The Calm Before the Brexit Storm

Britain has strict rules governing how much contestants can spend in an election or referendum. Because of this, and before the campaign can begin in full earnest, the Electoral Commission has to pick who will be fighting for Brexit, and, thus, who will be spending the money on its behalf. This designation of the official opposition to the government’s preferred policy of remaining in the EU will come in the second week of April, and it’s partly around this question of designation that uncertainty will swirl for the next few weeks. But the battle for the designation is not a gentlemanly business – it’s a cover for deeper divisions.

The history of British opposition to the EU – and its various antecedents – has, from the late 1950s, been riddled with two abiding sins: refusal to unite for a common purpose, and inability to disassociate the movement from discreditable elements. The EU’s backers may be relentlessly credulous about Europe’s economic advantages, and ready, willing, and able to lie about the nature of the EU’s drive for political unity, but they have always had the advantages that belong to the establishment: they have a clear line; they are well-organized, and they know what they want. This time around, sadly, little has changed. During a recent visit to London, almost every corner of the Eurosceptic movement resounded with private, bitter resentment at the disunity and factionalism of the Brexit campaign. This disunity is personified by the groups contending for the official designation: Vote Leave and Grassroots Out.

Vote Leave has strong antecedent organizations and a slicker London-based headquarters. More importantly, it has founded a range of supporting groups – such as Historians for Britain – and enjoys the backing of a greater number of mainstream figures. It’s also, however, attracted the same bitter animosities that have scarred Britain’s Eurosceptic movement for generations.

Its rival, Grassroots Out, has emphasized on-the-ground campaigning, but it certainly did not spring from the grassroots. The organization has cross-party support from reputable politicians, but finds its chief backing from the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP), including Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader. It’s also, unfortunately, won the support of George Galloway, the Israel-hating, hard-left, former MP. The sight of Galloway and Farage together on the same platform is both depressing and profoundly discrediting. It’s hard not to see how the designation won’t go to Vote Leave, but the Commission is inscrutable, and this is politics.

The government is certainly well aware of that fact. Over the last week, it’s secured the suspending (following shortly thereafter by the resignation) of John Longworth, the former director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, who dared to make it known that he believed Britain would be better off out of the EU. (Longworth, and his formidable address book, immediately signed up with Vote Leave.) In theory, the machinery of the state itself is supposed to be neutral, but there are already mutterings from the Vote Leave camp that the civil service is being tasked with defeating Brexit. And because of the broad and deep rebellion against remaining in the EU within the Conservative party – over 140 Tory MPs, and major figures like London Mayor Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, back Brexit – the government has had to suspend cabinet collective responsibility, and allow everyone to go their own way.

The government’s major asset is the Prime Minister, David Cameron, who began his tussle with the EU by asserting it needed fundamental reforms, and has now consented to campaign on its behalf. But the loincloth of concessions he won from Brussels was so skimpy that it is obviously embarrassing to wear it in public. The EU’s supporters thus rely on two other tactics: lining up the great and the good to endorse the EU, and proclaiming that life as currently known in Britain will come to an end if it leaves the EU—an effort derided by Brexit’s backers as “Project Fear.”

The effectiveness of these approaches remains to be seen. But in an era where the establishment is at a discount everywhere, it’s far from clear that encouraging members of the establishment to explain to the public that the establishment is actually really great is a reliable path to victory. The scare stories are more likely to have an impact, but they’ve been overdone before the campaign has even officially started: when I was London, the latest intervention was by the physicist Stephen Hawking, who had lined up his colleagues to proclaim that Brexit would cripple British science. It makes one wonder how CERN, the world-leading physics center, manages to get by in Switzerland, which isn’t in the EU.

For what they’re worth, the polls are finely-balanced: the Europhiles often show a numerical edge, but Brexit commands greater enthusiasm, a fact that may tell on the day. In conversation, Douglas Carswell, UKIP’s only MP and a Vote Leave supporter – as well as one of the liveliest and most independent men in British politics – professed his confidence that Brexit can win. What is likely to tell in the end is whether Brexit looks both a safer and a more optimistic course than remaining in the EU. As Mark Littlewood, the director of the free market Institute of Economic Affairs put it in a private briefing: the anxieties of the Europhiles are such that they’re not running Project Fear; they’re backing Project Scared. If the Brexit campaign grows into the role of Project Self-Confidence, Carswell’s faith may be vindicated.

If it does, the first victim will be David Cameron. Having taken a leading role in the referendum campaign, and having in any case promised to leave Downing Street before the next election, it is hard to see how he could remain in office. And when he goes – even if he does win the referendum – the Conservatives will likely pick a very different leader to follow him. The Tory party is like a pyramid: the further down you go, the more Eurosceptic it becomes, until you reach the constituency parties, which are overwhelmingly opposed to the EU – and which will have the final say in selecting the next Tory leader and, thus, the next Prime Minister.

In 1993, during the poisonous debate over the Maastricht Treaty, Prime Minister John Major faced barely 20 hard-core opponents. Now the rebels comprise more than half the party, and polls show that support for any Tory contender who has failed to support Brexit has collapsed. The next Conservative PM is thus likely to be a Brexit backer. Currently, Boris Johnson, Minister of State for Employment Priti Patel, former Defense Secretary Liam Fox, and dark horse backbencher Graham Brady lead many lists. If politics are in part about character, the worst sufferers in the leadership sweepstakes will be those who are perceived as having betrayed their Eurosceptic convictions to side with the Prime Minister.

When I visited Britain last May, before the most recent election, almost everyone I met affected to be bored by the campaign. But as I made my rounds in London this time, absolutely no one was bored, or pretended to be. From all sides I heard, as one MP put it, that the referendum was going to be a great political event, a passionate contest for the destiny of a nation between arguments, publicity stunts – and more than a few dirty tricks too. At a time when it’s hard to look at American politics without gasping or gulping, the battle for Brexit is inspiring. There are Tory activists and MPs across Britain who have spent the last 25 years preparing for this day. As Churchill put it, everyone has his day – and some days last longer than others.

Ted R. Bromund is the senior research fellow in Anglo-American relations at the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom.