{"id":547,"date":"2016-07-07T10:37:23","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T10:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/historia\/?p=547"},"modified":"2016-07-07T13:03:49","modified_gmt":"2016-07-07T13:03:49","slug":"brexit-and-broken-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/historia\/2016\/07\/07\/brexit-and-broken-britain\/","title":{"rendered":"Brexit and Broken Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"An<\/a>

An EU official hangs the Union Jack next to the European Union flag at the VIP entrance at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2016. British Prime Minister David Cameron is visiting EU leaders two days ahead of a crucial EU summit. (AP Photo\/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)<\/p><\/div>\n

”Historikerbloggen” publish a contribution on Brexit,\u00a0authored by Norry LaPorte, historian and Reader in Modern European History at the University of South Wales. In the blog, LaPorte gives us his own view and interpretation on the context and the consequences Brexit will have on Great Britain\u00a0once\u00a0the result of the referendum became evident on the morning of Friday 24 June. LaPorte’s research focus primarily on Europe’s radical history during the twentieth century, and he has published numerous articles and books on this topic, e.g. on the German Communist Party and one of its leading figures Ernst Th\u00e4lmann; the Communist International and the implications of Bolshevization and Stalinization on the international communist movement between the wars. \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

”Historikerbloggen” publicerar ett bidrag om Brexit\u00a0f\u00f6rfattad av\u00a0Norry LaPorte, historiker verksam vid University of South Wales. I bloggen ger LaPorte sin syn p\u00e5 Brexit och dess konsekvenser f\u00f6r Storbritannien efter att resultatet av omr\u00f6stningen stod klart p\u00e5 morgonen fredagen den 24 juni. LaPortes forskning fokuserar prim\u00e4rt p\u00e5 Europas radikala historia under 1900-talet, och han har publicerat artiklar och b\u00f6cker om det tyska kommunistpartiet och en av dess ledargestalter Ernst Th\u00e4lmann; den Kommunistiska internationalen och hur ”v\u00e4rldspartiet” p\u00e5verkades av bolsjevisering och stalinisering under mellankrigstiden.<\/em><\/p>\n

Norry LaPorte,<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reader in Modern European History at the University of South Wales,<\/p>\n

6 July 2016 (with thanks to Jane Finucane)<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of the vote to leave the European Union, a widely viewed satirical video appeared on Youtube<\/a>. A scene in the German film \u2018Downfall\u2019 carried spoof subtitles in which Hitler lambasted the Nazi leaders around him in the bunker: \u2018You were not supposed to actually win\u2019! To those who had vehemently opposed Brexit<\/a>, there seemed to be more than a grain of truth in this. Before Michael Gove and Boris Johnson acrimoniously parted company \u2013 in the words of Scottish Nationalist Party leader at Westminster, Alex Salmond \u2013 they looked like they wanted to cry at their \u2018victory\u2019 press conference. At least Johnson seemed to realise why this would be a pyrrhic victory. As mayor of London, he knew that the City and its financial services risked sinking beneath the waves if it stayed on board Gove\u2019s good ship Britannia, together with close to 50 percent of British exports.<\/p>\n

For all its complexity, the campaign leading up to the \u2018Leave\u2019 vote in the referendum of 23 June was reduced to two messages: immigration (bad) and the economy (bad if we leave). So why did \u2018Leave\u2019 win as it risked making voters poorer? And why did \u2018Remain\u2019 lose when referenda usually opt for the least risky option, not least economically \u2013 as happened in the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence<\/a>? One reason is that the \u2018Remain\u2019 campaign failed even to engage with the wider European project as a means to bring peace and prosperity to post-1945 Europe. Their only clear and consistent message was that you\u2019ll have to pay the cost of leaving EU.<\/p>\n

What caught the voters\u2019 imagination \u2013 and secured their support \u2013 was a cross-class alliance held together by what we can term \u2018project Britannia\u2019: a denial of post-imperial decline after 1945, which has been tied to a very Conservative political project. A political discourse already so infused by references to the Second World War went into overdrive. In its referendum special issue the neo-conservative monthly Standpoint called the campaign the \u2018Battle for Brexit<\/a>\u2019 in which \u2018we\u2019 were again standing up to the threat from Europe and the EU\u2019s failed project of preventing \u2018German domination\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"Great<\/a>

