the imminence of climate catastrophe, perhaps something will rise from the ashes.
1
I admit to be utterly confused by whatever argument the author thinks he is making.
One clear message is that he has 4 decades of fermenting contempt for Margaret Thatcher. Another is that he has very low opinion of what he calls "dreamers". Since he associates dreaming with those who want to leave the EU, he therefore is attempting to advocate for the Remainers without acknowledging that he is doing so.
He ridicules dreamers for clinging to the glories of the past when Britain was an empire. He especially seems to ridicule their identification with the Britain that stood alone for so long against the Nazis and withstood the Nazi Blitskrieg of London.
The author can ridicule all he pleases, but I think there is great positive value to that identification, that dreaming. The British really did stand alone against the supreme evil that was the Nazi killing machine. The inspiration that many British draw from that dreaming results in a similar beneficial effect that Americans receive from the special reverence that some Americans still have for the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights portion thereof. The individual freedom that we have now is not the result of democracy, nor of any partisan effort. Nor is the individual freedom we have the result of humanitarian inclinations, social consciousness, or goodwill toward all. Whatever individual freedom we still have is the result of our reverence for the dream expressed in the Bill of Rights.
2
Where exactly are the Leavers going to? Is there even grass on the other side? New colonies? Mars?
Thatcherism's parallel in the US was Reaganism. They both fed on the fears of whites and used a the now refined bait and switch tactics of the Republicans.
2
Why in the world would Brexit folks long to return to an Empire where untold millions on the subcontinent were their fellow Brits?
The Britain Empire is the direct and legitimate causation of non-white immigration to the U.K...
1
I have relatives in the UK who are nice people, not racist at all, but they are leave supporters out of a vague dream of past imperial glory and the conviction that “Britain can do it better alone”. What they fail to understand (and I’ve tried to explain this to them many times, to no avail) is that the “empire” they dream about was nothing more than the authoritarian imposition of foreign rule on faraway lands and peoples, with the sole purpose of resource exploitation (aka grand theft).
Never does the imperial-nostalgic brexiteer consider that those Rhodesians or those Indians perhaps had other ideas about how to govern themselves and use their own resources as they pleased!
This enormous British arrogance is ingrained in the minds of most brexiteers - the truth is that they want to leave the EU because they hate the idea of being peers with “bloody foreigners” in a multinational democratic institution. They want to be absolute rulers over obsequious subjects in the “colonies”, and in their immense hubris they expect Australians, New Zealenders, even Canadians to jump on board enthusiastically to become subjects of a new “British Empire” with wonderful new trade deals thay will naturally favor their British rulers.
What these deluded Brexiters will soon realize is that their little kingdom will slowly drift off as an irrelevant backwater in the global economy. The clock won’t turn back for them.
62
Spot on, Mr Meek. The British psyche can perhaps be summed up by Proust’s A la recherche du temp perdu?
1
seems to me leaves and Trump fans have one thing in common - the desire to dominate
2
Observing the final death-throes of Empire is not a pretty sight. But it is well-worth watching, especially for the inheritors of the British Empire--us. If history teaches anything, it is the Iron Law that an empire expands until it reaches exhaustion. Rome, in its various guises, lasted 3000 years or so--but today the forum is a magnificent ruin and Italy cannot seem to govern itself. History doesn't care.
America is an especially interesting case: we are both an internal empire--we paid the French and ripped-off the Mexicans and ethnically-cleansed the people unlucky enough to live here before the deluge. But now the nation is shredding along the coastal/fly-over axis; what California has in common with, say, Mississippi is hard to discern, especially as California realizes that it sends more to the union than it will ever get in return. If this unlikely "union" endures another century it will be a miracle.
And we have an external empire as well--we have military outposts in more than 80 nations; not one can be abandoned at peril of losing face. No nation has ever spent as much as ours on "defense." There's always a threat; if one isn't real, it will be nicely manufactured by the media--remember when the NY Times was all-in for a nice little war in Iraq?
It will happen to us; it has already begun. If anything, the inflation/deflation cycle of empire is getting faster, along with everything else in this world. Here today, gone tomorrow.
12
British people come to retire in the south west of France. they come for the good food, the sun, cheap houses compared to the UK, they use the good French Health care in which doctors still come to your house in the middle of the night for children and elderly. They stay together, not speaking a word of french, bring their beers and beans sauces from England. Entire villages are bought by the British with their own local newspapers in English .
They have their own fly in services with Ryan Air twice a day from all major UK cities into Bergerac airport.
4
The dream of Brexit Britain is midlife aged men to fight the battles their father's and grandfather's told them about when children
6
It is a problem that the press in the US * probably like in the UK ) writes articles about " the dreams of Brexit Britain " but does not make the effort of giving real information about the concrete problems tha Brexit causes , outside of opinionated ideological elaborations.
I have never seen an article in the NYT that states the real composites of the Brexit situation : the EU budget, how it is distributed, the laws and regulations at stake, etc..
Nothing. I guess the American journalists are not able to read French and German and decipher the elaborated articles in the French and German press.
5
This is an excellent and perceptive essay--and from my viewpoint, the most perceptive statement is this, regarding Margaret Thatcher:
"She achieved the extraordinary feat of turning into political orthodoxy a plainly contradictory credo, that nationalism and borderless capitalism could easily coexist."
Recall that Margaret was fond of waving a copy of F.A. Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom," jeering at Keynesians and any suggestion that proper governance includes economic policy, and was totally bought into the libertarian, no-government, no-community, let-them-eat-cake mentality of the real beneficiaries of unfettered capitalism: The unfettered capitalists.
The decades-long economic theorizing underpinning "unfettered globalism" is well-described in Mirowski and Plewhe's book, The Road From Mount Pelerin. That deals with the right-wing economists' collaboration with libertarian moneyed interests, and the nationalist, populist part slowly gained momentum, as the people whose jobs went thataway realized how badly screwed they had been.
31
Times have changed scince the 1940s. People are more mature. People's needs are different. The world is now moving in a different direction towards different goals. More people who thought their race or class in society gave them a sense of privilege are realizing that fallacy of those thoughts. They feel some resentment but are finding themselves powerless to stop the course of the changing times. All that is missing in their understanding of what is happening is a thoughtful realization that all the poeples of the world are created equal no matter their race, color or country of origin.
5
One thing that Americans should keep in mind about the EU is that membership in the organisation requires that you accept immigration with no restrictions from any other country in the organisation. Basically a permanent 'open borders' arrangement.
The US itself would never consent to be a part of such an organisation.
This was not always the case however, since originally the EU was merely a free trade organisation known as the EEC which is what the UK thought it was joining back in 1975.
4
Amazing the similarities between Brexit and Trump.
1
The Sex Pistols said it in 1977, and it's still true today:
"There is no future/and England's dreaming."
26
The author seems to have set out to find evidence for what he already wanted to be true and unsurprisingly found it. How nice it must be to believe that all one’s opponents are either mad or bad.
As I see it, Brexit was a desperate move to indicate disapproval of a ruling class that has railroaded the UK into deep peril. Itself demographically moribund, it has additionally brought in an Islamic minority that is culturally diametrically different and demographically prolific. It is no exaggeration that in 3 generations on current trends Britons will end up like the Maronites of Lebanon. See the report below:
http://www.pewforum.org/2017/11/29/europes-growing-muslim-population/
5
it either doesn't occur to James Meek (or it does, but he's too polite to acknowledge it) that all thse nostalgic dreamers he interviews are worthwhile in the same way, that, say, silk petticoats are worthwhile; or beautifully trained foxhouds; or antique Morgan roadsters; or Windsor Castle. or the whole damn monarchy.
It's fine that they're still around; it's fine that there are clubs & institutes & foundations & charites that support & preserve them. They're decorative, and don't take up much air, and don't use up that much food. and they don't occupy that much space, and though the money spent on them might be spent better elsewhere, they're not so expensive that we're compelled to get rid of them. Mostly, they're harmless.
But we can please stop pretending they matter. Not the petticoats, not the foxhouds, not the Morgans, not the castles, not the Monarchy, not the nostalgic dreamers.
Somebody should tell them that "Brigadoon" was musical.
4
In a word, exceptionalism. Many ordinary Britons nurture the delusion that Britain is exceptional, and therefore they are too. A word used perpetually by US presidents of all parties because so many Americans embrace the same delusion. With the same catastrophic consequences.
16
Mr Meek - Your analysis and impressions on this important subject. They lend support to a view I have had for sometime - draw from limited, buy personal observation - that the basic impulse behind Brexit and the movement that propelled the current US Administration is very similar which I summarize as a lament of loss of white privilege.
12
Trump is the result of 35 years of Reaganomics.
Brexit is the result of 35 years of Thatcherism.
Both Wall St. and the City got fabulously wealthy while the working class got left behind.
And yet in both cases, a lot of those left behind in both countries vote for the conservatives who got them where they are.
28
But directing your collective anger towards immigrants is even more dangerous, that thinking makes the assumption that immigration is bad, and is the root cause of the UKs problems. Who they should be directing their anger at, are the very people who are solely responsible, and those people are the same ones that are the root cause of this countries problems.
Those people, are the ones we elect to represent our interests ahead of their own, in the United States, it’s 545 elected people that are solely responsible for the economic inequality, the state of our infrastructure, the state of our healthcare, education, all of it. Like voters in the UK, we have no say with regards to tax policy, spending, etc, yet we are told over and over that they are the only ones that can fix it, that takes a lot of gall. And those people keep their narrative alive.
One thing that I’ve learned in the last decade, is how easily people can be lead, and how little bad information it takes to make that happen, once it’s repeated over and over, to people that are easily lead, that don’t seem to have a sense of skepticism, the damage is done, and no matter how many facts, how much truth you show them, their opinions are firmly rooted, and they are unable to change or alter their opinion. They forget, that like a tree in a strong wind, either you bend, or you break.
5
The problem of shipping palettes is a good exemple of the counter argument for Brexit. For now, the regulations inside the EU allaw a certain flexibility.Let's say that the rule of desinfected palettes is on a track of 5 year obligation, the UK today while being in the EU can and does still ship with unadequate palettes with the pressure of progressively having to comply. But the day the UK is not any more in the EU , the EU regulations imply that no exterior commerce activity can be delivered from the exterior of the EU with not cerified palettes .The UK , then would be in great trouble , not being able to import into the EU with palettes not in conformity .
4
This was an interesting read until it veered unexpectedly into character assassination at the end by laying all blame at Thatcher's feet.
14
Please God, would you direct the world to stop writing about Britain.
Please.
There is no country that gets more press in America than the UK (Royals, football, comedians, etc.). Constantly in our faces, non-stop day in and day out. Exasperation.
Either stay or leave, but do something.
Or better yet, tell us more about Donald Trump's mother.
We never hear about his lineage.
2
@bigdoc Hi BigDoc, The situation in the UK is even worse than that: Have a look at any of the British press, take any paper you want, The Telegraph, The Guardian, the Independent. US news is very prominent in all of these papers, and not just the major US headlines, either, but many of the minor stories as well. You sometimes have to start reading the article to find out that the event they are referring to happened in the US and not the UK!
2
Yes, I heard that the Brits are experiencing an epidemic of homicides committed by minors using knives. At a time when Chicago murder rates are declining, Glasgow and London are increasing.
Perhaps Brits are watching too much American TV??
The desire to be free of the European Union is the same as the desire to be free of the Soviet Union.
2
I like my illusory sky-gods to have a clue, but thanks.
7
@Robert
Ad hominems are a declaration of intellectual bankruptcy.
Not sure what Brexiters and Thatcherits have been smoking all along! It's been more than 70 years since Britain sundered the Indian Subcontinent and hurriedly departed leaving a dark legacy and now these folks think they can somehow recreate the magical empire. They have no clue how people think and feel about their legacy in parts of the world that were colonized and their wealth expropriated. No wonder the red coats of the British East India Company and the royal army to this day are shown in popular Bollywood movies as thugs who looted the Indian subcontinent. The biggest folly is that Britain has never come in terms with the dark shades of their colonial history. Maybe the country can start by revising the school history curriculum to provide a more balanced perspective to the younger generation so they don't harbor misplaced views of a broader world.
10
Not only was India’s wealth expropriated, but so were men old enough to fight in WWI and WWII, all the conscripts sent from India, to fight for a country that treated them like dirt.
1
The article digs deep into the roots of the Brexit malaise, but misses two important historical points - a) the difference between the British & continental European views on the essence of the European Union and b) the different legal and political systems.
In the '70s Britain only voted to join the (then) European Economic Community aka The Common Market, for economic not political reasons. Today's EU is a political project for most of its continental members; something that Britain has never wanted. Refer back to Mrs Thatcher's 'No! No! No!' speech in Parliament on the very idea of "closer political union".
Britain's legal & political systems are very different to Continental Europe's. The Napoleonic Code underpins most EU states' laws; not so Britain's. Her exceptionalism stems from the Napoleonic Era when she escaped the upheaval and reconstruction of Europe after the Congress of Vienna in the early 1800s.
This last point struck me during a recent visit to "The House of European History" museum in Brussels. The exhibition panels were all about massacres, riots, revolutions, invasions, and general mayhem on continental Europe during the 19th century. But Britain remained unscathed, forging its mighty empire, and basking in its glory.
It was only in 1914 that Britain once again went to war on the continent. That, and WW2, confirmed many Britons' deep aversion to getting too close to the rest of Europe ever again.
67
“But Britain remained unscathed, forging its mighty empire, and basking in its glory.”
A weird interpretation of history. Britain fought France all the way to 1815, alongside a dozen other Euopean allies. After that Britain fought more wars than any other country in the 19th century, closely followed by France and the US (mainly fighting wars with the native population). Although the majority of the british wars were in the “empire” (China, Japan, Afghanistan, South Africa, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) there were two major European conflicts, the First Carlist war 1833-40 and the Crimean war 1853-56. There were also numerous conflicts in Europe such as the Don Pacifico affair where Britain blockaded Athens in 1850.
The truth is that Britain has, and always has had, an interest in peace in Europe to ensure its own prosperity. This was recognized even by Churchill. This is the reason the EU was founded, in which it has been overwhelmingly successful.
41
@Euronomad
"Britain's legal & political systems are very different to Continental Europe's. The Napoleonic Code underpins most EU states' laws; not so Britain's."
Few people on either side of the debate realise the importance of this fact. For myself it was the fundamental reason for voting to leave.
11
@John Schlesinger "The truth is that Britain has, and always has had, an interest in peace in Europe to ensure its own prosperity. This was recognized even by Churchill. This is the reason the EU was founded, in which it has been overwhelmingly successful."
IS the EU really the reason why countries in Europe have not been at war for decades? Might not the immense threat of the Warsaw Pact until 1990-ish, and the shared horror of what war in Europe in the 20th Century cost us all, have also played a significant part?
13
It seems that a lot here are not able to understand the concept of a " backstop " . It concerns Northern Ireland, since the Republic of Ireland is in the EU and in the Euro zone . In the ROI the currency is the Euro, in Northern Ireland the currency is the Pound sterling .And for now, there is no border between ROI and N Ireland. In fact lots of people of NI go to work in ROI, since there are no jobs in NI .And since the UK and NI are in the EU , they respect the EU collective agreements about commerce, agriculture regulations, etc.. The day the UK and NI become independant from the EU, and ROI still in it, the question of the borders arise for control of products quality, regulations, etc..So an agreement was made in nov 2018 so that Northern Ireland, since it is in the same physical island as ROI, the EU regulations would still apply to NI, even though the UK is out .It has been rejected by the UK parliament.2 nations on same soil, with different regulations and no borders, how is it concretely possible ? One exemple is that the EU demands a certain type of palettes used in shipping and transport that need to be safe from pests and other qualities, the UK does not want that, so what do you do at the border of NI if the wrong palettes with inadequate merchandise enter the ROI, then to pursue their course towards the continent . The British are completely incapable of apprehend concrete problems. They think everything is private trade .No bother with regulations.
4
Um, a) the Bank of Ireland issues those pounds, actually, and b) there are no jobs in Belfast?
