Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
The British people have voted to leave the
European Union, by 52 to 48 percent. Following an intense battle that lasted
for months, the June 23 “Brexist” referendum on British membership in the
28-member EU ended with a close victory for the Leave side.
Led by British Prime Minister David
Cameron, the Remain side, supported by most of his own Conservative Party as
well as the opposition Labour Party, had pulled out all the stops to prevent
Britain from leaving.
Most European leaders hoped Britain would
remain an EU member. Landmarks from Paris to Warsaw were bathed in the colours
of the Union Jack, along with the message “Vote Remain.”
“I
appeal to the British citizens: Stay with us. We need you. Together we will
cope with future challenges. Apart it will be more difficult,” Donald Tusk, the
president of the European Council and a former prime minister of Poland, wrote
on Twitter. It was all for naught.
The vote revealed deep divisions within the
United Kingdom itself, with Scotland very favourable to remaining within the EU,
as opposed to most of England.
However, cosmopolitan London, along with a
few large cities such as Liverpool and Manchester, and university towns like
Oxford and Cambridge, threw their weight behind the Remain side.
Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish First
Minister and leader of the separatist Scottish National Party government in
Edinburgh, has threatened to mount another referendum in Scotland to leave the
UK.
In Wales, on the other hand, the Leave side
prevailed. Leanne Wood, the leader of the Welsh nationalist
Plaid Cymru, said that if the UK does leave the EU it could provide
opportunities for those whose ultimate aim is independence for Wales.
Northern Ireland’s vote followed sectarian
lines, with Catholic Nationalists massively in favour of remaining in the EU, of
which the Irish Republic is also a member, while Protestant Unionists were split
between the two options.
Cameron had accused the Leave side of being
opposed to immigration, pointing to a poster campaign by the right-wing pro-Leave
UK Independence Party head Nigel Farage warning that Britain had reached a
“breaking point.”
Farage, who was jubilant in victory,
contended that EU membership had left the country unable to control its borders
and defend itself against an immigrant influx. “The dawn is breaking on an
independent United Kingdom,” he declared when the results were tallied.
With net migration to Britain of 330,000
people in 2015, more than half of them from the European Union, Cameron had no
effective response to how he could limit the influx.
There was an obvious reason why immigration
proved a potent weapon for the Leave side. Life is tougher for millions of
Britons on modest incomes than it was a decade ago.
The country had only joined the EU (then
the European Economic Community) in 1973 because it felt it had run out of
other options in shaping its postwar, post-empire identity. There was no great
desire to pool sovereignty in pursuit of wider political goals.
That’s why pro-EU advocates, while making
dire economic predictions should the UK leave, seldom appealed to Britons’
sense of shared identity with the continent.
One of the main Leave proponents, former
London mayor Boris Johnson, had accused Prime Minister Cameron of demeaning
voters by suggesting that those who wished to leave were “somehow against the
spirit of modern Britain.”
He termed it “an insult to the people of
all races and parties and ages and beliefs who simply want to take back control
of this country’s democracy.”
Calling the Remain side “Project Fear,” Johnson
described them as “a cushy elite of politicians and lobbyists and bureaucrats,
circling the wagons and protecting their vested interests.” Much of the hostility
was aimed at those who were seen as feathering their own nests.
He was on to something. Chris Bickerton, a Cambridge University
lecturer, has observed that EU nations have become “member” states, rather than fully sovereign nations, whose power
and legitimacy are entirely bundled up with their membership of a transnational
community.
This shift from nation states to member
states, he asserted, results in the hollowing out of national democracy, as
elites withdraw from the larger society and feel less attachment to it.
What the EU had brought to the British was
a loss of control over their own affairs. No wonder so many Britons were angry.
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