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(…) “Marietje Schaake, a liberal member of the European
Parliament, shares Rory Fitzgerald's concerns that Brexit has emboldened
anti-EU populists that are still operating within the EU. "Since the
chaotic political process after the Brexit, nationalist politicians all over
Europe have changed their ambitions promptly. From calls for 'Frexit,' 'Nexit,'
'Grexit,' they now all opt to change or destroy the EU from within, instead of
seeking to leave."
She believes that the only way to stop this is if europhiles
across the political spectrum -- conservative, liberal, social-democratic and
green parties -- "reach their voters, with constructive agendas to change
the EU."
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A um mês das Eleições Europeias … Depois do Brexit a Europa
nunca mais será a mesma …
OVOODOCORVO
After Brexit, Europe will never be the same again
Luke McGee
Analysis By Luke McGee
Updated 0830 GMT (1630 HKT) April 6, 2019
Theresa May will attend an emergency EU summit on Wednesday.
The aim of this is to resolve the small matter that Brexit is scheduled to
happen on Friday.
She has enraged her own Brexiteers by requesting that the
Brexit deadline be extended to June 30. We have no idea what the EU's response
will be, but it could result in the UK being forced to participate in the EU's
Parliamentary elections in May. Or it could result in the UK leaving the EU
without a deal.
While the outcome of next week is up in the air, it's worth
taking a moment to reflect on the past three years and where it leaves the
politics of both the UK and Europe as a whole.
Nothing can ever be the same again. Brexit has sucked so
much oxygen out of European politics. EU leaders and officials claim that they
are sick of Brexit and Europe has its own agenda to be getting on with.
Fine. But Brexit is still the main event. One EU source told
me that they spend "more time thinking about Brexit than anything else.
This is no way to live."
Even in the event that Brexit is cancelled, the EU cannot
pretend that the last three years didn't happen. Nor can it ignore the reasons
for it happening.
Rob Ford, a politics professor at the University of
Manchester, believes that "a series of new divides are emerging across
Europe and the rich world. These include, but aren't limited to, education,
national identity, immigration, multiculturalism, ethnicity, and social
values."
The logic goes that Brexit, a binary vote that allowed an
electorate to give the elected a bit of a kicking, emboldened this kind of
ultra-partisan politics.
Helpfully, there is data to back this up. The European
Social Survey, a non-partisan research project that tracks the views of
Europeans, asked citizens from other member states how they would vote in a
similar referendum to the one held in the UK in 2016.
The numbers should still alarm europhiles. Rory Fitzgerald,
Director of the European Social Survey, told me that while the UK is an outlier,
"with around a fifth of those in a number of other member states willing
to support an EU-exit of their own it would be wise for those supportive of the
EU project to listen carefully to their concerns."
The prospect of more exits from the bloc isn't the EU's only
problem. The ESS survey, conducted in 2016-17, suggests that there was
"little support in any country for significant further EU integration.
Perhaps other ways than further integration need to be found to increase
support for the EU project."
For an institution that has always sought to deepen
continental unity, this is a problem.
Problems across Europe
Displeasure with the EU has allowed populists on the left
and right to make considerable gains in national elections since 2016.
In 2017, the National Front's Marine Le Pen made it to the
final two in France's presidential election, losing to Emmanuel Macron. Since
taking office, Macron has suffered at the hands of populists dissatisfied with
his centrism, most recently in the form of the "yellow vest"
protesters.
In the German elections later that year, Angela Merkel's
center-right CDU suffered losses to the far-right, anti-EU Alternative for
Germany (AfD). For the first time since World War II, a far-right party took
seats in the Bundestag and were officially recognized as the main opposition.
Italy and Austria have both elected leaders who are cooler
than their predecessors on the EU. Many in Brussels think that this surge all
started with Brexit.