1
Most articles I've seen in the U.S. press, however well-intentioned seem to imply that Brexit is all about desire to return to the lost days of empire or something similar.
However this was not one of the arguments heard in the run up to Brexit. It is not a view that is ever heard in the U.K., whether in the press or talking to the 'man on the street'.
It seems to be more an an attempt to understand Brexit by people who are bewildered by the idea that people would want to leave an excellent institution like the EU.
There are a number of compelling arguments on both sides of the Brexit argument and none of them have to do with faraway dreams of a lost empire.
7
@Peter Piper
For a counterpoint to this comment, readers may want to visit the "Daily Express" 'Daily Mail" websites, or e.g. the "Leave means Leave" youtube channel for a direct unfiltered insight into the souls of Leavers and Kippers.
5
This idea has been expanded and analysed thoroughly by the Irish journalist and writer, Fintan O'Toole, in his excellent book 'Heroic Failure - Brexit and the Politics of Pain' - the pain being the loss of Empire and the disconnect between many Brits' reality and the dream of being a privileged citizen of a 'Great Nation' . The dream version of England (and it is England, not the whole UK) that persists in 'Leavers' minds is used to imposing its rules on the rest of the world, rather than having rules imposed on it - and it that dream version that many Brexit voters thought, consciously or not, they were voting to regain.
113
I grew up in the Deep South, where people prized "musket ball holes" in the sides of old houses (they looked like knotholes to me, but never mind). Nostalgia dies hard -"I wish I was in Dixie, Hooray! Hooray!/In Dixie’s Land I’ll take my stand
to live and die in Dixie." Our Civil War, our earlier version of "Brexit", lives on in our country.
And I see a similar nostalgia in Britain's Exiters. Their nation was bombed to smithereens and their soldiers slaughtered by other members of the EU. One old Brit told me of having to eat seagulls (which tasted awful, he said) to stay alive during the battle of Britain. When the shooting stopped their empire was gone, sown to the four winds. Memories of things like this outlive those who first experienced them. Maybe this is what Brexit is about.
25
@Charles Tiege
Our war of independence from Great Britain is a better analogy.
2
@Charles Tiege you cannot say better that the US civil war was the result of British investments in the cotton industry . Read the articles of Marx and Engels , german journalists in London for the German press , just before the US civil war .
4
The confederate South has undue influence on our country and continually drags us down and back. Perhaps the leavers are of the same ilk and the UK will also decline further.
7
An excellent article on the Dreams of Brexiteers. The nightmare for all of us Brits is that any form of Brexit will be in breach of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), an international treaty lodged with the UN. In it, the British and Irish governments agreed it would be “wrong to make any change to the status of Northern Ireland save with the consent of a majority of its people”. The removal of NI from the EU under Brexit would obviously change its status, and it is clear from the Referendum that the people of NI have not given their consent (56% voted to remain).
The signatories also agreed to “develop still further the unique relationship between their peoples and the close co-operation between their countries as friendly neighbours and as partners in the European Union”. Whatever clever lawyers might say, there is no doubt that taking NI out of the EU without their consent and without the agreement of Dublin would breach the spirit of the agreement, if not the letter. And that is how the world will judge us.
8
Even though the British empire is gone, the lingering exceptionalism is an artifact that hangs heavily in the archetypal structure of the British psyche. It was easy to exploit this vulnerability. A similar vulnerability in the US enabled Trump to become president. What is frightening is that Putin’s disinformation campaigns worked so well. Both countries are now internally divided and can’t seem to figure a way out of their predicaments.
58
Longing deeply but mostly silently for a past that imbues one with a sense of true identity, of soul and of unseen strength is surely not unique to the English. All nations have national or tribal myths, which are ultimately much more powerful motivators than is provided by a conventional reading of history. And while there is a certain kind of deep and undeniable, if unspoken, truth to these myths, efforts to apply them to current everyday reality usually end badly.
70
"Longing deeply but mostly silently for a past that imbues one with a sense of true identity, of soul and of unseen strength is surely not unique to the English."
Yes, just look at small Maine towns and their antipathy toward people who weren't born there. People from "away".....
10
This is one of the best things I've read about the whole sorry Brexit mess.
Discussions with 'Leavers' become fraught because you can't debate dreams – based arguments seem to cut no ice. The result is that they are constantly surprised by how badly things are going: 'Project' Fear wasn't a project at all, it was REALITY.
I've long noticed the nostalgia for empire below the surface. I think it comes down to status: people miss the time when they felt superior to their neighbours – based on size of empire or victory in WW2 – in spite of evidence that many of those they felt superior to were in fact living better lives.
This nostalgia is at the heart of the Conservative Party. We joke about the 'blue rinse brigade' who've traditionally dominated selection panels for Tory candidates, but these people have recruited MPs after their own heart: British nostalgics with an antipathy for Europe. Hence the odd spectacle of youngish Tory MPs sounding off like eightysomethings.
Our problems are made worse by the fact that the leadership of the Labour Party is also in its own dream-state – wanting to turn the clock by to 1968 and start again.
What on earth are we supposed to do when both main political parties reject the modern world?
227
Spot on comment. What probably doesn't come across properly in the report though is the fact that everyone has mixed, even contradictory feelings -- about, well, everything. The referendum, indeed everything 'Brexit', played to the dark side of these feelings, which otherwise may have been dissipated in less injurious forms. The similarity with Trumpism is evident - a 'chip on the shoulder' feeling of disappointment and sense of loss about a time when 'things were better' and 'we were on top'. Hence MAGA in the US and Take Back Control, the Brexit equivalent in the UK.
88
@James K
Absolutely, and you are quite right about Labour being equally caught up in their own dreams. You are charitable saying they want to go back to 1968 - I'd put the year at the publication of Das Kapital.
Also, Americans may not realise the gulf between the continental social-democrats and the English labourites - they are a horde of undereducated bullies (and I say this as a socialist!). The closest someone on your side of the world can get to an appreciation of this is to read 1984. It sounds hackneyed, but it is really true...
16
@Geof Rayns "The referendum, indeed everything 'Brexit', played to the dark side of these feelings, which otherwise may have been dissipated in less injurious forms. " This seems to me to be what social media does best (or does its worst). It's not just that politics is lost in dreamland, it's that communications has been hijacked by algorithms and people with destructive intent.
9
Theresa May talks of a Global Britain.
The only means for a Global Britain to exist in this world is for the U.K. to nurture and exploit its cultural and political sophistication forged from its many years of Empire, within the umbrella of a larger entity such as the European Union.
The anti-immigrant crowd overlook the fact that those who came to the mother country from the former colonies did so because they were convinced of the fundamental merit of British culture. They now provide a permanent bridge between the U.K. and the wider world. They offer the U.K. a chance to develop the ability, already possessed by the U.S. because of its polyglot nature, to negotiate its way throughout the globe. Hence the potential for Global Britain lies within its increasing diversity of population bound together by a shared belief in its systems.
The anti-EU people (not all of them anti-immigration) overlook the fact that the world is much more crowded now and that only large states or political entities are able to shape their own destinies. The obvious answer to this development for the U.K. is the EU. Within the EU, a Global Britain is a priceless asset. It is the nation in all of the EU with the deepest international experience and is thus positioned to be its most influential member for international issues. This is the true opening for a Global Britain.
4
I am not certain that it is proper or useful for non-Brits to say that much right now about the dreams of British culture. I will limit myself to pointing out that some dreams of some Brits have been chronicled in vivid detail in English literature. For example, the Shire as described by J.R.R. Tolkien is a potent symbol of rural tranquility and stability.
In a more political sense, I found the references to Margaret Thatcher to be interesting but almost certainly an oversimplification. I think that the problem with UK-EU relations right now comes partly from the fact that the UK's entry into the EU was "special". This might have had more to do with Charles de Gaulle than Margaret Thatcher.
2
@Grindelwald
"For example, the Shire as described by J.R.R. Tolkien is a potent symbol of rural tranquility and stability."
Yes, and it symbolically functioned as England, seemingly happy and separate from the great events of Middle Earth as the English thought themselves remote from the great Imperial and religious clashes of the Near East and the Balkans (which famously inspired Tolkien's fantasy world). But just as in real life, the insulation of Tolkien's avatar of England was an illusion mostly generated by the willful ignorance of its inhabitants.
Something the British public might want to reflect on.
5
In the wake of austerity, most Western democracies experienced a change of leadership as the people who were suffering through the recession turned on their leaders. This backlash was avoided in the UK by David Cameron, then-PM, by re-directing it against the EU. He cleverly offered a referendum to ensure he gave that popular anger a different route, thus winning his party a landslide victory in national elections. The problem is, anger is not a policy, https://www.nytimes.com/1983/09/21/opinion/anger-is-not-a-policy.html
12
@gf
This seems to me a very astute comment. I would add that the remarkable thing about the UK's austerity is that it was almost entirely without economic justification.
Whatever the critiques of ideologically blinkered decision making in Greece, Italy, Spain, or Portugal (and I do not say they are without merit), those countries severe fiscal policies were grappling with legitimate and substantial economic and trade issues.
In the UK, the massive cuts were pursued by Mr. Cameron as an ideologically-driven radical social restructuring and justified by a political myth that inflated relatively minor and transitory fiscal challenges into an existential crisis for partisan gain.
I have great respect for many of the things the Conservative Party has achieved fro Britain over the last couple of centuries, but the combination of unnecessary austerity and unnecessary Brexit is surely one of the most shocking cases of misrule and contemptuous folly in the history of modern democracy.
14
The lesson of Brexit is that resistance to Big Brussels’ ever tightening grip is futile.
1
@God. Cite some examples of "Big Brussels' ever tightening grip" please.
2
They are looking not for empire, but for sovereignty for their own country. That’s what scares you. That’s why this is so unacceptable. Urban elites think they can drive a version of democracy, calibrated by them personally, using immigrants under their control. Then, they can rule over the world’s wealth and power as dictators. While pretending to care about the poor. Non-elite natives, who have lost tremendous ground and who have been more generous than any group in history, still have the vote, and are resisting in the name of nationhood and - crucially - the protections afforded to the middle classes of nations. This was once known as a “middle class.” Something to study up on.
5
How many Americans who were forced to train immigrant/foreign replacements before getting fired would have voted Leave on a Brexit style referendum?
The sense of economic injustice is real. The vast majority are losers in the new global economy. However the movers and shakers have managed to shift blame away from themselves and their gaming of domestic vs foreign workforce, and point the finger at economic migrants instead.
4
If Trump is at fault in all this, his denial of climate change is front and center. Mass migration is not due to a single cause, but rather a mix of problems facing a changing planet, with war and famine being prime factors. The inability to grow food because the rain can no longer be properly predicted in parts of the world is as much anything at the root cause of these issues. Parts of the Middle East and Africa growing food has become impossible. Local fighting ensues as water becomes a precious commodity. Mass migration, which has happened countless times in our past, was useful to spread homo sapiens around the world. Now, it simply frightens those who see it as an invasion against themselves. Unless we band together and heal our planet, we will be doomed to relive our murderous past.
6
Couldn't agree more, Mr. Meek. It seems that some top US and UK political elites have been dreaming a similar imperial dreams. Fuzzy, unfounded memories at best. Translated and documented, the theory of white supremacy today. True, the white race has outmaneuvered, exploited, and dehumanized nonwhite races for so long. Disruptions have come (and gone) and the imperial or rather the free market capitalists' strategic failures (and lies) have been exposed. Counter points and forces have been actively in operation, esp. in this century: as they say, what goes around comes around. Folks in the two English-speaking countries were massively being misled, misruled, and mistreated by corrupt and incompetent top officers and legislators. All peoples, both in the said countries and around the globe, dream of a better world, literally and figuratively. Everyone, a Leaver or a Remainer or a Don't carer, will hold on to his/her own myths and dreams no matter what and under any circumstance. It's the competent politicians, technocrats, and their advisors to do their job right: Persuade the populace with passion for truth, solid facts, common sense (the understanding that everyone wants the same thing - dignity and a good, safe life with a better future), and a compelling inclusive message. Persuade people to "keep calm and carry on" with composure and confidence, not to despair, get mad, and ignore the reality. Ask for patience and forgiveness. Leave your hyper inflated egos home. Listen.
“By no means all Leavers are racist, but I ended with the impression that for many, casual racism is regarded as a lost patrimony;”
This “Empire” patrimony of “casual racism/xenophobia” has also left many Leavers laboring under a belief in their all-encompassing innate superiority compared to the rest of the EU countries and the, so far unrealized, notion that the world’s trading nations will be beating a path their door to make juicy trade agreements with them once they have thrown off the yolk of the EU.
Unchecked globalization and growing inequality have indeed been a disaster for many Leavers, but blaming the EU, giving up the political and economic leverage the EU has given them on the world stage, and allowing “public school” elites like Johnson, Gove and Rees-Mogg to take over is not the solution.
10
The world will move on, and the English will get their Rule Britannia. The boundaries of their new Empire will be the southern 2/3's of their home island, and the Faulklands. The sun will set on the new Britannia actually it will be at most two or three timezones wide.
3
I do not understand why some commenters still seem to believe that the U.K consists only of 'England'.
Britain and England are not the same thing.
For the record, the United Kingdom of Great Britain, consists of Scotland, Wales and England was formed in 1707.
1
Isn’t it odd that the French and the Germans, who have been invading each other for centuries, were able to set aside their cultural myths for the goal of a bigger and united Europe, while the British, stuck in their past per usual, could not? Many tales about national character are buried in that difference.
10
The desire to declare independence from Big Brussels is the same desire Americans had to declare independence from King George III.
3
That first paragraph his pure silliness and does not bode well for the future. It's this kind of weak analysis that stops us from attacking real issues. Brexit happened for the same reason people are scared and angry all over the West...the middle class, our greatest achievement, has been gutted and buried with no future prospects in the offering. Their anger is real and justifiable. Too bad the working class penchant for emotional thinking leaves them susceptible to propaganda.
4
Yes, the leavers are morally repugnant. There is enough of that go around in the region.
Note the inordinate popularity of period shows on TV (their national consciousness), where everyone but the descendants of feudal lords are in servitude. They want a return to out houses, oil lamps, and short life spans (minor details). Why not?
Are people missing that: (a) After Europe stopped killing each other in 1945, they merely refocused their killing in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and (b) it is up to the Brits to keep EU from destroying the entire planet (a capability that they now possess). It is only a matter of time before EU begins experimenting with solutions for their easily identifiable immigrants (all have done this before when they could). Anyone thinking that Italy, Austria, Poland, and Hungary are not headed there, full speed, is kidding themselves.
Brexit will force Britain to do what it does best: take risk, innovate, overcome, improvise, and fight like crazy. And prevent a German dominance (which has been tempered almost entirely by immigrants they don't like). In this, they stand alone (compared to a whining, self-absorbed, authoritarianism loving Europe bordered by EU members who are either klpetocrats or profligate, or both).
Despite the repugnance of the motivations that drive the leavers, it is up to Britain to temper these developments, and forge a separate future for itself. I remain bullish on the British economy.
5
My unstudied and gut feeling point of view from America is that Britain quietly has more influence and control over the U.S. now than I can ever remember.
Has the American Revolution been overturned?
We have to endure this daily soap opera on the news called “Brexit”. Who cares.
Maybe from Reagan/Thatcher in the eighties until now the undoing has been so complete that Britain doesn’t need the EU like they used to?
They got America back.
I think Reagan did such a good job for England that they even knighted him for it.
2
The basic thread here as in the US is fear! " I remember when nobody like me was afraid of anything"
Whether that was ever actually true or not, or was naive is not recalled or thought of.
4
Brexit is Trump by another name. The seething, latent resentment of a dissipated and demoralized middle class surrendering to ever present racial animosity stoked by dog whistle trained miniature Trump model politicians. There is more dismay to come unless the middle class gets some attention here and there.
6
Our habitually pompous British forebears are taking themselves far too seriously.
The rest of the world sees the U.K. as a side-show spinoff from the now defunct Barnum and Bailey Circus. Brexit will not make the earth stop spinning.
4
The statistical backbone of this writer’s musings is remarkable. The article’s Brexit rationale all leads to some sort of immigrant phobia. Really? Ja’ever think people don’t want an unelected bureaucracy in Brussels controlling their daily lives? No, anyone well educated is certain that a centralized government bureaucracy can make better decisions.
1
I have lived in the EU half of my life. At no time did I feel l lived under a dictatorship.
6
I notice a theme to many NYT columns, one which echoes liberal thought; that other people just don't have a right to their own personal feelings, preferences, and values if those feelings go against what liberals deem politically correct. Whatever happened to "walk a mile in my shoes", liberals? Whatever happened to freedom of thought, freedom to have one's own personal preferences? Does that right only accrue to liberals and globalists?
3
Why did the author only travel to 'England' and not any of the other regions of the U.K., such as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?
This would be like going to the US to try to understand American opinion and then only stopping to visit California or New York.
3
@Peter Piper. England (and minimally populated Wales) is the part of the U.K. that voted for Brexit. Northern Ireland and Scotland voted to Remain.
2
@Peter Piper
You do realize Mr. Meeks is British, right? Born and lives in London, brought up in Scotland (Dundee), etc.? Right? I'm pretty sure as a lifelong British journalist (and usually resident, he was in Moscow and Kiev for a lot of the 1990s to cover the aftermath of the Soviet imperial collapse) Mr. Meeks has a pretty good handle on where to go and who to talk to over there.
5
I'm sorry that the author only sees this very limited view of brexit. What about those in the United Kingdom who see the European Union as anti-democratic, a corrupt bureacracy serving a failing dream?
2
Look it’s easy from the outside.
Just stay in and enjoy the GDP and travel benefits & stop dreaming of empire in an ignorant & arrogant neocolonial way. Get over it.
That hugely over-simplifies a ranging & complex debate. Eg..,
1. The inherent structural instability of the euro. Just because the UK is not a member does not mean it is impacted. See Stiglitz on this.
2. The perception of the Troika (Central bank, IMF & European Bank- not democratically accountable) imposing devastating austerity on Greece.
3. MEPs that do not publish expense accounts- right to privacy apparently.
4. UK is a net budget contributor (not a problem) to a budget that has a 40% spend on agriculture, yes agriculture. Research further and you will see what problems that causes.
5. The German unelected budget commissioner telling the French Govt/Macron in the middle of huge Gilet Jaune civil unrest “we will tolerate a national debt higher than 3 percent as a one-time exception. However, it must not continue beyond 2019.” Would the USA take that from Trudeau as a mandate not a suggestion?
5. Italy, Hungary and far right politics fuelled by EU inflexibility on free movement. (Clearly not exclusively, but somewhat.)
Etc I could go on but am length limited
I am not saying to Leave or Remain. I am simply saying that the decision is way more complicated than this article suggests, creating huge cognitive dissonance in the Uk. I do feel our nation is being painted with overly broad and simple strokes.
4
Call it what it is. Bigotry and ignorance. The same forces that allowed Mr Trump to gain the presidency (without the popular vote) are at the foundation of Brexit. Bigotry and ignorance. No deep analysis is needed. It is very plain and obvious.
4
Tribalism is the root cause for Brexit and almost every other human issue on the planet. Europeans warred with each other for centuries then expanded to take on the Muslims who moved into the Middle East and Iberian Peninsula. Exploration into Africa, India, China and the Americas led to a feeding frenzy of exploitation and the modern age of "international" economy. Europe conquered and divided the planet into a colonial system that covered the globe, decimating the native populations, destroying cultures, forcing Christianity and European ideas and ideals on all.
What could go wrong? Everything!
A century of wars across the globe have not led to peace. Humans cannot understand that excess population and climate change are far more dangerous to our very existence than skin color and religion.
Brexit is a microcosm of the human condition, the ego inside us all that believes "I" can be the alpha, "I" can be the king. The chances of humans overcoming that flaw seem to be slim.
1
As James Meek notes, a history long outpaced by present realties, with no hope of recovery, can still lie subliminally in the hearts and dreams of a people who regard themselves as “once great.” This is Putin’s dream of Czarist, Orthodox Russia wedded to the once great global nuclear power of the Soviet Empire, of China’s hope that the communist party can rule over a restored Middle Kingdom, of the Islamist dream of the Caliphate. And of course America’s great subliminal dream is not a global empire but our own internal frontier — not the real frontier of genocide and massive industrial exploitation of natural resources, but the frontier of Frederic Remington, where doughty white men armed with carbines conquered an unforgiving wasteland. Appropriated by Teddy Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, and Ronald Reagan, currently in the custodianship of the Chamber of Commerce, NRA, and the Republican party, this dream of frontier has dominated our politics ever since the census bureau declared the American frontier officially closed in 1890. Trump’s manifest demonstration of America’s rot from within will only whip this dream into self-destructive violence — which our president, in his most recent invocation, hopes will be carried out by the police, military. and biker paramilitaries against his political enemies.
5
It is truly a joke. The more I’ve learned about the U.K. from this affair the less interested I am in what finally happens and the less I respect the Brits.
And being of Irish ancestory I can thank the English for my presence in the US, provided I look past the colonial enslavement and genocide that they used to rule Ireland.
And lastly, it is cruel but delightful irony to see their last colonial outpost, Northern Ireland, bringing down the House.
7
I was hoping for some insights here, alas the piece is cut down in its prime, offed by final paragraphs that neither conclude nor relate to the story.
Blaming Brexit on Thatcher makes about as much sense as blaming Trump’s wall on Reagan: you can do it, sort of (not really) but it just comes out as having an axe to grind. It’s been thirty years man, the only strings Thatcher pulls today are in your mind.
1
@Two-Headed Bear
Yes, but I think that what Meek meant to evoke was Thatcher's ability to sell her base on two incompatible ideals. Only just, though. She, and every Tory leader after her, were ultimately laid low by the EU question.
1
I am grateful to be enlightened but, as a Remainer, discomfited that it takes an American's insight to inform me about matters otherwise opaque.
Empire 2.0 just makes no sense at. Not if you travel or read - or work in the media or the civil service, or the arts and sciences, at higher levels of industry or, in my case the NHS. If you you know any modern history.... It's over. It's never coming back. Get over it.
Saying such a thing marks you as a member of 'the elite' - the term applied to the 48.1% who voted to Remain. Elites can't question the rest of the nonsense about the Brexit dream - the return of capital punishment, the demilitarisation, the return of massively subsidized state industries, the desire to eject European immigrants and replace them with more tractable imports from the Commonwealth along with absurdities like 'putting lawyers in their place' (sic), ripping up workers rights and Health&Safety law and repeating England's success in the 1966 World Cup soccer final. Brexits is England's objective BTW - not the UK's or 'Britain's'.
The only caution I'd offer to condescending American - having been born in England in the early 1950's is that MAGA is a swansong - not an aspiration. I've heard that sort of thing before.
2
@nolongeradoc
"...it takes an American's insight to inform me about matters otherwise opaque."
Ummm....Meeks is a Brit, not an American. Born and lives in London, raised in Scotland.
2
Sorry this is mostly nonsense. Most people in favour of leaving are not motivated by racism, or pining for the empire. I should know I’m one of them.
What motivated them was a dislike of the elitist, undemocratic EU that is gradually centralising power away from national governments and has an aim of a US of Europe.
I actually voted remain but I believe the referendum should be honoured and the machinations of both the EU and its supporters in the UK since then has made me change my mind.
2
There have been no machinations by the EU. They have just repeated what was already written down. Time for Britain to eat its vegetables and enjoy the disaster they created for themselves.
5
Nevertheless, empire-envy is endemic to Leavers and their sense of lost glory. Racism is similarly associated with empire-envy and Leavers. The UK is determined to destroy their own economy with this need to wave a tattered Ensign.
3
"Leavers might oppose immigration, they are no less resentful of the “elites” rendering it awkward to categorize people along racial lines."
Here's an example of the kind of freedom to racially/ethnically/nationally categorize people that old line Britisher prize and fear losing:
The three of us were visiting an affiliate of our company in southeast England a few years ago. After concluding our business we walked out to the Gate House to get a cab back to the train station. The guard there, a man of an age from the Empire generation, called for the taxi saying, "Chauncey, I've got two yanks and a colored chap for you."
Rule Britannia still.
2
It's an interesting analysis and very Freudian about the dream but the English men and women who voted for Brexit have only shown themselves to be prejudiced, bigoted, and small-minded. The land of hope and glory is soon to become the domain of the small and petty.
3
Brexit is about immigration, pure and simple. People just don't like having too many foreigners moving into their country. This is in the UK, US, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Italy, many other countries.
Loss of empire has nothing to do with it.
3
@vbering
You completely miss the point. The choice to see oneself as British and not European, and to think of being British as something categorically different from European rather than being a subset is inseparable from the way you framed things. And as Meeks shows, that construction of one's identity as British-but-not European, is fueled and supported by nostalgic romantic fantasies of the Imperial period as a once-a-and-future utopia.
6
@Cormac
Wrong. The Greeks and Italians would leave if they thought they could. So would the Germans and French. It's the leaders that want the EU, not the people. Nothing here is special about the British.
1
American journalists with a progressive viewpoint get Brexit all wrong. The British do not wish to be controlled by an unknown bureaucracy in Brussels. They want to be in charge of their own destiny, thank you very much. What is so difficult to understand about that?
2
@Asher
What do people mean with this 'unknown bureaucracy in Brussels' ? It is a fictitious entity, a bogeyman, created by Rupert Murdough's newspapers.
Boris Johnson has predicted that England upon Brexit will turn into a 'vassal state of the EU'. I cannot understand how the British will thus become 'in charge of their own destiny'.
2
@Asher
You do know that Meeks is a British journalist turned novelist right? Born and lives in London. Raised in Dundee. Has lived in the UK pretty much most of his life (he spent some years in the 90's covering reinvention of Ukraine and Russia from the ground).
Question: Does the fact that he is British make his intellectual points more valid? Does the truth have less merit if it is spoken by the "wrong" person for you?
Brexit doc martins have shades of the latest choice for the well-dressed droogs
1
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
3
The idea that England or "Great Britain" or "The United Kingdom" might thrive if 'untethered' to the EU is about as rational as an idea that Mississippi would thrive if only it could secede from the U.S. of A. (and 'shed' its dependence upon federal dollars provided by taxes paid by New Yorkers and other 'Blue' state "persons" -- 'real' and corporate).
But, being a man of Irish Catholic ancestry, I find the Brexit 'stuff' -- 'especially' the British Parliament's Brexit miasma -- a lot of fun to 'watch.'
9
" ... where it can somehow turn the rules to its advantage, in the idea of a safe white core protected from the dark hordes beyond by a mighty armed force."
In one word, Tribalism.
Precisely what I, and tens of millions, no hundreds upon hundreds of millions of people worldwide know in their hearts and souls, something as old as time itself, something we see all of the time in the animal kingdom, and have no doubt, we are animals, albeit some, and only some, of we so called reasoning animals, do show grudging signs of empathy, from time to time.
Dreaming for the English would result in a nightmare for billions, just as it did during their subjugating Empire days of yore.
4
I once read that 'nostalgia is paper mache history'. Fake and flimsy. I think it explains a lot about Brexit and the trump supporters in America. Not only do they believe is the lie, they want us to live it.
3
Mr. Meeks' Use of the racist card to discredit the Brexiteers has been too casual, unexamined and likely politically motivated. Certainly Mr. Meeks’ extended lark about Briton “talking to” and “listening to” those who favor leaving si somewhat short of science. Thus, when he claims “...people’s conventional political views about taxation or public spending; even the issue of immigration..” don’t explain the ethos of the Brexiteers, we should be very skeptical that he will come up with anything new.
He casually writes off the majority of Britains as racist, but refuses to take a hard look at a substantial history of Brussels’ corruption and failure. Of Brussel’s policy failures, Greece is perhaps the best example, but Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland also work. The best economists of the world told Brussels to write off the bad debt to Greece. Brussels focused instead on imposing draconian austerity programs. This austerity made Greece nearly impossible to govern, and literally turned hundreds of thousands of Greeks out on the street. The problem is that EC isn’t democratic. There are elections, but those elected don’t have real control over how policy is established. The truth is that the EC is intent on stripping its nation states of pro-social policies, and creating the very ugly realities currently prevailing in the US. Mr. Meeks does very poorly indeed at ignoring this elephant in the room, while instead invoking the strawman of racism.
2
Wow. This brings to life Faulkner’s observation that “The past is never dead. It isn’t even past.” To me this (and MAGA) represents a failure of leadership. Leaders don’t harken back to a past they can’t change, they try to build the best they can in the scary present. The Brexit moment as well as the 150-year yearning for an ante bellum era replete with its racism speaks to the deep human need for hope that mistakenly looks backward instead of toward the uncertain future. Conservatism, on a global scale, catered to that mind set and today is crashing. But what’s needed before any new synthesis can take hold is a big discussion about what it was like to survive the Civil War, the World Wars, and to see the post war global institutions of peace and equality set in and eventually threaten our (white) spremacy.
4
This thesis is about as credible as suggesting that Trump supporters can be explained by nostalgia for the former British empire. Which is to say, not at all. By trying to impose these silly and fanciful narratives onto the situation, we avoid facing up to understanding what are the real issues and motivations. It's really just a way to trivialize and slander those whose opinions you disagree with. You arrive at neither understanding nor solutions when you simply insult your opponents with such facile caricatures. Fail.
In a nutshell, it's MEGA: Make England Great Again. The equivalent of MAGA. Led by right wing hypocrites, the angry, white, Christian "base" doesn't want their perceived entitlement taken away, or accept that the world is changing. Wondering what the equivalent of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh is in the UK--to complete the picture.
2
@JCX
That would be tabloid newspapers (Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, The Sun) and Murdoch's Sky.
"for many, casual racism is regarded as a lost patrimony"
For a minute there I thought I was reading about the US, where "casual racism" is definitely something millions of Americans are into. Affordable health care? Meh. A job? Meh. Just as long as they've got someone to look down on, they're good. Welcome to the funhouse.
3
"How could this dreaming have survived so long after the fall of the actual empire?"
I have found an answer (at least a working theory) in a little old book;; Antisemite and Jew by J-P Sartre.
Although the book is obviously about a particular kind of hate it describes a certain mentality and this explanation can easily be extrapolated. It explains thus the various nationalistic and irrational trends like reactionary politics.
One small quote: "since they are afraid of reasoning, they wish to lead the kind of life wherein reasoning and research play only a subordinate role..."Only a strong emotional bias can give a lightninglike certainty; it alone can hold reason in leash..."
2
Mr. Meek is clearly very smart and his book sounds fascinating, but he still has a scolding and condescending attitude toward the Leavers. He talks like they’re strange animals in a zoo who are just “dreaming.” Mr. Meek, to the reader it’s clear you still don’t understand the Leavers at all.
Brexit is tribalism of the deluded.
Somehow the British thought they could leave the E.U. while retaining all the benefits of being in the E.U.
What puzzles me is how exactly does Brexit benefit Farage, Johnson and the rest of that gang.
28
My impression living in England is also that a subtle nostalgia for the strength of the Empire feeds into the delusion of "global Britain" and "trade deals around the world" peddled by the leave campaigners.
It is interesting that demographically most leave voters were of pensioner age, and most remain voters were the young people who are going to lose out. There is even some evidence that in the almost three years since the referendum public opinion has shifted (slightly) towards remain due to the addition of new younger voters.
Let's hope we can stop this madness for the sake of the younger generation.
1
Reading between the lines, to things not said, the author paints Brexiteers as people who think the UK is is now neutered powerless to shape culture and economic forces. That they’re bound and determined to make sure that happens, ironically, because they don’t like “foreigners”. I have to say that the UK should leave the Union. They’ve given up a large slice of their sovereignty. The Union should have only been about economic ties and not set up to shape “less advanced” countries rules and regs in everything other than economic.
The military and economic power houses of the mid-twentieth century have seen their hegemony diminished by relentless paradigm shifts that have made them profoundly uncomfortable. As the third world has developed, it has taken its place at the table and demanded its rightful share of the wealth. China and India, among others, have become the producers of the world while the former leaders have become the consumers. This has resulted in a redistribution of the wealth that is as irreversible as the Industrial Revolution. We are witnessing the formation of a new economic equilibrium.
