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Trump and
Brexit
One
interpretation of Brexit was that it represented a moment when Britain decided
to retire from greatness and lead a quieter life.
Lawrence
Freedman
In early
2017, at gatherings of the globalist elite, a new word could be heard –
‘Trumpandbrexit’. It captured the idea that the two shocking events of the
previous year – the Leave victory in the UK referendum on membership in the
European Union and Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 US presidential election
– were part of a single mysterious phenomenon that the elite was ill-equipped
to understand. Trumpandbrexit appeared as a popular revolt against their most
cherished values: multilateralism and international cooperation, liberalism and
human rights, open borders and free trade. As the US and UK had historically
been two of the most energetic promoters of those values, the rebuff was both
distressing and unfathomable. Might Trumpandbrexit be the vanguard of a
movement threatening all that had been achieved in the Western world since
1945?
This elite
feared that the nationalist virus might spread. In 2015, Chancellor Angela
Merkel of Germany had accepted that putting up barriers to those desperate to
flee the wars of the Middle East and North Africa was unconscionable, but also
probably futile. The resultant surge of migration into EU territory had
galvanised rightist parties. It was not inconceivable that these parties might
win elections in all parts of Europe. In 2017, the challenge was beaten back
first in the Netherlands, then France and, somewhat less convincingly, in
Germany. But it was hard to ignore the harsher tone that had entered into the
politics of many countries, and that in some cases intolerant nationalists were
in power or getting closer.
The
phenomenon could be dramatised as an existential struggle across the Western
world between the liberal and illiberal, the global and the parochial, the open
and the closed, and the broad-minded and the mean-spirited. It pitted the
optimism of big cities against the pessimism of small towns. But presenting the
struggle as one between the enlightened and the bigoted, lamenting the ease
with which populist demagogues had beguiled those from the poorer, less
educated, less travelled and more elderly sections of society, risked
patronising and caricaturing these people, and missed the complexity of the
phenomenon and the contingent and unique features of the different national
settings. Popular grievances were expressed in a variety of ways, in some cases
via the far left instead of the far right. Most importantly, there were good
reasons for people to be cross. Many had been left behind by the
transformational economic changes of recent decades and were then badly hit by
the financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath. They saw the wealthy as
benefiting from cheap immigrant labour and from the low interest rates that
boosted the value of their assets. Levels of inequality were as bad as ever.
The
wellsprings of Trump and Brexit did show similarities. These lay not only in
migration and the financial crisis, but also in the US and UK’s fraught
collaborations on the ‘war on terror’ and the endless wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq. There was even the shared figure of Nigel Farage, who had made his career
pushing the case for Leave in the UK and who turned up in 2016 as a confidant
of Trump. But the differences were also significant.
Trump won an
election, and with a Republican Congress was able to pursue an agenda that was
true to his instincts. Subsequent elections could produce reversals of some of
his policies even if their effects lingered. Brexit, by contrast, involved a
simple in–out proposition. The Leave camp mounted two quite separate campaigns
– an official one going for the higher political ground and Farage’s playing on
fears of yet more immigrants. Both offered reassurances to uncertain voters
that the Leave proposition was far less radical than it might appear. The Leave
victory was therefore quite different from Trump’s. It reflected a disgruntled
mood but not a coherent philosophy. After the vote, the most enthusiastic
Leavers could not claim a mandate for any particular sort of Brexit. Some
insisted that 17.4 million people had voted for a sharp break with all EU
institutions and practices no matter what. Others argued that, in practice, the
ties were bound to stay close, and that the country was merely giving itself a
bit more freedom of manoeuvre without cutting itself off from all mutually
beneficial trading relations.
British
confusion
Compounding
this lack of underlying clarity on the meaning of the project was the speed
with which the political class embraced it. Sensing the extent of popular
anger, it was loath to dismiss the result as an aberration and work immediately
to overturn it. Not respecting this exercise of democracy risked aggravating
public cynicism. In retrospect, a new and different debate was now needed,
focused not on what had just happened, but on what needed to be done to
implement the result of the referendum. Looking forward, this debate might have
been informed by a realistic appraisal of the complexity of the task and the
range of issues that must now be addressed, set against not only the interests
of the UK but also those of the remaining 27 members of the EU.
This debate
did not arise for a number of reasons, but the main one was the uneasy
consensus behind the project. Those in charge were divided on its meaning, on a
spectrum from the hardest to the softest versions, and so was the opposition.
Seeking a definitive answer to the question of what it was all about risked
opening up divisions and alienating supporters. Though both leaders of the two
main political parties supported Remain, they were both always lukewarm in this
position. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was on record rejecting the EU as a
restraint on a proper socialist platform. Theresa May, as home secretary, had
tried to cut back on migration and was aware of the limits on what she could do
while the UK was still a member of the EU’s single market. She became prime
minister mainly on account of her rivals’ self-destruction, and was not
seriously challenged on how she saw the project being taken forward. Her slogan
‘Brexit means Brexit’ was a means of reassuring Leavers that she would not let
them down, and of asserting her authority over the Conservative Party, but its
banality underscored the lack of clear, agreed objectives and principles
informing the project. Both parties described desirable outcomes while ducking
questions of whether they were at all negotiable, as if pointing out legal and
technical difficulties were bad form and self-defeating. The administrative
class in particular saw their task as largely one of damage limitation. Some
ardent Remainers were still in key positions in both the cabinet and shadow
cabinet. Accordingly, the consensus encompassed varying degrees of enthusiasm
and high degrees of blandness.
