Brexit Opponents Need to Look in the Mirror

In the end, it was close, but it wasn’t all that close. Brexit won by a margin of 52 to 48 percent, or over 1.2 million votes. Rejection of the European Union from the north of England, in particular, swamped the vote in its favor n London and Scotland.

The immediate result has been the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron, with a replacement to be chosen within three months. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, is taking heat too, for campaigning ineffectively in favor of the EU.

That’s no surprise: Corbyn actually belongs to that school of Old Labour which wants Britain out. And quite a lot of Labour voters—perhaps increasingly former Labour voters in the north—agree with him. The problem is that most Labour MPs and the trade unions don’t.

The vote answers one question. But it raises others of fundamental importance. There is Scotland, which, to no one’s surprise, voted heavily in favor of EU membership—indeed, more heavily than London, which was surprisingly only 60 percent in favor of the EU.

There are Britain’s exit negotiations from the EU, where the number of vital issues is enormous. There is Britain’s need to develop the ability to conduct its own trade negotiations, which is something it’s not done for over two generations.

And there are the policies of the EU and the U.S. It’s certainly in the interests of the U.S. to minimize the bumps on the round, and to start looking for new ways to cooperate – including through that U.S.-British free trade area that President Obama was so keen to talk down in April.

Whether the EU will see it that way is, sadly, doubtful. A good bit of the responsibility for the outcome of this vote falls on Brussels. It really thought it was going to win, that Cameron had the situation safely in hand, that it didn’t need to make any real concessions. Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

Will the EU now decide that this “damn the torpedoes” approach risks losing more members? Will it decide that it’s better off without Britain? Or will it decide it needs to return to its standard approach, which is to demand voters keep voting until they get it right? I wash I felt more optimistic on this score.

We will know a lot more about why Britain voted as it did later than we do now. The result certainly wasn’t foreseen by any of the polls, or by almost anyone I talked with during my last week in London. One brave man did predict a 51 percent win for Brexit—but only one.

As I pointed out, the Remain campaign had the advantage of being able to raise fears about an unknown future, and the advantage of being able to campaign on the status quo. It also had the advantage of being able to call on an unlimited supply of famous people to oppose Brexit.

And yet it lost. You have to conclude that a lot of people didn’t regard the status quo as all that great. But I fear that quite a few EU backers are likely to blame the following things for their loss: a) Fascists; b) Racists; c) Liars; d) The man at the pub. Well, if they really want to argue that over half the British public are that terrible, that’s their right.

But they might just consider this. There were undoubtedly a lot of issues that mattered in the vote. Sovereignty and democracy were certainly among them. So was sheer bloody-mindedness at all the famous folks telling them what to do. So was a sense that the EU is a bureaucratic, top-down, expensive answer to problems that don’t seem at all obvious.

But undoubtedly, immigration mattered a lot too. Or at least, immigration mattered as a proxy for a whole range of concerns centered on a loss of control, particularly in the north. Immigration, to a lot of people, meant lower wages, fewer jobs, crowded hospitals and crowded schools. And it meant a loss of cultural identity and community.

And they heard politicians for two decades promising to do something about it, and either lying about it, or completely (and implausibly) misunderstanding their inability to do something about it as long as they remained in the EU.

So here’s my question. Did anyone in the City—London’s financial center—who is now panicking about the future of their trading arrangements with the EU ever stop and suggest that, perhaps, this approach to immigration might just produce a reaction? That it might be unwise?

That, yes, Britain benefits from immigration, but that repeated unkept promises might, sometime, be noticed? That there might be a forfeit to be paid, and it might come at the expense of the EU, and of a set of arrangements that a lot of City workers find very convenient?

That, just maybe, the ability to have lots of foreign waiters, baristas, and nannies didn’t come without risks? That the working class in Britain has a long history of skepticism towards European integration, and that this kind of approach to immigration might just set it off again?

Or did they ignore all this, and conclude that all the people who have now voted Britain out of the EU were hicks, rubes, and probably racists, and not worth worrying about?

Well, time will tell. But one of the big jobs of the City is to manage risk. And by their own lights, they have failed pretty spectacularly at it. They got the outcome of the referendum wrong, which is embarrassing, but so did almost everyone else.

But the City didn’t effectively manage the political risk of Britain’s immigration policies and politics. Nor did any of the other pro-EU business organizations. Instead, they said nothing, or they positively advocated for higher levels of skilled immigration from outside the EU.

Economically, I understand the logic of this. And there is a lot of logic to it. The City, and British business as a whole, undoubtedly has a ton to gain from allowing skilled immigration. And less-skilled immigrants arrive mostly because they find jobs in Britain: A less dynamic economy would attract fewer immigrants, but I doubt that would be a net positive.

But when coupled with Britain’s inability to control EU migration, the approach that big business and the City took pretty much guaranteed that immigration was going to be a top-tier political issue, and that most of the organizations that advocated the EU’s cause were going to be regarded by many voters, come the day, as part of the problem. Maybe things would come right from their point of view on that day. But in the end, they didn’t.

I really doubt that addressing the issue of immigration is central to the problems of northern England. It’s probably a part of the problem, but no more than that. But what I think doesn’t matter. What matters is what other people think, and how they feel about it. And feel is crucial here. This isn’t just an economic issue. It’s about identity, control, and belonging.

Labour, of course, is now busy blaming Tory austerity for the failure of Labour voters to vote the way Labour wanted them to vote. But that’s rot. I wish, just once, that Labour, and the EU’s business supporters in Britain, and indeed David Cameron, would accept some responsibility for advocating a policy that lots of people didn’t like, instead of blaming them for disliking it.

I’m not saying the people were right. But I am saying that these polices were unpopular, were likely to produce a reaction, and that it would have been wiser, from the business point of view, to take steps and advocate policies that would minimize that reaction, instead of inflaming it.

Just perhaps, strong business leadership backing up a prime minister who wanted to impose some limits on exceptionally large movements of EU citizens seeking employment in another EU nation might have moved the EU in that direction. Or maybe not. But it might have been worth trying. After all, if Angela Merkel can carry out her migrant policy, and lead to the near-collapse of the Schengen area as a result, limits don’t sound so unreasonable.

But no. Because neither Labour, nor the Tory leadership, nor business, nor the unions ever took a serious lead on this, they left the field open for a reaction against both immigration and the EU, which ended up being tied together – for the simple reason that they were, and that no one ever really tried to separate them.

Part of statesmanship is knowing the limits of the possible. Those limits may be right or wrong, you may agree with them or disagree with them. But they exist, and if you cross them, there will be consequences. Well, at some point over the past two decades, Britain exceeded those limits. So, for that matter, did the EU—much more persistently, and egregiously.

And now, the forfeit has been paid. It is not a victory for conservatism, because a lot of Brexit’s backing came from socialists. But it certainly is a victory for democracy, for sovereignty – and for the basic idea that politicians shouldn’t persistently do things that people really don’t like.

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