While this trend is beneficial overall, it creates an unjust distribution of the wealth. Many at the bottom of the economic ladder have had their lives destroyed by the migration of their jobs to low-cost-of-production countries. These jobs are not coming back. This problem cries out for a solution before there is catastrophic social upheaval.
Right-wing populists have seized on this inequity to grab power without offering a realistic solution to the problem. Their tactic is to scapegoat immigrants, a position easily embraced by the disaffected whose grasp of economics is tenuous. In Britain it's called Brexit; in the US it's labeled Trumpism.
Those displaced by the shifting economy will drift further to the right when their populist solutions inevitably fail to ameliorate their condition. This is the existential problem that must be solved if we're to avoid being misled into WW III.
8
Very good essay, but maybe an oversimplification. There seems merit in the argument of a number of different factions desiring more autonomy a la Norway and Switzerland. It is curious that the Scots recently came close to separating from the UK and now would like to remain in the EU as would Northern Ireland, perhaps reviving a UK break-up. Is the price of identity isolation and obscurity?
4
One of the most insightful and delightfully expressed columns in the Times this year. Thank you.
1
Loss of empire can be a hard pill to swallow. The turn of the US will be coming at some point, hurried along by ignoring the consequences of an aging population, climate change and an 'American First' outlook.
254
@David
It's already happening. As Isaac Asimov said in the original Foundation series, the Empire was approaching collapse while its people thought it was stronger than ever.
51
@David
Indeed, it is already here. Why is Trump so intent on a trade war with China? China has become the 2nd largest economy and is projected to be #1 in another few years.
Listen to Trump - the more he says "we're no. 1; we're the best; we're the most; we're winning " the more you know we're losing.
Just think about this - China's rate of poverty is 3.3% while America's is 15.1% according to the CIA World Factbook, Jan 1, 2018.
42
@Mimi
oh yeah the vaunted US empire is in decline but as for China:
are the Chinese happy? are they free? what is the Chinese government masking? there are warning signs in their economy-remember when Japan was forecast to take over the world-then the bubble burst and the lost decade happened.
we never know what the future holds-oh wait we do-climate change will destroy all this silly talk of "empires" and #1 economies.
5
Meeks' essay makes a lot of sense as it deals with human emotions, memory and longing. It is understanding and respectful of the ideas and feelings of people to whom his approach would be inconprehensible. It is in a word humane. It is also very applicable, in its basic approach, to the travails of the US.
4
If May's third try at passing her negotiated deal fails and she is forced to seek an extension from the EU, the way to resolve the chaos is for the EU to postpone the March 29 deadline under the condition of another plebiscite on the issue. If that reaffirms the prior vote, then either Parliament approves the existing deal or the UK leaves the EU without a deal. Further negotiations are pointless and a general election, as some suggest, would only kick the can down the road.
4
@Rudy Ludeke
For th UK, yours is indeed a wis approach. But there is also the EU to consider. Brexit has been very damaging and an immense distraction at a time when the Union has other, sometimes greater, concerns. It seems to me that we are approaching, and perhaps past, the point where the marginal addition (significant) harm to the EU of a no-deal exit is still less than the harm created by drawing this out any further. For the EU, it may be time to give up on smooth transition and just move on.
4
@Rudy Ludeke, when the British government asks to extend the exit date for further negotiation, they must mean negotiations amongst themselves.
1
This is one of the most intelligent and nuanced analyses of the Brexit crisis I have read. It is gratifying to see it penned by a British national. I disagree with one comment, however: “I used to be skeptical of the idea that Britain hadn’t come to terms with the loss of its empire.” London was my home for 30+ years and, since moving to the European mainland, I return at least twice a year. I can honestly say that the exceptionalism that accompanies, indeed is a feature of, the Rule Britannia mentality was widespread if not the norm. Thatcher amplified - and, during the Falklands War, weaponized - that exceptionalist narrative, surely a last-ditch defensive/aggressive reaction to the fear that empire was, if not lost, then no longer an exclusive British patrimony. As it does now, white nativism drove the narrative. Being an ethnic Southern European in Britain meant being ‘othered,’ racialized, at best tolerated; both of and yet not of Britain. At the same time, as is clear from this article, for every Nigel Farage, for every Rees-Mogg, for every delusional Sunderland resident, there is a James Meek. There is also a David Lammy, a Gina Miller. Someone has to reclaim that other Britain.
30
Articles in the US press often indicate that it is dreams of some faraway and long lost empire that have been the motivating force behind Brexit.
One thing that seems to be lost in these articles is that being a member of the EU requires that you accept an unlimited number of immigrants from the EU.
The issue is that in Eastern part of the EU are a number of countries where GDP per capita is similar to Mexico. By moving to the UK you can ahieve income 3 - 4 times what you can make back home. Who wouldn't take up such an offer?
Due to the popularity of the English language and the relatively good economy, the U.K. is one of the most popular places to move to for East Europeans, who have been immigrating to the UK at the rate of about 600,000 per year. But... this is in a country the size of NY State that already has 60 million people.
It is a far easier matter as an EU citizen to move to the UK than for a British citizen to get a visa for their own Canadian, Australian or American spouse to move there.
The EU has refused to budge on this issue or offer any sort of compromise, even if it meant the UK ultimately leaving.
Americans would themselves never accept a Pan-American free trade deal that required them to accept an unlimited number of immigrants from Central or South America.
On the other hand, the U.K. is so enmeshed economically in the E.U., that leaving has proven to be far more difficult than anticipated.
17
@Peter Piper
In a broad sense, this is all true.
However, it does't really tell the whole story.
Freedom of movement among the member states of the EU is one of the Four Freedoms it is based on, so "the EU" (of which the UK is an equal member and therefore has a say) is not going to compromise on that. HOWEVER, FoM is not without restrictions (for example a time limit on getting a job) but the UK has declined to implement them.
Businesses and public services like the NHS rely on FoM for staffing.
FoM also means that Brits are free to work and live in all the other member states. Many British retired people now enjoy living in the south of Spain, and young people attend university on the same terms as local students. These privileges will go away.
4
@Peter Piper
Your point is hugely undermined by quoting a a completely false immigration figure of "about 600,000 a year."
The figures published by the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that the peak annual net migration figure from all other EU countries was 184,000, in 2015. The average since 2004 is 106,000 a year.
Further, the ONS figures show the average annual net migration from the former Soviet bloc EU members since 2004 is 41,000 a year.
To put these numbers into perspective, annual net migration to the UK from countries outside of the EU, which the UK Government has always been able to control, has averaged 198,000 a year since 2004.
Regrettably, fake "facts" were a huge part of the Leave campaign. It is proving difficult to put the genie back into the bottle.
7
You are right. Yet, it also means that any British citizen is free to move in any of the 27 other countries of the EU. Freedom of movement goes both ways.... and, i believe, many citizens of the UK have taken advantage of it....a quick trip to Spain it the south of france would attest to it.
6
My oldest known white European American ancestor was born in London 1613. He was married in Lancaster County the Virginia colony in 1640 where he died in 1670. His descendants fought on the side of the rebels during the American Revolution.
I am an Anglophile. London is one of my favorite cities on Earth. I am a aficionado of Masterpiece Theater particularly the historical dramas and anything Dickens or Shakespeare.
The United States of America is a colonial legacy of the first successful rebellion against the British Empire. It pains me greatly to see Britain going through this dilemma. Why can't a parliamentary English speaking democracy do something effective and useful ?
There is a reason that the royals are mere symbolic heads of state. There is a reason that the 13 American colonies rebelled. There is a reason that while the British Empire collapsed the Commonwealth with the Queen as Head of State remains.
" Two people divided by a common language" Winston Churchill on the difference between his father's Britain and his mothers America.
Now we Americans and you British are not so different nor divided in a very bad and distressing way for the future of both nations.
8
To leave or stay in the EU is not simply a question of imperial nostalgia versus liberal diversity -- far from it. The last 40 years of Thatcher/Blair austerity hollowed out much of English industry outside the big cities and destroyed the country's social services.
The Brexit referendum gave its victims a chance to lash out -- a little like the working class Trump voters in this country. If heed is not taken of this protest, and dignity is not restored to blue collar England, the rise of far right parties like UKIP is a certainty.
In or out, the naked inequality of British society needs to be addressed. It's a pity that Jeremy Corbyn, the only UK leader to understand that, is the subject of a campaign of vile slander in the British media.
14
@P
Great comment.
Heres a simple, quick and effective solution: labor unions.
3
Totally agree EXCEPT, Jeremy Corbyn only cares about Jeremy Corbyn and is exploiting the sentiments.
1
Wonderful essay, that is incapsulated by "a plainly contradictory credo, that nationalism and borderless capitalism could easily coexist." I haven't read this idea so succinctly stated. That right there is the issue.
18
Self determination and Big Brussels have the incompatibility problem.
I suspect that history will come to rue the success of the two most consequential leaders of the West during the 1980s--Thatcher and Reagan. Both introduced an ideological strain of conservatism that has metastasized, and it's no surprise to see both the UK and the US now taking up a sick bed in the hospital of empires.
47
British history is rich with tribalism and independence, not just from a rival king on the other side of an English hill, but from foreign invaders and influence. Romans, Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Normans, Danes, Norwegians, Swedes were resented invaders, changing the cultural landscape, or they blended through assimilation with indigenous inhabitants or former victorious invaders. Though the idea of unification came and went many times, it took millennia for a British Empire to be realized. A British Empire - cruel, oppressive, arrogant to many - also gave people of the world the idea of human dignity, rights, and freedoms inherited from the disorganized tribalism and independence predating Roman occupation.
It is understandable some fear the ever-shrinking world we live in today and want to return to an idyllic perception of how things had been. It is easier to think this way, but it is unrealistic. Instant communications, rapid transportation to all four corners of the world, increasing population, and world-wide problems demand long-term thinking for the continued existence of humanity. Most would treat others with the human dignity they deserve, granting them the same rights and freedoms they themselves enjoy.
Other leaders want their followers to take a step back. In my view, there are no ideologies among these leaders except near-sociopathic greed. To these leaders, people are expendable, preaching hate and fear defying human dignity, rights, and freedoms.
11
It’s NOT so long ago that the British Empire dissolved. It’s within my lifetime. And I’m 74 this month. The Empire reached its peak under Queen Victoria, who ruled until nearly the end of the 19th Century. And what she saw increase (in the mid 19th century) only finished breaking up in the mid 20th century. That is still within the lifetime of many older people in Britain. And it’s particularly the older citizens who voted to remain, while younger ages wanted Brexit (regardless of what reasons they gave).
The mythology behind a nation’s stature is extremely powerful. And you have only to watch programs emanating from the BBC to see how powerfully Britain recalls its history, how fascinated people are by its royalty, its lords and ladies and castles, etc.
Britain views itself as a hugely important nation. And being within the EU, as valuable as that may be economically, does not fit with the Mythology of Empire.
The British Royal Family frequently visit nations which are part of the Commonweath. And the Commonwealth is likely a source of the continuing myth of Empire.
I have no dog in this fight, but I suspect Brexit is a huge mistake, but one that continues to feel - especially for older voters - like an endorsement of Empire (or the Commonwealth).
14
Actually statistically it is completely the opposite: Just over 70% of 18 to 24-year-olds who voted in the referendum backed Remain, four major academic and commercial polls conducted shortly after the ballot agree, with just under 30% backing Leave. In contrast, only 40% of those aged 65 and over supported Remain, while 60% placed their cross against Leave.
4
@TheraP
I don't understand your argument. On the one hand you say older Brits largely voted to remain, that older Brits have some actual memory of the empire, that the Brits embrace the now myth of empire. Then you say Brexit is a mistake and that older voters think Brexit is an endorsement of empire. If that were true, then older Brits would have largely supported Brexit, not Remain.
Older Brits all votes to leave.
Thank you for this article. Like the writer, I’ve been trying to sort out what is happening here in the states. It’s like the stages of grief. A large part of the general public can’t come to terms with the fact that white supremacy is dead. One stage of grief is anger. It will take a while for us to have acceptance around not being the caucasian, “Christian”, world power we thought we were. Eager to see what we look like when we see how much we need each other.
12
That is an elegantly written slap down. I guess theoretically there is no reason why another Margaret Thatcher couldn't come along and lift Britain a few notches above its current ranking on the world stage, but the trajectory seems opposite, doesn't it. Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, there are no MTs in that group. If anything Brexit appears to be leading Brittain towards greater internal divisions, a reduced economy and diminished world stature, in part due to the public spectacle of the British Parliament floundering as it processes the Brexit decision.
13
I think the media focus on Brexit has crossed over into a strange type of voyeurism, like gaping at a car accident along the highway. The UK has decided to self-harm, and the media publishes story after story about their self-imposed financial masochism. Ultimately, the UK and Europe will be “fine”, each perhaps a a bit diminished, but otherwise they will each recover from the UK’s self-imposed financial wounds. There are so many other stories of greater significance and yet it appears we (or maybe just the media) can’t look away. Strange.
10
Well, self-harming appears rife among countries yearning for the past, so the object lesson of Brexit calls for close coverage. Understanding the pathology of sentimentalizing lost glory may help the rest of us to avoid it. The NYT is providing a valuable service.
16
@Island man
Not strange at all. Something is happening before our eyes that we cannot believe - an entire nation is consciously, intentionally harming itself while it says it is becoming better and stronger. The massive internal contradiction of those actions are so powerful that we ask ourselves "Am I seeing what I'm seeing?" That is why we look - it does not compute.
4
One fact no one ever seems to mention, and certainly not the author, is that the older voters who are credited and blamed for Brexit were, in 1973, the younger voters that voted to join the European Common Market.
So does that make them the disrupters in both cases? Or just the good intentioned but disillusioned?
Perhaps all we are seeing here is a recognition of unwelcome encroachment by the EU? Not to mention a steady but relentless march towards European federalism which as an historic island nation Britain has never wanted.
Perhaps we are just witnessing a progressive change in attitude? This being based on experience rather than on the generalising and less than generous assertions of the author.
For most of the people I know discussion on empire, exceptionalism, global stature never takes place, ever. Whereas jobs security, education, health, welfare and criminality are worrying topics alive in the minds on many.
If the people of Britain mourn the loss of anything it is the certainty of a secure job, affordable housing, a drug free school gate, and a decent media with family friendly moral values.
I think the author knows only too well a representative sample runs into millions of people in all walks of life - not those you meet in the pub who generate a saleable story to pay the bills!
11
Brexit or not, the U.K. is not going anywhere: it will remain west of Scandinavia, north of France, east of Ireland, and south of Iceland. It will simply be more difficult to move people and material to and fro.
10
Something this important and complicated was based on a simple majority vote and without a comprehensive plan in place? That's insane.
40
Why does Britain still have royalty and a queen? It reminds people of majesty and power and wealth. The queen is the symbol of rule Britannia, which by the way is still the National anthem. Longing for yesterday. Is not living in the now. Being a member of a union is unique and special. Make America Great again and Brexit are cut from the same cloth, that's why the Brexit politicians are Trump fans. As the world becomes more international the more we will see this tribalism. The only question is will it die out or not?
18
@dave Britain still has a monarch for the same reason that the United States has a flag. It it a symbol of the nation as a whole: nobody has to vote on the monarch (or the flag). Nobody has to reason through a rejection of the monarch in favor of an alternative and then continue to affirm to ones self that they made the right choice.
5
@dave
I agree that it may encourage what I have seen described as 'Ruritanian self-regard' but a monarchy is not inconsistent with successful and socially equal societies (Norway, Denmark, Japan etc). Nor is a republic inconsistent with profoundly unequal and, arguably, unsuccessful ones (U.S.A). Perhaps the answer is the type of monarchy and there I agree. The UK needs a very different one.
2
@dave From the outside having a Queen in the modern era doesn't seem to make sense. But it allows a politically neutral head of state to represent the country, therby avoiding the issue of a President who has some of the powers of a king (pardon power), but is still beholden to a political party.
