The
day after Britain votes
‘You’re
never the same after a near-death experience.’
By MATTHEW KAMINSKI
6/22/16, 8:11 PM CET
When David Cameron
honored his pledge to hold a referendum on Europe following an
unexpectedly resounding election triumph last year, the choice put
before British voters was roughly this: Keep the status quo ante or
leap into an unknown.
At some point in the
last few months, status quo came off the ballot. Whether the U.K.
stays or not after Thursday’s vote, there’s no business as usual
to return to for Britain, the EU or even the Western world.
A Brexit campaign
whose tragic coda was the assassination of a pro-EU member of the
British parliament by the hand of an English extremist, exposed
divisions within Britain that few realized went so deep. On the
European Continent and in the U.S., the political ground has shifted
jarringly since Cameron called the referendum. A historically
unprecedented migration crisis in the EU and deep economic pain,
particularly across the southern Greco-Latin belt, are propelling
parties from the further reaches of the Right and Left up the polls
and closer than ever to power in Europe. Across the Atlantic, Donald
Trump turned politics on its head, riding the same forces as the
rising political outsiders in the EU.
The down-to-the-wire
vote in Britain — a place seen as habitually pragmatic, even
phlegmatic, in its electoral politics (if not its parliamentary
theater or football viewing habits) — has coincided with and
deepened a crisis of a Western political order built after World War
II and reinforced and expanded with the fall of the Berlin Wall in
1989.
British Prime
Minister David Cameron on his campaign bus | Geoff Caddick/AFP via
Getty Images
British Prime
Minister David Cameron on his campaign bus | Geoff Caddick/AFP via
Getty Images
Thursday’s
referendum, regardless of its outcome, may turn out to be merely a
starter to a larger course of troubles.
The new Britain
The shock scenarios
from an Out vote are clearer to sketch out, as Cameron has strained
to do throughout the campaign. The markets are braced for immediate
pain, expecting a sharp decline in the British pound and stocks,
likely central bank interventions, and slower growth in years ahead
when the U.K. would need to rebuild its global trade relations from
virtually scratch. Even assuming a smooth handover of power at 10
Downing Street in the weeks after the referendum, as widely expected
if Cameron loses this vote, the political fallout would last longer,
particularly should Scotland — possibly along with Wales and
Northern Ireland, who want to stay in the EU — move to break up the
United Kingdom.
“Whatever
the outcome, the British referendum may trigger the process of EU
disintegration. The mechanisms that allowed the EU to strengthen
itself by crisis have been weakened by populist forces”
— Mario Monti
No matter what
happens Thursday, Cameron faces immediate challenges to his
leadership of his party and country. The anti-EU Tory base is livid
with the prime minister who, strange as it looks from the vantage
point of today, expected to unify the Conservatives in calling a
referendum that would put its anti-European demons to rest for good.
His potential
replacements, such as pro-Leave Boris Johnson, the former London
mayor, or Home Secretary Theresa May, who backed Remain, haven’t
been forced to sell any governing agenda to an electorate. Yet any
successor would have to respect a Conservative mood hostile to what
the EU (with or without Britain) stands for — open borders to
people, free trade and close cooperation with allies.
Even if he stays,
Cameron’s room for maneuver could well be hemmed in by the
lingering bitterness from the campaign.
‘EU
disintegration’
The other huge open
question after Thursday is how will Continental Europe, perhaps even
the transatlantic alliance, withstand the political aftershocks from
Britain?
This ground feels
shakier than in decades, and other potentially disruptive events are
around the corner. A few months after the U.K. referendum, France and
the Netherlands hold elections in which far-right parties that are as
contemptuous of the EU, America and the global economic system as any
found in Britain are slated to do better than ever. Last month in
Austria, a far-right candidate came within a few thousand votes of
becoming the head of state.
“Maybe
this will be the shock Brussels needs” — Giles
Merritt, founder of the Friends of Europe
In these tumultuous
days in Europe, the U.S. isn’t playing its customary role as
bedrock of the West with the same sense of purpose. Barack Obama
shifted America’s attentions to Asia with his “pivot,” as well
as the Middle East, and away from Europe, which until recently was
considered another century’s problem in Washington.
Bad feelings from
the Iraq war followed by Edward Snowden’s revelations about
American surveillance — which, in turn, exposed for many in
Washington Europe’s knee-jerk anti-Americanism — left a sour
taste around transatlantic relations. The notable foreign policy
views expressed by Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, are
admiration for Vladimir Putin and doubts about the utility of the
NATO military alliance, the only club that brings together the U.S.
and Europe’s democracies.
“You only need to
look at who in Europe would fully applaud a possible U.K. exit from
the EU — and that would be in the Kremlin,” the former
Secretary-General of NATO and Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh
Rasmussen, said in a recent interview. “Mr. Putin would see it as a
weakening of the EU and of the Western community as a whole, and
rightly so.” He called the impact on Western security
“devastating.”
Some dismiss such
talk as hyperbole, yet other prominent figures in the European
political establishment who are known for their sobriety have turned
into would-be Cassandras.
“Whatever the
outcome, their referendum [in Britain] may trigger the process of EU
disintegration,” said Mario Monti, who held powerful posts in the
European Commission and went on to lead a technocratic government in
Italy after the financial crisis.
He put the
aftershocks from Britain, regardless of what happens Thursday, as a
greater existential threat to Europe than the continuing strain,
though lessened this year, of mass migration or the relapse of the
Greek debt crisis. “The mechanisms that allowed the EU to
strengthen itself by crisis [in the past] have been weakened by
populist forces,” Monti told a private gathering of Italian and
U.S. business leaders in Venice last week.