The problem requires urgent attention when you consider that
EU parliamentary elections take place next month. If the UK participates, the
EU will face the prospect of seats being taken by euroskeptics that make
Theresa May look like a flag-waving Europhile.
Back across the channel, Brexit has left the UK's democratic
system in a mess. The referendum asked a binary question: leave the EU or stay
in. The problem with asking a question like this is that it can be interpreted
any number of ways, including: "Are you happy with the way your country is
run?"
When direct democracy collides with parliamentary democracy
like this, politicians must accommodate what the public tells them. Tom
Tugendhat, a prominent Conservative MP and Chairman of the Foreign Affairs
Select Committee, doesn't think that the UK has managed to do this. He believes
that Brexit has caused a competition between two forms of democracy that
haven't yet been reconciled.
"Parliament's indirect democracy is struggling to
accommodate the stark clarity of the direct instruction of voters in 2016. As
representatives, we need to find ways to accommodate direct instructions and
reflect them in the laws that we pass. If we don't, then our democratic system
is in danger of losing legitimacy."
This is partly why the UK has ended up in this mess. In the
UK's electoral system -- a winner-takes all form of politics -- the candidate
with the most votes takes the seat. The rest of the votes count for nothing.
Take the Prime Minister's own parliamentary constituency of
Maidenhead as an example: May, the Conservative candidate, won 64.8% of the
vote in her seat in the 2017 general election. The remaining 35.2% was split
across 12 parties. Those people are not represented in parliament.
This pattern is repeated in various ways across the country.
That means that quite a lot of the country are represented by people they do
not agree with. In 2015, the year in which May's predecessor as PM, David
Cameron, secured a parliamentary majority with only 36.9% of the popular vote.
In the UK Parliament, each MP has one vote when approving
legislation. This means that on the question of Brexit, the will of parliament
cannot possibly reflect the will of the people.
As tribalism took over the UK's politics, the language
directed at MPs both from their colleagues and the public has been unedifying:
traitors; liars; mutineers; saboteurs. The low point was an interview given to
a national newspaper by an unnamed MP, who talked about stabbing the prime
minister in the back.
A lot has been said that cannot be unsaid. The two main
parties are in open disagreement with one another and themselves, as both are
trying desperately to make sense of the result of the referendum.
The traditional method of holding an election is unlikely to
break the deadlock.
Untangling Brexit from a general election campaign would be
near impossible. Back to Rob Ford, and the new political divides he described
earlier. Ford believes that "The EU referendum mobilized many of these. As
a result, there are now strong Leave and Remain political identities, which may
have a lasting impact." He says that this has led to the public having
less of an attachment to traditional political parties, in favor of their Leave
and Remain identities.
Ford believes that this makes the result of any election
highly unpredictable while voters are being pulled further into the mire of
identity politics.
How does this get fixed? A new electoral system might help:
"A more proportional system can better accommodate a diversity of division
and allegiances. Forcing people with fundamental disagreements into two big
tent parties is a recipe for chaos, as we are seeing."
So, the UK needs to rip up its electoral system to get out
of this mess. What about the EU?
Marietje Schaake, a liberal member of the European
Parliament, shares Rory Fitzgerald's concerns that Brexit has emboldened
anti-EU populists that are still operating within the EU. "Since the
chaotic political process after the Brexit, nationalist politicians all over
Europe have changed their ambitions promptly. From calls for 'Frexit,' 'Nexit,'
'Grexit,' they now all opt to change or destroy the EU from within, instead of
seeking to leave."
She believes that the only way to stop this is if europhiles
across the political spectrum -- conservative, liberal, social-democratic and
green parties -- "reach their voters, with constructive agendas to change
the EU."
Hard Brexit, soft Brexit, remain, no deal, whatever. The
Brexit problem has left a never-ending list of unanswered questions for
politicians and citizens across the continent.
If they are not addressed soon, European politics could find
itself in an even bigger mess. It's staggering that three years on, so many of
the political elite are still dragging their heels.
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