1
I personally would find it galling to see the EU flag in the primary position, usually the left as seen by the observer, in every public situation. On a trip to France, in front of every city hall, police station, fire house, hospital, I saw the EU flag where the US flag would be in relation to state and city flags. The EU is not a country. To my knowledge no one has ever died defending the EU. I do not consider my attitude imperialistic. It does not rely on empire. On my trip to Norway, I saw the Norwegian flag everywhere, in many cases flying from private homes. Nobody would claim the Norwegians are imperialists. They also stayed out of the EU.
5
@Michael Blazin "I personally would find it galling to see the EU flag in the primary position, ... The EU is not a country. To my knowledge no one has ever died defending the EU."
If you are correct, Mr Blazin, that would go a long way to explain the endless wars of our nation and age. It is not only greed for money, it is greed for the loyalty that justifies power, that causes us to send our children to destroy and kill.
There must be a "Them" to justify an "Us".
18
@Michael Blazin
"I personally would find it galling to see the EU flag in the primary position, usually the left as seen by the observer, in every public situation."
Can I ask why? Are you a citizen of the EU? It seems quite strange to me that someone who live in Dallas, Texas would be so emotionally invested in the flag protocols engaged in by people on the other side of the world.
It is also weird because it is, as you note, pretty standard, for the flag of a larger overlapping political entity to stand to the right (or be flown above) that of a small, constituent political entity. Indeed, this has been the convention for some centuries.
Your main issue seems to be:
"The EU is not a country."
And so what? Non-country sovereign polities and overlapping sovereign claims is not something we in the U.S. have much direct experience with (particularly since the Civil War) but it is something that Europeans and others have a deep and long history dating from Medieval times when Church, Empire, King, and local Lord might all assert claims on your loyalty-sometimes in conflict with each other. This has continued right up to the current day, through Empires (like the Austro-Hungarian and the British) to states like the Russian Federation and the UK, which is a union of distinct kingdoms and entities.
Which is why many Europeans would not agree that:
"no one has ever died defending the EU."
2
I am a US citizen. I was trying to imagine the feelings of someone in Europe seeing a constant reminder that her country now comes second. To many, if not most, people, in every nation, the national flag is an important symbol. Even people that use it as a protest symbol recognize that importance and resonance with a nation’s citizens. You may ridicule flag protocols, but they exist for the reason that people think proper respect is important. The display of the flag sends an important message.
I keep seeing that Brexit is about fondness for empire. That is an asinine conclusion. Do Norwegians care about empires? I personally would have kept the EU flag and symbol off anything not directly controlled by the EU. I do think that true EU believers feel the same as I do on a flag’s importance. It is for that reason the flag is everywhere. They want to send the message of what they consider is the new reality, at least in their minds. Someone not anticipating a deep and growing reaction would not know much about human nature.
A very pretty and largely fictional narrative.
More than anything you need to look at the terrible job Britain has done in negotiation with Europe - for 40 years the EU has outmaneuvered Britain comfortably at every turn including the exit negotiations. BREXIT and even the current debacle are deeply predictable based on that simple fact.
1
@Adam It rather seems to me that the Brits were the cherry pickers in the EU, always looking for some kind of a special deal while wanting all the EU benefits.
4
@Adam this is blatantly false. The UK, more than any other member of the EU, has been able to achieve for itself all sorts of opt-outs, special deals and rebates over the years, all the while benefiting immensely from the Single Market, which, incidentally, the UK had a lead role in designing.
5
E Pluribus Unum- out of many, one. Such a wonderful sentiment on our coinage. Any cursory look into our history demonstrates that it remains a quest for us. Brexit is just one more example of the very human trait of unbundling when differences of understanding become intolerable or seem to. Schisms in Religions are the best examples. The answer to the question, “Why can’t we all get along” is that we can’t for long.
8
I think the reason this empire thinking still exists, even if its under the surface, is the issue that admitting its gone and will never come back means having to admit to a diminished role in the world.
And with that admission comes fear.
14
@Tijger
Exactly. There would be less fear if an effort had been made by British politicians to create an alternative narrative of a middle ranking, wealthy, European country among others. This is surely the best destination for the UK, but one that has never been sought.
2
The dream of British power persists because it gives the nation a false sense of security to those who continue to hold it. That dream was inherited by former colonies including India who makes a shrine of the British created railroad system and multiple golf courses like that in Shimla which sits unused but is tended like a sacred relic. The dream persists in the US in the form of Trumpism which denies our connections with the rest of the world even though we declared our independence almost 250 years ago. In dreams time does not exist only dearly held stories of power and security.
But this dream does not hold countries together, but results in the will to separate from the parent and establish their own power base. Brexit will destroy the last remnants of the UK as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland go their own way and England stands alone proud but powerless.
10
Maybe others saw it for a long time, but it wasn’t until a minute go that I realized Brexit is, essentially, « MBGA », Make Britain Great Again ».
And the promise is just as shallow and empty as the Trump one.
They are going to cause far, far more problems than they will solve.
Both, Trump and the Brexit folks.
41
@David Martin
We have seen this for a long time--it started when Trump, who at first didn't know what the term "Brexit" stood for, proclaimed it a grand idea when someone wondered if he approved of Great Britain leaving the E.U. No thought, no consideration of international strengths, of trade, of defense, etc. Just, sure, go it alone. What a bum, the hero of fantasizing people longing for past greatness everywhere.
4
There is a different point of view. Brexit is the Colonies' 1776. Rule by a distant and not necessarily friendly power. Nearly half of UK law is decided not in London but on mainland Europe and must be adopted by the UK without scrutiny or dissent. Much of the Brexit argument is about restoring law making powers to London. There is a nominal input by the UK into new EU law but the UK is outnumbered by 27 other states.
4
@Brian E Davies Be careful lest you give encouragement to the various separatist movements in the United States. California will not consent forever to being ruled by Wyoming and North Dakota.
1
@Brian E Davies
Except this is lie not borne out by reality.
I guess the Scots or any non english nation of the "United Kingdom" could say and feel the same toward the UK....
James Meek should not underestimate the realities of the "leavers", people who literally have been left behind by the hyper-globalization of the world economy. They also have been adversely affected by "immigration" that entails movement of EU nationals within the EU as well as immigrants to the EU from the outside the EU.
As well, the customs union that is the trade side of the EU is exclusive, and the UK unilaterally cannot enter into trade agreements from which it might benefit. The EU also has judicial jurisdiction over legal issues that affect the UK that the UK cannot pursue. The belief that membership in the EU has affected UK sovereignty adversely is a real one and should not be lightly dismissed.
Mr. Meek does not seem to be very interested in the internal dynamics of democracy and party politics. Both the PM and Mr. Corbyn are "leavers", although for different reasons. In both parliamentary parties, moreover, there are sharp divisions internally between "leavers" and "remainers" depending on how the electorate voted on a constituency basis.
Finally, the referendum had a clear, though not an overwhelming majority. The "representatives" of democracy in parliament have had trouble translating the results into an implementation plan, in part due to issues relating to the next election rather than to any real desperation about the future of the UK.
People decided that taking control over their destiny was worth a minor fall in overall GDP. That is democracy.
3
@San Ta
Its not a minor fall but that aside, there is also zero evidence that EU migration (a much smaller number than non-EU immigration) caused any hardship of any kind, in fact the average EU person in the UK pays much more into the treasury as UK workers and non-EU workers are an actual negative.
5
@San Ta Minor fall? That remains to be seen.
@San Ta No, many of the leavers are rich aristocrats, or opportunists, Johnson, Rees-Mogg, Farage etc, & a one time referendum is not democracy, people are not taking control of their destiny by leaving Europe, ask the Scots, but signing on to a racist, backward England First ideology.
1
So Britan is ahead of us, but today with Trump we have the same problem. Many of us here in America fail to accept that we are no longer the last country standing. Witout accepting that fact means we are not facing and accepting what is real.
19
The problem with the EU is the members will not and cannot give up their sovereignty.
If only the could form a Republic, have a Constitution, and act as a unified body where all Europeans were citizens.
How could you convince them to do that - make sure each country is represented with 2 senators so they have equal representation in Congress,but also develop a house that has representation based on the population of each country.
Sound familiar - maybe Americans can understand why we have the Gov. we have. The problem with the EU is they were never willing to cede their sovereignty- they wanted to mimic the American republic without actually forming a Republic.
And take note on why we have 2 senators for each state and the electoral college - our Republic depends on it.
2
@Chris
You are so correct in bringing the “Republic” concept to the fro. Each State in our Republic is sovereign within our Constitution in all respects except for the powers ceded to the National Government by the Constitution. This sovereignty is not defined by area or population of the State but rather just its existence as an equal among any other State in the Union. We are a Republic not a Democracy. Californians may promulgate different traffic laws than Pennsylvanians , for example. However, Californians that number perhaps two times or more than Pennsylvanians can only have the same number of Senators as Pennsylvanians because each State is equal in the Federal Senate according to the Constitution which guarantees that no State can be deprived of this equality without its permission.
3
@Chris So a tiny country like Luxembourg would have two senators and a large country like France would also have two senators?
@Chris
The EU are made of countries. Like Canada, USA and Mexico. But shure, the US congressioal system is a great role model for the rest of the world.
All this Jungian stuff about dreams makes for a lovely read. But real policies are made by real people and subverted by real countries.
In this case, David Cameron and Theresa May thought, as the British like to say, "too clever by a half." Boris Johnson and his cabal thought they could ride to victory on a pack of lies and sort things out at their leisure. Convenient slogans like "no deal is better than a bad deal" obscured the real challenges of dealing with the Irish border question.
And let's not forget the role of Russia and social media. They swung the vote, which was only 52-48%, in favor of Brexit.
There is much for the US to learn.
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@Pat Yes, the question is will we learn it in time.
7
Brilliantly said: racism drives Brexit. And the dream of the Empire only masks it. But it is not the notion racism known in many other cultures, it is the British idea of what a race is. It takes many months of acquaintance with Brexiteers to make them come out. While the statement "too many foreigners" might seem to fit the general pattern of the right, British Brexiteer are so profoundly and deeply racist that it will surprise the rest of the world. Brexiteers believe the British to be a special race, distinct from all the other races of Europe. Note, they are using the notion race to begin with and secondly, they use it to set themselves off. A significant segment of UKs population is deeply racist. Period. That type of racism was exported to Australia where (and earlier to the US Southern States), where it created the contemporary white males who cannot have a discussion without referring to one's skin color. Racism was born in Great Britain, in Imperial Britain, long before it became an issue anywhere else in the world. Nobody in the EU should want to have the UK as a partner as long as those British racists consider themselves so much superior.
23
@Lala Actually, Britain led the antislavery movement. And the US was the nexus of that problem.
Brits who want to leave the EU are resentful of the loss of control over their economy and culture.
The Brexit debate and vote have been a flawed process, given that information has been distorted and even inaccurate.
It would have been better to stay in the EU and to reform it. The French, for example, have some of the same problems with the EU as do Brits.
5
@Lala. From your address, I’m guessing your French. All the 18th/19th century Western European empires were deeply racist - France, Britain, Holland, Belgium. (The earlier Iberian empires even more so). France tried much harder than Britain to assimilate its non-white colonial subjects into the governance of Metropolitan France, but the underlying racist attitudes burst forth in Algeria and French Indo-China in the 1950s. Britain massively populated large relatively empty spaces around the world with white settlers whose racism against indigenous populations hardened in their local environments (America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Rhodesia, Kenya). Only in India, given the impossibility of directly mastering a huge population, did the British adopt the ancient Roman imperial M.O. of subverting and seconding a “subaltern” class of local managers. As a British schoolboy in the 50s and 60s, I can tell you that these imperial dreams described by James Meek were very strong in a battered, impoverished country. Winston Churchill was throughout his life the chief dream merchant, but even the Labour party, ostensibly socialist and internationalist, was tarred with the imperial dream when in power then (Attlee, Bevin, Wilson).
2
@Lala Brexit might be a terrible idea, often driven by ignorance, but it would be some achievement to match the historical ignorance of this post.
Racism was born in Britain? Really? In the 17th Century the populations of Spain, Portugal, France and China were models of multicultural tolerance? Yes, yes, of course they were.
Regarding the present day, there is plenty of independent peer reviewed data to suggest that the UK is among the most tolerant of countries, one example....
http://www.pewglobal.org/2019/03/14/around-the-world-more-say-immigrants-are-a-strength-than-a-burden/
I assume you didn't fail to notice that the second place candidate in the last French presidential election was a genuine racist?
And if we widen the picture to non-Western societies, I can tell you, as someone who has travelled extensively in the Arab world, India, China, dozen of other societies... people are often very racist.
Xenophobia is as old as human society. Attempting to attribute it to one country or culture is utterly ridiculous. You are only showing your own prejudices.
2
Isn’t there still a national celebration of Henry Balfour in the UK?
And a family from Saxony, who enjoy lives of extreme decadence, at the expense of the English taxpayer?
Doesn’t really seem like the love of empire ever went into hiding, not that Americans are in any place to be particularly critical.
5
@ubique No, there isn't. And what is your comment about Saxony all about?
Zowie - as a yank who lived in the uk for 25 years - I am amazed at the conclusion to this piece. Thatcher tried to open up the uk to competition and championed Europe’s liberal market based approach. If anything, brexit is the brainchild of the hard left in Britain, together with the colonel blimps of the right - a bizarre marriage of odd bedfellows who both dream (different dreams) entirely mired in the past - one of imperialism and the other of socialism. Thatcher usually looked forward systemically while these groups are entirely backward looking - this guy picked the wrong fall guy (lady).
7
"I believe now that a subliminal empire does persist in the dreaming of a large number of Britons, hinted at in a longing for the return of guilt-free racial categorization, in the idea that my country can be both globally open and privileged in an international trading system where it can somehow turn the rules to its advantage, in the idea of a safe white core protected from the dark hordes beyond by a mighty armed force."
Fear not leavers, prostrate before Emperor Trump I and you will get what you desire. He is a true believer.
2
There is a lot of the use of the word nostalgia here but the thing I most associate with leavers is fear. My brother is a leaver - intelligent and kind - and I think he’s afraid. Of the wider world, of foreigners having some kind of supposed control over us. Personally I’m a lot more afraid of being jettisoned into a world where we’re a lower tier power with Europe, Russia, China and maybe America taking bites out of us.
94
@Michael: Indeed. It's so obvious that the UK is stronger within the EU than without. I'm still flabbergasted by the referendum vote.
9
“Big powers taking bites out of us” - but nobody takes bites out of Switzerland, Norway, contented stable rich non-EU fully developed countries. Your own fear betrays something...
2
At last somebody traveled more than 50 miles from London up the east coast to get a British opinion. Norfolk, Fenland, Lincolnshire where moving solidly UKIP before Brexit. And, yes, the older generations are still living in the days of the empire. Their state education and the tabloid press has perpetuated this myth and somehow Brexit will restore England to its former glory.
13
Here is the stark reality for the Brits. China, the United States and Russia. if only from a military standpoint are super powers. The Eurozone can be one and it is an opportunity for Britain to remain part of one.
Further, the Eurozone must either have their own military or pay up to have America's military to be a larger force in that area of the world.
3
The English working class never supported Thatcher, or voted for her and her ideology. The English working and lower classes never benefited in any way from membership in the EU, in globalization or the new unrestricted movement of capital and corporations. As did in the end no working class groups in other EU member states. Eu was touted as the new Eden and many bought it. But at this point the growth of populism in all of Europe shows this to be a falsehood. The disenchantment with the authoritarian, non-transparent EU body has become strong in many corners of Europe and not
just in England.
The old Empire probably gave a little gloss to otherwise poor and hard conditions that the English workers lived with for so
long. And still do. But let's not be carried away with such an
idea when it regards this group. The conservatives maybe, but not the workers. As with all the Social Democratic parties in Europe we see dwindling of membership and a move to the right. Because the members have been left out of the increased wealth and social mobility. To have a free and wide open Europe (who cannot control its own borders)
is not attractive to a worker who looses his/her job because of cheap labour arriving into the country in an unprecedented way. Not as attractive as for those who live off other people's labour. So the stakes are not fair.
What motivates the right to be pro Brexit is quite the opposite of what motivates the left. Important to note.
13
@Petras Lots of the UK working class supported Margaret Thatcher. As everyone knows, both her supporters and opponents. Brexit is a terrible idea. Why are you so hung up on some concept that leftists who voted for it (many do) did it for good reasons?
If it is so as Mr. Meek has said, the famous sentence "What belongs together, grows together" has to be reversed in this case to "What doesn´t fit together can not grow together"
Why it doesn´t fit?
British elites were not interested to reduce but to increase incompatibilities for 46 years. They just stuck to a false interpretation of history emphazising a non existing cultural superiority just to ease phantom pain of the real decline of the Empire andtheir economy. For their population safe cozy spaces were created by ideological narratives only - like exceptionalism for instance - that have nothing to do with reality.
Now reality did not allow to maintain such cheap placebo any more. But this ideology is still in too many heads so too many are still acting on the phoney fact basis of their artificially upheld narratives. As long as they do so - this is exactly the way parliament is debating and tabloids are issuing spin and propaganda at present - there will be no way for mutual cooperation on equal conditions by the rules of EU.
Before this can happen again a solid learning process is required and inevitable. Because UK refused to do so and EU member states were not assertive enough within EU fo 46 years this has to take place outside by hard experience of life in the wild - this means doing global trade with Mr. Trump, Mr. Xi, Mr. Abe, Mr. Modi and, and...for some time.
So Brexit is to come. Only the effects and impacts can be cushioned.
Winston Churchill once commented that the strongest argument against democracy in the UK was a five-minute conversation with a voter. James Meek seems to have resurrected the former Prime Minister's notions about the nationalists in Britain through the voices of the Leavers. Mr. Meek, you have my compliments and my sympathies.
8
Thatcherism in Britain and Reaganism in the US did the same thing: encourage the working classes to attribute their declining wages to immigrants, foreigners, minorities, and other "freeloaders"; weaken the social safety net; encourage nationalistic and militaristic pride among the masses; and free up capitalists to accumulate huge fortunes while giving as little as possible back to workers or society as a whole.
The working classes in both countries are increasingly restive as wealth inequities grow, wages stagnate, and financial insecurity increases. Now they are striking out against everyone. That includes the immigrants, foreigners, and minorities who were previously demonized—but also now the elites, the capitalists and politicians who are perceived as promoting globalization and unfairly benefitting at the expense of ordinary people.
Centrist elites in both countries continue to believe in Thatcherism and Reaganism—neoliberalism—but maybe with softened edges. Unfortunately, the people are well beyond that. They want a revolution and it's either going to be a white nationalist authoritarian movement (Brexit and Trump both lean that way) or, if somehow our better angels prevail, an idealistic green, socialist movement such as that envisioned by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
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@617to416 Thatcher and Reagan "neoliberalism"? On what planet? I lived and protested in both the US and UK in the early and mid-80s. There was nothing "neo" or "liberal" about the policies of either.
8
@KKW, Please note the definition of neoliberalism:
"Neoliberalism is a policy model—bridging politics, social studies, and economics—that seeks to transfer control of economic factors to the private sector from the public sector. It tends towards free-market capitalism and away from government spending, regulation, and public ownership."
17
>>>
The working classes in both countries are increasingly restive as wealth inequities grow, wages stagnate, and financial insecurity increases.>>>
Very well said and observed. A lot of people will be very disappointed if not endangered by their future.
6
This is all so true. I know Britain fairly well having studied and worked there, still visit regularly and enjoy British culture and humor generally. The British, with some reason perhaps, are deeply the prisoners of their history and this extends across all social classes; Johnny Foreigner is alive and well in the popular imagination. That includes Americans btw. There is a underlying strain of anti Americanism not perhaps as strong the Francophobia but definitely present. Trump has been a gift for British humorists. I have many friends there who are successful and intelligent, go skiing in Austria or have second homes in France or the Algarve and voted to leave. Totally irrational. They now know, to use a British expression, that it's all going pear shaped but are in deep denial about what they have wrought. There are several sociology books overtly about this phenomenon but if you want to get a sense of it you could do worse than read that recent biography of John le Carre whose superb spy novels are in many ways a sort of epitaph for British greatness. They are a nation come down in the world somewhat and they don't like it.
38
This is an insightful opinion essay. The dreams or imaginings that propel Brexiteers are different on the surface from those which impel Trumpeteers but at the core they are the same.
While the former fantasize over the Empire that was, the latter act on a go-it-alone, gunslinger, High Noon, White alpha-male dominated America. Both are based on the White Supremacy fiction and on an abiding hostility. The hostility and alienation are reflective of a life which has perhaps lost meaning or never had any.
Thank you for helping us put some perspective behind the perplexing reality of Brexit and MAGA. It helps me understand why destruction with no plan to replace are so important to these misguided "dreamers".
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@Brian Barrett
There is a left and a right camp to pro Brexiters. This is not well understood in North America, basically because media has covered this issue in a very one sided way. From a Neo Liberal angel. This is the case in Canadian press as well as American. It's unfortunate that no one seems to be interested in the real core issues.
Being a member of the EU is a very expensive affair and it's one aspect of the issue that concerns people who have not been part of the economic party of the last 20-30 years. This goes for all of Europe. Not all have succumbed to voting populist. Besides there is also a very strong pro Brexit sentiment among highly educated and left leaning middle class people who do not like the EU's lack of democracy and transparency.
The EU is basically a supporter of globalized Neo Liberal economic thinking and everything is done in this spirit.
1
This is a fascinating analysis that mirrors our political landscape. Historically, Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver's travels in which he describes the war in Lilliputia between the big-enders and little-enders regarding which side of an egg to open. We are now Lilliputia. Britain, surprisingly, ruled the world for a time because of a small known world and superior technology. The world is bigger now, and, Mirabile Dictu, the little brown people are as adept as we are. The reluctance to accept equality may be at the heart of all this argument and likely has to do with vicarious feelings of superiority and its relation to self esteem, suggesting that the changing world is causing us Boomers to have an "old age" crisis of identity. I suppose we will live through it but for one willing to go with the new world, it sure seems hard. The sequel may be that Lilliputia, fiddling with eggs, gets conquered by Googapplia and eggs are banned.
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@William Trainor: Britain, and the West in general, gained empire mainly through superior naval artillery. That gave rise to Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism, which seemed obvious as long as Britain held its empire. Now its empire is gone, and British exceptionalism has metamorphosed into American exceptionalism. (The Germanic peoples were better than the Greeks and Romans, the Anglo-Saxons the best of the Germanic peoples, so naturally the Americans were/are the best of the British.)
Both are racist at the core. Too many of us Yanks are convinced that, despite all evidence, we're still No. 1 in everything, because, well, we're us.
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@William Trainor Well said! Another Swift work also explains the current political and cultural landscape: "A Modest Proposal". Both the UK and US are eating their young with tax breaks and giveaways and spoils to the rich instead of financing education, infrastructure and, most importantly, recognizing and addressing global warming. Doesn't get more Swiftian than that.
21
@William Trainor you supposedly ruled the world because of superior technology ? or because you had no shame at exploiting others resources ?
I don't think a Rolls Royce or a Jaguar were better technology than an Hispano Suiza or a Bugatti , or a Ferrari.
On the contrary . And we could go on with many other exemples in many different fields . British clocks were better than French or Swiss ones ? British medecine was better than French or German ? You have always invaded and exploited the others, In Europe, in India, in America. In Africa, in the Pacific. Until they kicked you out. You even historically abused your own neighbors and friends the Irish and the Scotts to the point that they have now left you.
This makes as much sense as anything I've heard about the reasons for the sentiments of Brexit supporters.
But I wonder if the inspiration for such continuing sentiments of a
simpler world, one recognizing English superiority and legitimizing the British world empire, was not only Margaret Thatcher, but also the children's author who expressed that simplified world view in her books, Enid Blyton.
4
A weakness of this argument is that the UK is far from the only country afflicted by this backwards-looking exceptionalism - the same thing can be detected in European countries that have anti-EU movements, including ones that never had empires to worship, as well as (lest we forget) in the US.
My experience of the British phenomenon is that demographics plays some part - it's noticeable that Brexit supporters tend to be older, often much older. As with many developed nations, the UK is ageing rapidly and Brexit might simply be the political manifestation of what this means in electoral terms. If this is true, it's likely that in time we'll see a swing back to a more open world view as younger voters turn out to vote in greater numbers than they did during the Brexit referendum.
16
Other EU countries might well vote to leave if their people were asked which is why they won’t be.
Macron admitted as much about France.
4
@Iain Clark
Totally wrong. And Macron has admitted no such thing. The EU has a 75% approval rate across Europe. If anything the British antics have strengthened it.
And in those situations where local politicians have railed against the EU or threatened to leave the Euro (Greece and Italy) when it came to the crunch they were falling over themselves to run away from their rhetoric. In the case of France Le Pen was anti EU and this was a major factor in her huge defeat by Macron.
Your comment is very much of a piece with anti EU attitudes among British leavers who seem convinced the EU is about to collapse but then they claimed they held all the cards in the negotiation and now they are reduced to begging the EU for an extension.
20
@John E On the other-countries list: Turkey
Funny that the college admission scandal was discovered by the FBI while working on a small fraud case in Los Angeles. The guy tipped them about the college thing . And suddenly it becomes a nation wide scandal because people realize it was happening everywhere .
Some financial activities by the UK and the USA that are functionning now because no body is widely denouncing them will not continue forever. When. if London comes out of the EU A lots of money laundering opportunities will not be possible any more.
4
With good memories of 'O, To Be in England',
the days of the darling buds of May by H.E. Bates, with laughter, fish and chips come to mind. Orwell depicts a bleaker picture with his 'Coming Up for Air', where his narrator George Bowling tries to escape the changing times and go back to the Past. He does not offer a viable solution. George is in for a rum time of it.
The Lion and The Unicorn are drumming it out, while half the Kingdom is covering its ears. In youth long ago, this expatriate decided to leave, and place her faith in America. My country is navigating a tumultuous time in history, but at the end of the day, we are in the same boat.
Be careful what you wish for; the sun is setting on Britain, and many tears may be shed over answered prayers.
13
As the son of British expats who came to the US for a better life because of WW2 I hope you haven’t moved from the frying pan into the fire. I’m as worried about this country as you are about the one you and my parents left.
And to paraphrase Tiny Tim; "A Merry Brexit to us all; God bless us, every one!"
3
@David Price,
'Alas, is not a place where I live', and in America never have we faced such challenging times as now. While it is pleasant on occasion to indulge in frolicking in the garden of nostalgia and one's days of youth, we are facing hard times ahead.
But I believe in my country of birth and its resilience to this testing of Democracy. Some of us are descendants of Richard Bennett, the first British born governor of Virginia after a revolutionary war. One of his daughters, 'Molly', married Charles Carroll of Annapolis, the only Catholic signer of The Declaration of Independence.
We are all linked, and forward we go, leaving behind an America described as 'The Giant in Retreat', for those who do not wish to grow and dwell in the graveyards of the Past.
By the 19th century the pound sterling was widely accepted outside Britain and ruled the world. But that time is long gone. Today the Pound is seeing its already shrunken share of international currency diminishing. This is the reality Brexiters don't like to accept.
5
@Sergio Santillan
"Today the Pound is seeing its already shrunken share of international currency diminishing."
No. According to International Monetary Fund data, sterling continues to account for between 4% and 5% of world currency reserves. The pound's share was 4.49% as of Q3 18, compared with 4.54% as of Q2 16, i.e. at the time of the Brexit referendum. IMV, that is not a particularly material decline. It's also up from 4.27% as of Q1 17.
2
What was the Pound’s share of international reserves 100 years ago? I don’t know the number but I’m betting it was a lot higher than single digits. What will be the Dollar’s share 100 years from now I wonder?
Interesting. The author cites the “Leavers” as the disrupters concluding that as the reason for speaking with them. Aren’t the true disrupters those individuals who mitigated British sovereignty by getting involved with the European Union in the first place. Globalism like much of everything is a choice.
6
@Patrick You could say the same about Londoners "mitigating" their sovereignty by agreeing to be part of the rest of the UK. You could say Wembley mitigates it's sovereignty by agreeing to be part of metropolitan London. In each case, the UK, London, Wembley, gain much more than is lost. Because of Brexit the UK lost the right to host the European Medicines Agency and the European Banking Authority. The UK will just become a marginal tourist spot.
14
@Patrick
I would have to disagree, for the hard-core Brexiteers are the ones who are calling for MORE globalisation. Much of the EU is a protectionist club, where goods from the rest of the world are excluded in favour of controlled denominations and EU products. The promise of the Brexit camp is that we are going to be a flourishing global economic trader who can make trade deals with whoever we please. They have this fantasy that all of our former Empire will want to make free trade deals with us and lead us into a new age of global prosperity. What they fail to admit is that many of these Commonwealth nations are going to be asking for greater access to immigration in return for open markets, thus betraying the other side of the Brexit coin, an inherent xenophobia.
1
Britain's success can be traced to three monstrous, illegal schemes - colonialism, slavery and the opium trade, all masked in the fiction of 'English decency'. It's hardly surprising that it has become a failed nation state when these illicit income sources went away. Brexit is the ultimate example of Britain's failure.
23
I've visited failed states and none of them resembled the UK in any way. If Brexit represents a cultural failure, it's a much more mundane political one.
16
@Thomas
Today of course people generally have forgotten the cruelty of these three schemes especially the opium wars in which the US participated and the inhumanity involved.
1
This: "... it was the British government’s job to defend native Britons ... ; foreign competition; greedy capitalists; and, through the National Health Service, illness."
What is wrong with this expectation? Every citizen of a democracy has the right to expect that their government will work in their interest - rather than in the interest of other outside actors. Indeed, the idea that the German chancellor can unilaterally decide to open the door of HER country to 1 million immigrants and that all other EU countries MUST accept them once they become legal in Germany is deeply undemocratic. The Leavers were right to be incensed.
Here is a thought - maybe it is because of the legacy of Empire that the Leavers understand that they are the ones who are now the colonized - and the colonizers are the global elite.
18
@na Why would anyone leave Germany to live in the UK when the Germany economy has historically been so much stronger than the UK? This is more Brexiteer racist paranoia, similar to the "Breaking Point" poster.
My personal opinion is that Germany and the EU in general should have a policy of helping refuges return to their country of origin, if possible. So that means making Syria, Iraq etc livable.
1
It seems similar to the longing for a simpler time in America - a place where white men were at the top pf the pyramid (most still are but hear people rattling the ladders below them) and implicit racism and misogyny. The triumph of the Brits in WW II was simply amazing and glorious but they have not learned their place in the modern world. A recent editorial piece highlighted countries in Europe who know they are small, and others who don't yet know they are small. The UK is still solidly in the latter category.
38
Perhaps, but with climate change and China looming, the US might be about to learn the same lesson about being small.
19
@Meighan Corbett
“The triumph of the Brits in WW II was simply amazing and glorious.”
Er...what about the triumph of the US? Or, let us not forget, the Soviet Union? Or other nations? The triumph was a triumph of allies, NOT of the Brits.
3
@liz The Soviet Union's reaction to WW2 was to form a pact with Hitler that lasted until it was attacked in 1941.
The US sat back and watched until it too was attacked by Japan in the same year.
Britain certainly did not win WW2 but for two long years it stopped the allies from from losing it.
3
Great analysis. However--though perhaps I missed it--saw no mention of the Royals.
1
@pepys
Yes, as a Britton I think the Queen and her family are as responsible for Brexit as anyone. They have managed to keep empire nostalgia alive and have prevented the UK becoming a modern democracy.
28
They’re a largely irrelevant tourist attraction.
@BH Because republics have a great record of anti-elitism, right?!
An interesting piece, but I think that the Mr Meek's idea of dreaming exceptionalism is applicable to all communities, in all nations, Brexit is simply a UK manifestation of the conflict between this exceptionalism and modern liberal globalism. This conflict has also manifested in other countries but in different ways, the most obvious being the current political turmoil in the US.