“Now
is the worst possible time for any of this to happen” —
Rob Wainwright, director of Europol
“You’re never
the same after a near-death experience,” said a senior EU official
in Brussels. The past few months have shown to rivals outside the EU
and Euroskeptics within the fragility of the whole construct, this
official added, calling them “signs of an unraveling” that China,
for example, would factor into its dealings with Europe.
Across the EU,
support for the so-called European project has dropped sharply since
the global financial crisis. The polls for extremist parties trend
the other way. Podemos, a Spanish far-left group founded only two
years ago, is slated to finish second in Sunday’s parliamentary
elections, ahead of the old mainstream center-left Socialists. In
less than a decade, the EU’s favorability rating in Spain went from
80 percent to 47 percent today, according to a Pew poll released this
month.
In France, 38
percent now have a favorable opinion of the EU, compared with 69
percent in 2004, the poll found. In that sense, the French are even
more Euroskeptical than traditionally Euro-weary British, 44 percent
of whom had a favorable view of the EU.
In the bloc’s
defense, support for most governing institutions, not just the EU,
has dropped steeply across the West.
Wary Europtimism
There’s one
possible bright spot: In France and Britain, a majority of people
18-34 years old view the EU positively, suggesting a potential source
of future strength. The same Pew study that surveyed opinion in 10
European countries also found that, somewhat paradoxically in the
context of overall unhappiness with the EU, 74 percent of respondents
believed it “should play a more active role in world affairs,”
also encouraging wary Europtimists. Seven in 10 Europeans said a
Brexit would be a “bad thing” for the EU best avoided.
The search for
silver linings has already begun.
“Maybe this will
be the shock Brussels needs,” said Giles Merritt, founder of the
Friends of Europe think tank in Brussels and author of the
just-published “Slippery Slope: Europe’s Troubled Future,”
referring to a Brexit.
European Digital
Economy Commissioner Günther Oettinger, a senior figure in the
ruling German center-right party, last week said it could spur
remaining countries to come together. “My expectation would be that
the European project would gather new dynamics,” he said at
POLITICO’s Morgen Europa Live event in Brussels, though he did warn
of a “domino effect” that might push others toward the EU exits.
EU leaders will take
stock of the post-referendum realities at a previously scheduled
meeting in Brussels next week. The 28 NATO allies, the Europeans plus
the U.S. and Canada, gather for their biannual summit in Warsaw
starting July 8, giving them an opportunity to put on a show of unity
for the cameras.
Yet the current
political mood and deeper changes will hinder any attempt to reboot
not just the EU, but to inject new life into the Western camp.
The old leadership
model in Europe — a strong French-German partnership, complemented
by an outward-looking Britain that supported a muscular military and
claimed a “special” connection to Washington — has come undone.
France’s chronic economic woes have politically hobbled the past
three French presidents, pushing their support into the teens and
denying German Chancellor Angela Merkel a partner in Paris. With an
election coming up next year and strikers in the street, the current
French leader, François Hollande, is in no position to work with
Merkel to lead a European renaissance.
End of liberal
Europe, end of federal Europe
Since taking office
in 2010, Cameron has focused his attentions on domestic and, more
recently, on intramural Tory squabbles. As the Cameron government cut
defense, Britain’s traditional leadership on security has been
diminished. Inside the EU, North and East European countries welcome
Britain’s sway on debates over more free trade, continued sanctions
on Russia and a truer single market inside Europe for goods, labor
and services.
Yet, if he survives,
Cameron will find it hard to throw any weight around in the EU.
European leaders, especially the Germans, are said to be furious with
him for foisting what they view as a party dispute onto an EU
straining to deal with so many other problems, such as migration and
rising populism, and sucking up all this attention.
“Europe
is cracking up west of us” — Hungary’s Prime
Minister Viktor Orbán
Anywhere you look
these days, the Western camp is fraying.
Thriving
transatlantic commerce used to be the glue that held it together. Now
both the Democratic and Republican candidates, as much of the
European mainstream, broadly oppose free trade. The proposed TTIP
trade accord between the EU and U.S., which supporters touted as a
renewal of transatlantic vows, is dead in all but name, at least for
the conceivable future. The EU and U.S. are divided over how to
regulate the digital economy.
And though the Paris
and Brussels attacks in recent months brought home the renewed threat
of terrorism, that hasn’t slowed the sense of unwinding ties. “Now
is the worst possible time for any of this to happen,” said Rob
Wainwright, director of Europol, referring specifically to Brexit.
Britain, he told a POLITICO conference in Amsterdam this week,
provides a large share of intelligence on terrorist threats to the
EU’s law enforcement agency.
As much as the odds
are against any imminent revival of a Europe built around liberal
ideas of open borders, the other vision of a deeper federal EU faces
equally long chances of being revived.
Donald Tusk, the
former Polish prime minister and now president of the European
Council, which groups EU countries together, sought in a series of
recent speeches to bury the old “integrationist” reflex of
“confronting reality with all kinds of utopias.” His views were
endorsed by, among others, a former French foreign minister who had
in the past been seen as a champion of deeper EU integration.
An old saying about
Europe held that the so-called project was like a shark that had to
keep moving forward to survive. What happens if the shark stops
moving, even goes into reverse — with or without Britain in the
club? Coming weeks will show.
If anything can be
said with certainty about European politics in the past year, it’s
that like America’s these days, they’re divisive and deeply
unpredictable, particularly in the countries seen as part of what
used to be considered stable, boring “old Europe.”
Speaking in the
Czech capital Prague earlier this month, Hungary’s Prime Minister
Viktor Orbán said, “Europe is cracking up west of us.” His
right-wing government took out ads this week in Britain to urge a
Remain vote.
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