Great Britain Divided<\/p><\/div>\n

For 52% of the electorate, the message was seductive. Usual political alliances were thrown in the air as those traditional Labour voters living in post-industrial parts of England and Wales who have suffered from the impact of Chancellor George Osborne\u2019s austerity policies stood on the same side of the debate as more affluent core Conservative voters in rural England. Both groups appear to have believed that \u2018immigrants\u2019 were the problem, even if there was not a foreign accent to hear for miles in most of the countryside. A discourse of xenophobia was spewed out by the tabloid press, which hammered out the \u2018Leave\u2019 campaign\u2019s simplistic message: \u2018take back control\u2019. After decades of hostility to the EU, this large and influential section of the media called for ending the influx of migrant workers (who in reality have contributed significantly to the economy) and ending the so-called Diktat imposed from Brussels \u2013 it is only Europe, if you subscribe to this worldview, that does dictatorship, not the \u2018mother of democracy\u2019.<\/p>\n

Yet, it became clear that the Brexiteers really did not have any plan for a future outside the EU, and social divisions and political discord defined post-referendum Britain. Prime Minister David Cameron resigned and the Tory government became a caretaker government. The opposition Labour Party fell into a civil war between the parliamentary party and the left-wing, Jeremy Corbyn supporting membership. The 48% who voted \u2018Remain\u2019 felt totally disenfranchised. The Brexiteers were dividing into \u2018fundamentalist\u2019 (no compromise on immigration) and \u2018realist\u2019 (a compromise on immigration to secure access to the EU\u2019s single market) camps. In Scotland, the governing SNP reopened issues of Scottish independence as this part of multinational Britain voted 62% to 38% for \u2018Remain\u2019. Northern Ireland too voted \u2018Remain\u2019, which now risks all the achievement of the peace process encapsulated in the \u2018Good Friday Agreement (1998). Will there really be a hard border dividing Ireland and risking a return to the troubles? According to the hard-line Gove, Westminster should never have appeased \u2018Irish nationalism\u2019 in the first place \u2013 after all, in his view, if you yield to one \u2018demand\u2019 what comes next?<\/p>\n

So what did the potent slogan \u2018take back control<\/a>\u2019 mean? Here there is something uniting two of the main candidates in the Tory leadership contest, Gove and Theresa May, beyond the focus on immigrant on \u2018borders\u2019 in a globalised world, which has led to a\u00a0surge in hate crime as recorded by the police. They are enthused by the prospect of repealing the \u2018Human Rights Act\u2019 and the intervention of \u2018foreign\u2019 judges in the \u2018European Court of Rights\u2019 and European labour and working legislation has also been deemed unwelcome in deregulated, free-market Britain.<\/p>\n

Is there a way back to the \u2018imagined community\u2019 trumped in the tabloid press and the Daily Telegraph when Britain ruled the waves, could stand alone and trade with the wider world? No. All great powers rise and fall, and this vote will only accelerate decline \u2013 from multinational state into a \u2018Little England<\/a>\u2019 with Scotland, and perhaps even a re-united Ireland, returning to their common European home.<\/p>\n

What, if anything, is the lesson from history in these uncharted waters? One point is to beware myths of national renewal which are exploited by right-wing populists and more readily believed by sections of society in troubled times. 1940 is not 2016 and fixating on Hitler\u2019s \u2018Downfall\u2019 not only tells us about British humour but also about how nationalist myths defined against foreign \u2018others\u2019 and past battles obscure a positive vision of the future and \u2018our\u2019 place in it. The empire is gone and the war long over. Can\u2019t we adopt another myth of Britishness: being a fair, open and hospitable people? It would be much better than Tory leadership hopefuls debating whether Europeans can remain in the UK.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

”Historikerbloggen” publish a contribution on Brexit,\u00a0authored by Norry LaPorte, historian and Reader in Modern European History at the University of South Wales. In the blog, LaPorte gives us his own view and interpretation on the context and the consequences Brexit will have on Great Britain\u00a0once\u00a0the result of the referendum became evident on the morning of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":394,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148,149,1,144,285],"tags":[297,287,286,276,293,177,289,290,299,298,296,288,295,291,292,294],"class_list":["post-547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2000-tal","category-europa","category-okategoriserade","category-ovrigt","category-samtidshistoria","tag-boris-johnson","tag-bremain","tag-brexit","tag-david-cameron","tag-england","tag-eu","tag-european-union","tag-great-britain","tag-independence","tag-michael-gove","tag-northern-ireland","tag-referendum","tag-scotland","tag-twenty-first-century","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wales"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/historia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/historia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/historia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/historia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/394"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/historia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/historia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":552,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/historia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547\/revisions\/552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/historia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/historia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.abo.fi\/historia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}