It is my experience that all communities have these myths of there own exceptionalism, and that any perceived threat to that can trigger strong reactions, the horrors of the early twentieth century show just how far this can go
27
@Epaminondas The urge for community seems to be innate, and the death of community and human connection is one of the saddest aspects of our age, imo. Whether or not one community's greatness is or was a "myth" is in no way YOUR call. Or the condescending, snobbish writer's call, either.
Well said. Too true, unfortunately.
1
@me I agree, humans are a community based species and we do have an innate need to ground those communities in a bedrock, of beliefs, ideas and shared history, I grew up in a poor working class, hard line brexit voting area of the UK, my entire family voted for leave. I have a great deal of experience of why they think as they do, and in no way would denigrate them for their beliefs, but it is based on a mythology, stories, of what it is to be English (they refuse to call themselves British), just as I have stories I tell myself, about who I am and where I belong which differs from that of my family. Neither narrative is the correct one, they both have equal validity insofar as they create frameworks that help us make sense of a crazy world, but unfortunately, sometimes they come in to conflict with each other, at which point my family and I agree to disagree and carry on eating dinner.
Unfortunately, when it comes to creating national policy we cant do that, nations fundamental ideas about who they are will come from narratives that are held by the vast majority of the population, but what happens when you get two deeply held narratives, where neither has such a large majority? That's why I believe we have the current political turmoil with brexit.
2
The real issue with Brexit, that needs to be addressed, is the "faltering peace agreement" between Ireland and Britain.
If that is revoked, and, it does not need EU approval, then the back-stop issue goes away.
One has to visit Belfast and walk from the catholic side to the Protestant side, and you can tell, there is no love or camaraderie.
Britain is the master of split, India Pakistan was a good example. Time to replicate that with NI, and let UK leave Brexit and pursue its own trade deals and future.
4
@Gyns D Sorry but the peace agreement about old religious and political fume between England and Ireland and Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland ( United Kingdom... ? ) is the problem of the British not the EU. The Republic of Ireland though belongs to the EU ( Euro market) so the problem of Brexit is not only a physical frontier but the question of how the activities of all US corporations in Ireland will continue to evade through London banking system .And vice versa.
3
@JPH I was able to find flow charts clarifying the Brexit process online, but no explanation of "backstop", unfortunately...
@me the “backstop” is the arrangements that come into place if at the end of the 2 year transitional period a new trading agreement has not been reached between the UK and EU. It assumes the UK will remain part of the existing Customs Union with EU and subject to its rules.
4
I'm a Remain-voting, financial professional with a doctoral degree in history who lives in central London, but with family all across the UK. I'd advise readers to take this interpretation of the 'Brexit psyche' with a huge pinch of salt.
There is no mention of sovereignty, which is routinely the first issue raised by my Brexit-voting relatives. People hate the idea of their laws being made beyond the Channel.
While I myself am sanguine about EU law, on the basis that it has helped enshrine extensive rights for workers and minorities, I think this is a legitimate and fundamental issue.
Conversely, I have never once heard anyone in person mention the Empire in relation to leaving the EU. If the Empire was necessary in getting working-class Brits to swallow hyper-globalised capitalism, how do you explain the late consensuses on Neoliberalism in Germany and the US?
32
Thanks for that. It seems those supporting remain can’t believe people could have legitimate and decent reasons for wishing to leave the EU so they’ve convinced themselves they must be xenophobes pining for the Empire.
15
@Asclepiodatus
I vehemently disagree. Sovereignty is merely a code word, a dog whistle, that turns out to mean exactly the cluster of dreams o Britishness that Meek describes here, whenever you ask Leavers to explain what they believe this means.
On the point of "hate the idea of their laws being made beyond the Channel" - that is very true, and something Meek only mentions in passing. In reality, the astounding plethora of things that the Brits wrongly believe to have been imposed on them by the EU, is truly mind boggling.
The cause is easy to pinpoint and I am sure you will agree: it stems for decades of UK politicians using the EU as an easy scapegoat for decisions that in fact resided wholly within British autonomy.
They want "sovereignty"? They always had it. Why do they not feel it? My guess: because of the class system...
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@Hugo van den Berg I agree completely that a root cause is decades of British politicians (read: Conservative politicians) disingenuously blaming the EU for things that were well within their control. 100%.
Also agree on the class system point. Although I think it's class system + dis-functional systems of patronage within the two major parties. How else can you end up with a situation in which c.52% of the populace think one way on an issue but 70-80% of MPs hold the contrary view.
25
This is a wonderful clarification of what's motivating the Leavers. Simply put: it's rural provincialism (with nostalgia for empire) against metropolitan globalism (in a WTO economic order).
Recall that the London metro area didn't generally vote to Leave. Nor did Scotland; nor did Northern Ireland. It'a all about rural England against the UK in a global world.
It's also about a failure of the metro globalists to bring the provincials into the Good Order. Proper British leadership can resolve WITHIN THE EU the problems that really matter to provincials: bread-and-butter, not dreams. Better rural prosperity will return nostalgia to the homey shelves.
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@gary e. davis
Everything you say is true, Gary, but we must not forget that the Brits are now terminally addicted to blaming the EU for everything that is wrong with their country.
You are correct about the solution, but it is not going to happen.
12
@gary e. davis This nails it. We face the same problem in the US. Globalism has been great for most people in most places. It has been even better for the elites who were on the inside. Nothing happens without a cost. The cost is perceived to have been borne dis proportionally by Trump voters and Brexiters. Not much has been done to curb some of the excesses of the elites who benefit from globalism, nor to redistribute their enormous gains. One hopes that US politicians like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren will achieve the power to correct those problems in our country.
5
Dreams are the only things left about days of greatness for Britons which acctually never were that great for British colonies.Britain took the EU for another colony expecting favors free of charge which did not turn out that way.Going back to exploiting former colonies will not work one more time,Britain will have to provide for itself after Brexit.
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To be frank, never actually that great for most Brits at the time (but terrific for the elite.) Nor for that matter for the US 'middle class' (AKA working class) in the last thirty years of neoliberalism.
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@Geof Rayns
Good point. The UK can only be understood in terms of the class system. One of the dreams of the (lower) middle class is to identify, somehow, with the moneyed elite, and Leave offers a channel for this dream. (An utter mirage of course...)
16
A very good and painful perspective of the lasting headache of Britain's imperial hangover and the resultant sense of exceptionalism that feeds feverish illusions, a vicious circle of sorts compounded by the universality of the English language and the belief that neoliberalism shall follow a similar course ("... political orthodoxy a plainly contradictory credo, that nationalism and borderless capitalism could easily coexist").
In a world that begins to rebuff the neo-liberal / libertarian strain of "anglospheric" globalist ideology, the inheritors of Thatcherism are leading the UK to row against prevailing wind and current while at home the dismantling of the welfare state in favor of financial capitalism efficiency (and rent seeking) fails in public services from education and the NHS, to market driven structures as Interserve follows Carillion into receivership.
James Meek's perspective is a pendant to Fintan O'Toole's recent book "Heroic Failure, Brexit and The Politics of Pain" who offers the following : "The power of Brexit is that it promised to end at last all this tantalizing uncertainty by fusing these contradictory moods into a single emotion – the pleasurable self - pity in which one can feel at once horribly hard done by and exceptionally grand. Its promise is, at heart, a liberation, not from Europe, but from the torment of an eternally unresolved conflict between superiority and inferiority".
25
Despite all the difficulties of a union, the English and Welsh ought to try to stick it out and reform from within.
Remain. Victories are won with allies, not in pouting isolation.
10
Our British nanny is a strong Brexit supporter yet she will be emigrating to the EU.
She passionately mentions revitalization of key industries and I find her a bit dreaming because her arguments are Industry 2.0 level based, as in the post-WWII period, 'we will build factories and everything will be great' kind of optimism. She is unaware Britain will not realize many of her dreams in a competitive multipolar world which already built those factories and turned them into global businesses running on complex supply chain systems fueled by technology and functioning within a global network.
I did not go into scenarios such as what Russia will do to a weakening and internationally isolated Britain and whether the US will continue to see the UK, that has very little to offer, as a key partner. One question I asked was left unanswered, is UKIP going to clean toilets when there are fewer immigrants?
In my view, Brexit is more than a sovereign referendum. It is a historical turning point in the history of the UK where their society fractured along a socio-economic rift. Just research the educational level comparisons between Brexit and Remain voters and you can see that the future of Britain does not look rosy.
I did not ask our nanny why she is going to move to the EU after voting for Brexit, she will probably say it is a personal choice. I personally think her Brexit is solely the embodiment of the past days of glory as this article suggests.
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@Blackbird
She might learn it the hard way much sooner than she is able to imagine now - when EU authorities (in your case French authorities) will ask her about her right of residence as Non-EU citizen after Brexit. Then she will have to do all the paperwork and will depend on sovereign EU (French) decisions.
That´s what sovereignity is for.
Brexiteers are ignoring that there is one of EU states too due to their dream of an still existing empire that could fix this kind of such disturbing sovereignity in a British sense. In large scale we have to face this by Westminster debates about "red lines" and "self evident benefits" UK has to obtain in negotiation. In the very tiny personal scale of your nanny she will have the face it when EU authorities will explain the word "residence permit" to her by adding long instructions about the mandatory need to get one including all formal requirements of the application process of course. She will love it...
Dear nanny you never could imagine? Never thought about this could happen to you due to your long awaited Brexit didn´t you? Too late to get wise then.
This takes us back to the article of Mr. Meeks.
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@Blackbird
In keeping with your story about a disconnect between a Leaver's vote and their own life, many of the Leave voters I spoke to distance themselves from the racist masses who voted Leave "for the wrong (vulgar) reasons" - no, the voted Leave for sophisticated, atypical reasons. To send a signal, that sort of thing.
1
Soon after the Brexit, the idea was briefly floated to form a economic, political and social union - which is basically the EU - between Britain and the former Dominions. That is Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The white parts of the empire. The polling support in the UK was overwhelming, though notably it was not as strong in the other three.
10
Brexiters wanted to replace the EU with the Commonwealth (former British colonies). Leaving aside questions of distance and economic heft, the question if Commonwealth country consent was entirely ignored.
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@Thollian
Isn't the USA a former dominion of Great Britain, too? (The British kings once called Virginia their "fifth dominion" - beside England, Scotland, Ireland and France.)
So the USA should be a part of that new union, too - shouldn't it?
1
Thank you for a beautifully written and concise piece which seems to me to contain many truths as well as painful realities about how far we have not come. As a colonial child (South Africa), a US citizen now living in the UK, I have been haunted through the Brexit fiasco by the familiar ghosts Mr Meek names as "nonacademic history, casually informed reasoning, clan prejudice, tribal loyalty"; the notion of a "stolen" country and the lost patrimony of "casual racism". The Leave campaign evokes much of what we heard in South Africa trying to justify itself during the throes of apartheid It is the work of a lifetime to rid the psyche - one's own, a community's and a nation's - of the pernicious strands of blindness, arrogance and casual contempt that arise from patriarchal systems of racially and gender driven entitlement and privilege, of which British colonialism was a supreme expression. You are right about the dreams of Leavers Mr Meek, the longing for guilt-free racial categorization and the persistence in the national psyche of a "subliminal empire". We live with powerful consequences of the human stain of colonialism.
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@Fiona H
Absolutely. Go to a UKIP channel on YouTube, or the comments section in the Express, and you will see the pain contained in these dreams laid bare.
3
@woof and @election inspector make points more in tune with the majority of Brexiteers than the author. Though no doubt there are ‘Empire-it’s’ here as well. What I see living here, is a populace across the country who have believed the dialogue of ‘us and them, bad Brussels, Europe telling us how to live & what to do’ which has been presented in the press over at least the past 30 years. Things like Polish plumbers stealing jobs from ‘us’, Brussels dictating the shape of bananas and cucumbers we are allowed to import and those we are not, the type of lightbulbs we may use or not, the power of vacuum cleaners allowed to be sold, whether we may deport convicted criminals back to their county of origin once convicted here (or not, because their quality of life may be affected, as Europe sees it.) And in an older generation, a feeling of ‘hey, we were invited & accepted to join a trading block for mutual commercial advantage, not the United States of Europe that it is turning into’.
The fact that the elected officials in London were surprised by this sentiment only goes to show how correct the populace was in its assess emend that their representatives were disconnected from the reality of life outside the capitol. And, the unfolding reality of the bungled negotiations further expose the lengths to which a unwilling representatives ( the remainders in charge of coming up with a deal) are willing to go to stop something they don’t believe in. It disgusts me.
8
This attitude, that the negotiations were semi-deliberately bungled by remain preferring politicians and officials, is the dying conspiracy theory of those trying to dupe the British electorate into staying with the brexit plan. There is no evidence for it and lots of evidence against. To understand what really happened, read Ivan Rogers' speech https://news.liverpool.ac.uk/2018/12/13/full-speech-sir-ivan-rogers-on-brexit/.
I wonder if dreaming of an idealised past and wanting its return may be part of the human condition. Governments in China, Russia and parts of Central Europe seem motivated to return to earlier days of glory and influence and a substantial number of Americans aspire for their country to be great again. How to challenge such backwards looking views with a future based on current realities may be a quite a challenge.
40
@Brian Delroy,
We could begin by revisiting 'Quiet Flows The Don', but true Cossacks are growing rarer by the day.
3
I watch on, like many Australians I suspect, bemused at Brexiteer nostalgia for Australia. The number of times my country of just 25 million people is nominated by Brexiteers as a trading substitute for the hundreds of millions of people of the European Union is astounding. Regardless of these population numbers, the Brexiteers also assume that the Australia of 2019 is the same country that the UK turned it's back on when it joined the EU in the early 70s. I can assure them that, apart from taking great delight at beating England at cricket, there is almost no cultural resemblance between Australia now and that of 50 years ago. And, for the vast majority of Australians, there is definitely no nostalgia for the days of empire.
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@Melbourne Town
This attitude is pervasive in all British thinking, Leaver and Remainer. They are resolutely blind to the idea all their former colonies and dependencies have made their own way in the world, forged alliances with their neighbours and developed their own talent to meet their needs.
Take Ireland, for example. The Brits still think it's a country that only gets by because of its beef and dairy, a precarious economy that only survives because of Brit generosity and EU handouts (that the Brits finance). That notion, like their perspective on Australia, might have had traction in the 1970s' but, as the figures clearly show, not now.
The engine of the Brit economy is its services sector but all the countries they're hoping to sell their services to don't need them, they have their own professional class.
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Very strange opinions put forward by Melbourne Town, not supported by facts. The last referendum in 1999 revealed a clear majority against a republic . 55% voted to retain the Queen as head of state . Since then opinion polls have shown that the republicans have at various times been slightly in the majority but such support has now dropped to 40% following Prince Harry and Meghans visit. I can assure Melbourne Town that regardless of opinion polls , when push comes to shove Aussies will never ditch the Queen (or her successor ) .
Much of the world's current and growing upheaval is due to mass migration. All humans are deeply rooted in the cultures they learned in childhood, and we are threatened and resentful when we see those changing, especially when the change is brought against our will by strangers. This is basic human nature, and to call it racism is simplistic name-calling. As population growth, climate change, environmental degradation, and the resulting turmoil grow, we will be seeing a lot more 'racism' wherever large numbers of immigrants arrive.
6
There is some truth in this, but the voting results of the 2016 referendum show it is not quite so simple. Constituencies with large numbers of immigrants, such as mine, Islington South, voted remain (72% in our case). Constituencies with far fewer immigrants voted leave, such as Sunderland. There was no correlation between percentage of immigrants and voting. However there was a strong correlation between voting leave and recent immigration. The accepted interpretation fits with your analysis, that competition for local services, particularly health and education, exacerbated by the awful austerity programme, convinced many to vote leave. The irony is that immigration is just as high now, but GDP is 2.3% lower because of brexit uncertainty so competition is worse and the immigration is predominantly from outside the EU.
7
@JBR
A fear-based rejection of people from different cultures is not basic human nature. Being fearful, however, is more prevalent in individuals with conservative political leanings according to social science research (e.g., https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/calling-truce-political-wars/ for an overview). A fearful approach to life means anything or anyone new is likely to be perceived as a threat, whether or not they, in fact, are threatening.
