In most of the European Union, when the authorities hold a plebiscite and don’t get the result they want, they hold another, and another, until the voters see it their way. The English tradition holds democracy in greater esteem than that. Or at least it used to, before the Brexit mess.
In 2015, David Cameron, the British prime minister, announced a national referendum on whether the country should remain in the E.U. Few of London’s politicos and commentators exhibited much awareness of the resentments and anxieties beneath the surface of British life. Cameron’s Conservative party hoped mainly to renegotiate E.U. membership on more favorable terms and marginalize the anti-Europe U.K. Independence party. The plebiscite, it was expected, would reaffirm Britain’s ambivalent status as an independent, non-eurozone member of the E.U., and the Conservative party would reassume its traditional role as the sensible protectors of British values and economic interests. All would be as it was before.
It didn’t work out that way. High levels of immigration from other E.U. states; regulations on everything from food safety to handicapped-access ramps courtesy of faceless bureaucrats in Brussels; court decisions on medical ethics and child-rearing handed down by foreign judges—all this had given millions of ordinary Britons a sense of dislocation and injustice that found expression in a vote to leave the E.U. Thus did the British electorate oblige its leaders to carry out a policy in which those leaders didn’t believe.
Cameron resigned after the June 2016 vote, and for two and a half years his replacement, Theresa May, has poured her energies into forging a Brexit deal. It was a short time to accomplish such a vast task, and May has blundered at every point. She called for an election in April 2017 in order to strengthen her majority, but ended up diminishing it. She has let the Europeans—E.U. president Jean-Claude Juncker, European Council president Donald Tusk, and Michel Barnier, the E.U.’s chief negotiator—dictate to her the terms of Britain’s departure. The deal is hopelessly complicated, but the crucial point is that the 585-page withdrawal agreement would establish a “transition period” of two years or more after the Brexit deadline of March 29, 2019, during which new trade and immigration agreements would be negotiated. During the transition, goods, services, and people would continue to move freely into and out of the U.K., but the U.K. would have no say in any E.U. policy. All the while, Britain will be expected to pay a portion of the E.U.’s budget, amounting to around £40 billion. Britain, a vassal state in all but name, could only exit this transitional status with E.U. approval.
Parliament was scheduled to vote on May’s deal on December 11, but the prime minister postponed the vote to 2019 as it became clear how badly her deal would be rejected. What now looms is the so-called Hard Brexit—the March 29 deadline passing with no deal or very little of one. Much of the news media speak of a no-deal exit in tones of hysteria. It’s true that British companies would be faced with the sudden imposition of duties on almost everything, that customs checkpoints would see a period of chaos, and that continental Europeans resident in the U.K. would find themselves in legal limbo. But the private sector has a way of adapting, and Britain’s civil service would sort out the mess. May’s government has made no preparations for the outcome—seemingly as some sort of bargaining chip to gain votes for whatever deal she negotiated.
Another possibility is a second referendum. London’s political elite, like the country’s media, were always firm Remainers. And they are furiously working for what they call a “People’s Vote”—another referendum, this one on the deal itself. This, in essence Remain by Other Means, would confirm what millions of Britons believe about the elites, namely that they no longer care about the consent of the governed.
Brexit may be a debacle, but it is a necessary one. The European Union was a noble attempt to bind nations together to prevent them from warring, but its intrinsic tendency to place power in the hands of anonymous bureaucrats in faraway places is an affront to those who are taught to believe they can govern themselves. If ordinary Britons believe their consent is a sham—that they may vote all they want but that London’s politicos will do what they want—that is a problem far more acute than a self-inflicted recession. Leaving the E.U. on March 29 may throw the United Kingdom into confusion, but the nation that defeated the Armada, Napoleon, and Hitler has met worse challenges. We fully expect she will get through this one.