Resenting and rejecting people who lawfully migrate is not basic human nature - it IS racism and a reflection of a frightened person who lacks the willingness to learn to live in the modern world.
1
Last year I watched the documentary "Elizabeth at 90 - A Family Tribute" broadcast by the BBC. If memory does not betray me, the interviews with the royal family talk about the Commonwealth, never the European Union. I remember what my grandmother always said to me: Words weigh, but silence weighs even more, and I believe that if your queen and her heirs do not mention the European Union, that will mean something. In my opinion, starting with the royal family, many of you Britons are all prisoners of your imperial past. Careful, the world has gone on! Best regards from Padova EU.
120
Add to this the unwillingness to adopt the Euro plus the British version of racism. Brexiteers think the EU is a hoard of inferior races that they can easily dominate. That is how bad it is. I have had that message given to me in person by Brexiteers. The EU should force the UK to adopt the Euro if it wishes to remain. But with the racist Brexiteers in such high numbers, the EU will be much better off without the UK. Let's get important work done that was previously vetoed by racist British representatives.
1
The British cheat with the US over Europe. All US corporations are fiscally registered in Ireland, in the EU , because Ireland offers them free taxing and they cheat even more to invade the European market from Ireland and pay zero taxes . The cash benefit is dent back to the US via fictive Irish intermediaries who exchange the money in London to send it incognito to the US offshore banks in the Caribbean. The fiscal fraud of the US organize by the British and Irish is fo the equivalent of the EU deficit annually.
These corporations are : Apple, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Starbucks, Netflix, Mc Donald, etc... all registered fiscally in the EU, in Ireland. Not in the USA.
60
@JPH
Incorrect. Ireland does not offer 'zero taxes' but actually, low ones. All EU countries are free to set their own rates of corporation tax. However, EU harmonised tax regulations require all businesses to pay the SAME rate of corporation tax. Apple and the Irish government cooked up a scheme to pay much lower rates than were generally available. A secret sweetheart deal. Found out, the EU has ordered Dublin to collect the outstanding $11bn. Apple have appealed this - of course.
Companies like Google and Starbucks have exploited a discontinuity in taxation laws between Ireland and the UK which means the companies are obliged to pay tax in the 'other' country - i.e. in neither. Legal, yes. Moral? What do the likes of Google say? 'We pay all taxes that we are required to pay by law'.
17
Racisms is a British export product, including Ireland.
please distinguish between southern Ireland, about whom you seem to be speaking, and Britain. The two are separate states.
“She achieved the extraordinary feat of turning into political orthodoxy a plainly contradictory credo, that nationalism and borderless capitalism could easily coexist. ”
Nationalism and borderless capitalism is exactly what has been called the hegemony, going strong for near about a century if not three.
8
In the end it was Angela Merkel’s invitation to immigrants - for which she had no mandate - that put the voices of the leavers over the top.
15
@Ostinato I have to challenge this. German politics get relatively little coverage in the UK and it's highly unlikely that Leave voters - who are more inward looking than Remain voters - would have been influenced by Merkel's decision to welcome refugees as a humanitarian gesture and as a solution to the impending demographic crisis that Germany was facing.
47
@Michael Ashworth Merkels invitation to refugees received huge press coverage in the UK, even if internal german politics does not
@Michael Ashworth A lot of Brexit propaganda fixed on Turkey entering the EU and triggering a huge amount of immigration from there. Merkel allowing in refugees got mixed up with that.
It is important to understand what drove Brexit
When the EU was enlarged to include Poland (wages 1/4 of France), Bulgaria (even lower) , Romania (yet lower) factories closed in high wage EU countries (UK, France) and moved East. A famous case study is that of the Whirlpool factory in Amiens , (labour cost Euro 35/hr) moving to Poland (Euro 7.80/hr) that nearly derailed the campaign of Mr. Macron.
That is, wages moved to the EU average. That is they fell (in real term) in high wage countries and rose in low wage countries. Welcome in Poland (that however turned less democratic) and it was not welcome by the working population in Western Europe.
Concurrently, under the EU policy of free movement, Polish plumbers willing to work for less , moved to London, putting British plumbers out of work. This was welcome by the British elite, that now could their plumbing in their Victorian Townhouse repaired cheaper and promptly, but not by
British plumbers.
Eventually, the lower middle class revolted (as we see in France with the gillets jaunes, and in the US with Trump voters)
But the fault lies not with the lower middle class. The fault lies with the educated elite that should have foreseen the political consequences and installed a system of transfer payments from the elites (winners) to workers that lost good jobs)
That a) would have helped UK workers and farmers, and b) would have lessened the increasing inequality that, lies at the bottom of all
260
@Woof It was Britain that pushed for the enlargement. Having caused the problem, now they want to leave it to the remaining EU countries to fix it.
41
@Woof I know this is the story people like to tell, but is there evidence for any of this? I always find the plumber story particularly bizarre-- as a British homeowner in a supposedly already low wage area, I cannot find a decent plumber of any nationality for love nor money. I find it hard to believe that in London, where there has been a building boom for ages, that somehow well-trained plumbers were all of a sudden able to find work. I think these stories are just part of what people like to say in order to pretend that their racism against Easter Europeans is simple economics.
78
Note that it was the UK government who chose to allow the free movement of people with the treaty becoming effective immediately. Other countries, such as Germany, were more cautious and introduced this liberalization of the labour market more slowly over the course of several years.
It is a bitter irony that this is what the British complain about. UK had the chance to mitigate this problem.
42
Recalls something Antony Jay wrote in the 60's--that Britain could be an Athens, but tries instead to be a mini-Rome.
11
@Steve Paradis
And what Tory austerity has turned it into is a mini-Greece. Not ancient Greece.
25
@Steve Paradis
Interesting that Edinburgh, the capital of pro EU Scotland, has, since the time of the Enlightenment, been referred to as the “Athens of the North.”
1
Referred to by whom? Edinburgh is nice city, but it is no Athens.
Neither Trump nor the Brexiteers really expected (or wanted) to win. They just saw an opportunity to make a point, and to make their political opponents feel the hot breath on their necks. As a result, both Trump and the Brexiteers felt that they could make promises (The Wall That Mexico Will Pay For. £350 million a week to the NHS) that did not need to be provided for. Now the dog has caught the car that he was chasing, jaws clamped on the revolving tire, and we are all paying the price.
347
@Walter: Or, in another idiom, they've grabbed a tiger by its tail. The tiger is thrashing about to get them to let go, and they're being helplessly tossed about. They can't let go, but it's getting harder and harder to hold on. there's no good way out.
It's tempting to feel schadenfreude about the situation, considering that they brought this on themselves. The truth is, however, that we will all suffer from the consequences; above all the British themselves, regardless of their stance on Brexit. Populist ethnonationalism -- which is what Brexit ultimately stands for -- can never be a force for good, no matter what kind of patriotic rhetoric it's cloaked in.
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@Walter
Yes, Walter, it’s as bad as a town that collectively removes road signs to keep outsiders away. Know anyplace like that?
1
@Walter
"Neither Trump nor the Brexiteers really expected (or wanted) to win - they just saw an opportunity to make a point"
The point they wanted to make smacks of an emotional reaction to the loss of white supremacy due to the influx of and the intrusion of non-whites into their worlds.
Trump's and Brexiteers' latent racism and xenophobia have risen to the surface. Voting for Brexit signaled a desire to return to the days of the empire when white might ruled; similarly, voting for Trump was a rejection of the melting pot of America.
There is no other way to look at it. It can even be said that it's human nature - who to blame for feeling diminished and losing status? The newcomer - the stranger - the other.
So now what?
3
I think Mr. Meeks has said it best. The contradictions are so deep in the story of what is going on, it is so mysterious to watch the news and understand what is going on, to me as an outsider. It is like I am watching a family psychodrama, and the language of the argument is so arcane and rooted in the past, it is unintelligible. It also seems there are so many European nations breaking the code, and rewriting the E.U agreement without leaving, why divorce? when you can go your own way. But it is a family drama, like watching that family across the street yelling and screaming all night long. If you ask them to stop, they start yelling at you.
27
As a Brit, an Englishman, who has to suffer the tooing and frowing of the dreadful Brexit debate everyday and pretend I am somehow intellectually above the squabbling, the notes from the USA below and especially the journalist’s commentary are, you’ll be astonished to hear, in my view very encouraging and gratefully sympathetic. You’re all right to one degree or another, we do crave a Falkland’s War, an Empire, a sense of supercilious greatness, but we simply don’t have the international credentials to pull it off. Remember too we love to export our patriotism (very different from USA patriotism) namely pomp and circumstance and deference: the very behaviour that distinguish the British from its colonies during the empire. We have no global economic power, nor military (a good commando force in the SAS no doubt), nor diplomatic leverage anymore. That won’t stop half of our population from dreaming otherwise though.
Wish us luck please - god knows we’ll need it!
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@Jonathan T "we have no global economic power"? The UK is still one of the world's largest economies!
2
@Jonathan T,
Sending a large good fortunate bouquet of shamrocks your way, as we march in the parade this weekend.
"I believe now that a subliminal empire does persist in the dreaming of a large number of Britons"
I think it is not so much a dream of the specifics of an empire, and more a dream of "greatness" and the solutions for home problems that real greatness would imply.
People identify with their country even more than with their favorite sports teams. It is part of self image. Whatever their personal problems, the greatness of the nation can overcome. That was a core appeal of fascism, and of the militarized nationalisms before that. They dream of their nation being great in place of their own greatness.
This dream of greatness is very similar to the French dream of being the civilizing force in the world. The French dream serves the same things as "empire" does for the British.
It does not make sense, as in logic, or in producing the dreamed of result. That is just as true as if one's sports team wins the championship. That doesn't matter. The prospect, off in the future, gives a dream that serves the real purpose, even if it never arrives.
Empire then is Godot. Waiting for it is the point. It makes them feel better. No, it doesn't make sense, nor is sense the point of it. It's emotion.
31
Yes the British want to continue cheating with the USA and the EU philosophy is not good for that. They want to keep exchanging the economy of the world through London and the offshore banks ,theirs in the Channel, in Malte, Cyprus, etc..., etc and the ones from the USA in the Caribbean. And that does not really fit with the EU economy rules. They want to keep the money of the Greeks by hosting illegally all their shipping companies in London. But that will not work for ever for the Greeks and the EU .
The whole process of Brexit, without talking about the lies about the EU that they are unable to understand of make the effort to decipher because it is like the metric system for them, the whole process of their inability to even apply their own decision of leaving and finding concrete solutions, shows that they are not pragmatic and out of touch with the world that they supposedly would love to re-encounter .
11
@JPH -- The Greek problem is not that someone is willing to host the stolen money of their elites. The Greek problem is right there at home, the elites who looted the place, and still do. Their major parties are competitive looters, who overlook each others' excesses as part of a dirty deal.
The rest of the EU economy problems are also not the fault of The City nor the tax havens. They have to fix their own in-between status, of a currency without a central bank or a real national policy to run it as a whole.
Europe can't blame its problems on Britain, nor on Brexit or Remain, nor on Britain's own delusions.
The EU is victim of its own delusions, not Britain's.
10
@Mark Thomason
Britain has never really seen itself as part of Europe. But globalisation marches on whether we like it or not. Business rules, not Britannia. A strong cup of tea will not cure it.
The "delusions of the EU" have come into sharper focus witnessing the progress of Brexit with its negative fallout before it even happens. That, and the election of Trump, has gone a long way to inspiring renewed motivation to make the EU work for all its members.
Who knows, maybe Britain will eventually vote for an indefinite extension for leaving having their cake and eating it too.
As for the EU, I'll put my money on Macron as Merkel leaves. He's on his way with increasing support after his "great national debate" following the 'gilets jaunes' protests. Maybe democracy still works.
7
@Rob The UK does not see itself part of the EU but the UK sees itself really well part of the money of the EU !
4
The “special relationship” with the US has certainly propelled the U.K. into a major global player creating the impression of it still beingan imperial power. The U.K. has been the “go to” advocate within the EU. While the U.K. economy is strong, on its own, it will plummet. Will London remain the second financial global hub?
As in the US, no real capital markets regulatory reform was passed, allowing the economic gap to keep growing with the current dilemma/s.
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My guess is that the longing for empire got a huge boost from the Falklands war. As noted, by then the empire was long gone with only minor exceptions -- Hong Kong was destined for turnover before the end of the century, after all. The Falklands war was Thatcher's Churchill moment, and flags waved, and Rule Britannia was sung, and so on; all gloriously (apologies to Britten) patriotic. Perhaps if we could have a word with the Argentines, they would recreate their invasion, the Brits would respond, and the Brexit nonsense would be over.
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@Jack Walsh
The Falklands war was a classic case of a person creating a problem and then getting enormous credit for cleaning it up. By declaring that the UK was concentrating on deterring Russia with nuclear submarines and getting rid of her aircraft carriers, Thatcher encouraged the Argentinian Generals (who admittedly desperately needed a diversion from their domestic woes) to believe they could have a quick victory in the Falklands.
The one great benefit of the Falklands war was that it enabled the Fraser government to graciously offer to let the UK keep the Invincible (a harrier carrier) which they had committed to sell to Australia and which we had committed to buy.
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They are called Malvinas.
"...the referendum didn’t create division. It exposed something that was already there, latent."
Hm, maybe latent in a few. But maybe constant ads and speeches actually worked to exhort many other people to take extreme views they didn't have before. Brainwashing, in other words. Certainly, 20th century advertising worked to convince vast multitudes to use deodorant, when nearly no-one bothered before.
Never underestimate the power of focused, intense, targeted and personalized propaganda (like social media delivers so well). This is what both the UK and the US need to watch out for if we want democracy to survive.
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@Election Inspector
I've lived in rural areas for the last thirty years of my adult life. With one exception, a South Boston Irish white-flighter, I had never heard openly racist remarks for most of that time. Yes, some thought that way, but had the good sense or common decency to keep it to themselves. With that one exception, I'd never heard a white person use the N word for our Afro-American citizen brothers and sisters.
Since the arrival of Donald Trump, as an older white guy I now hear my neighbors, business associates and the waitress at the bar use the most vicious ugly racial slurs and stereotypes. The constant lies about immigrants; the lack of Black folks in his administration and his constant attacks on people of color, particularly women; and the general disdain for intelligence and compassion have had an impact, particularly on the less well-educated. I've known some of the offenders for many years. Donald Trump and his Republican Party have unleashed the hyenas of bigotry. Our entire nation suffers the consequences of right-wing Republican lies and propaganda.
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As I read this, I wonder how a dear friend of mine is going to obtain his insulin meds. The UK doesn't manufacture the injections he needs, nor have any safeguards been made so that he can ensure his welfare. Dear supporter of Brexit, please explain how this can happen - to the rest of the world. As a frequent traveler to the UK, I'm still flummoxed by it all.
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@Networthy, it’s a real worry if we crash out. Hospitals and pharmacies are stockpiling meds because there is absolutely no plan for how customs and imports will work afterwards. The UK has to go from frictionless trade to making up a trade system overnight. This is why crashing out worries everyone but the most insistent Leavers. Grocery stores are stockpiling food because the UK can’t produce enough to feed the population. So, yes, mate, we are worried!
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Another aspect is the resistance of an insular people against being subsumed into the mass of others. The French and Germans and Italians and Spaniards are regarded by some English people as being enemies, and if they are not to be despised, then they should be mocked -- after all, they are just not English. Australians and Canadians and even Yanks might be acceptable, but not the 'real foreigners'.
It is an amazingly parochial attitude, but it is also an extremely powerful tribal urge. It is particularly present in rural communities, where there is less contact with 'the other'. We see it here in the US too, and in France and elsewhere. Perhaps if English were not the world language, and England had had to adapt more to other cultures, then this primitive impulse would have been less by now.
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@Malcolm
Funny that the Scots never had any issues with trading into Europe
On another note, it can be fairly claimed that the Scots built the empire and the English provided administration of the Empire
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