The EU was
fed up with British demands
May tried to
give herself more authority over the process by calling an election for May
2017, intended to strengthen her parliamentary majority. Despite starting with
a 20% lead over the Labour Party, a lacklustre campaign left her without a
majority at all, in power only with the assistance of Northern Ireland’s
Democratic Unionist Party – a dependency that became increasingly important as
the border between the North and the Republic of Ireland became an increasingly
vexed issue. May’s political weakness affected every stage of the subsequent
negotiations with the EU, as she could take very few risks. Her compromises had
to be tentative and on occasion were withdrawn. To make matters worse, she had
called the election just after invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty,
starting the clock on the UK’s withdrawal. Two years later, on 29 March 2019,
the UK would be out of the EU with or without an acceptable withdrawal
agreement unless the 27 remaining members agreed to extend the deadline.
Invoking
Article 50 lost the UK whatever leverage it might have had to shape the course
of the negotiations. This catered to the preference of the EU, which held that
there could be no negotiations with the UK prior to this formal step. Negative
referendums in other countries had been followed by efforts to find concessions
and then new votes that yielded more positive results, but the UK referendum
appeared too momentous to be handled in this way. Moreover, the EU had already
been through some unsatisfactory negotiations with May’s predecessor, David
Cameron, prior to the announcement of the referendum, and was reluctant to
entertain more special pleading. In short, it was already fed up with British
demands, especially after negotiated opt-outs from the euro and Schengen, and
budget rebates. Brussels also wanted the UK out before the May 2019 elections
for the European Parliament.
The American
election was also a factor. In other circumstances, the US government would
have seen such disunity in Europe as a major problem and worked to help broker
a solution. But Barack Obama’s presidency was coming to an end. Trump supported
Brexit and was generally hostile to the EU. This coloured the stances of
European leaders. They tended to see Trump and Brexit as part of the same
phenomenon, which encouraged a strong stand against both. They wished to keep
their distance from Trumpism and demonstrate to Britain that if it wanted to
leave the EU it would be on the EU’s terms. Elections had to be respected and
the American and British governments dealt with, but there was no need to
appease them.
If May had
not been in such a hurry to get the process started, orderly and substantive
discussions of possible ways of taking the issue forward might still have been
possible because then there would have been pressure on the EU to help move the
process along. More time would also have enabled the UK to work out exactly
what leaving the EU would mean in practice. Instead, May embarked on a process
for which the country had not been prepared, then failed to boost her electoral
mandate, and was then left moving forward with a divided government, a febrile
parliament and a confused country. This led to a strategy of incremental
capitulation, edging towards a position that the EU could accept, hoping she
might be offered something in exchange to make it look more like a substantive
negotiation, trimming each concession to avoid triggering an unmanageable
parliamentary revolt. The strategy became more fraught as its logic became
apparent, although it lasted longer than many might have expected. It required
shifting the choice from what Britain wanted to what Britain could get, with an
alternative of no deal at all.
Meanwhile
the EU held together. Leavers looked for signs of splits among the EU27, hoping
that their predictions that the Union was about to fall apart would come true
sooner rather than later. The EU certainly had big problems to address, not
least the developing tensions with countries such as Poland and Hungary, and
the risks posed by the Italian government to the eurozone. But Brexit made
little difference to how these issues would unfold, and they gave the UK no
leverage. It was not terribly difficult for the 27 to stay united and let the
lead negotiator, Michel Barnier, do the best he could. Few in the EU blamed
problems in the negotiations on the European Commission. Most saw them as the
result of a lack of realism on the UK’s part. Some might have had a grudging
admiration for the British trying to honour a democratic vote with a
magnificent stubbornness. Others just assumed the country had taken leave of
its senses.
Divided and
bored
Even with a
strong majority, May would have struggled with the essential contradiction at
the heart of the UK position. From the start she stressed two aspects in
particular – taking the UK out of the jurisdiction of the European Court of
Justice and ending freedom of movement. Whatever some Leavers said about the
great trading opportunities away from the EU, migration was the issue that had
most animated voters and with which May herself had the greatest sympathy. It
was the area in which David Cameron had sought relief from the EU prior to the
referendum. The problem was that ending freedom of movement meant no longer
being part of the single market, just as the desire to negotiate trade deals
separate from the rest of the EU meant leaving the customs union. To the
business and financial communities, that meant inevitable economic harm. The
single market, which had been energetically promoted by Margaret Thatcher’s
government during the 1980s, had contributed to Britain’s recent prosperity and
the country’s ability to present itself as a global hub.
The UK
government understood that some migration was necessary and that trade was
good. This set it on a path of what the EU saw as ‘cherry-picking’ – that is,
seeking to secure as many benefits as possible of the single market and customs
union without accepting the full package of European Court of Justice
jurisdiction and freedom of movement. Strictly speaking, this was an issue for
post-withdrawal, and a transition period was agreed during which the future
trading arrangements with the EU would be set. Awkwardly for the British (and
to a degree for the EU), the Irish border had to be settled as part of the
withdrawal agreement. Dublin insisted on maintaining an open border as agreed
under the Good Friday Agreement. As this is the UK’s only land border, the
issue raised questions that might have been left for the transition. If border
checkpoints were not to be set up and Northern Ireland not separated from the
rest of the UK, it was hard to see how something close to the single market and
customs union could be avoided. This of course was anathema to the hardline
Leavers.
Throughout
2018, May tried to find a formula that would feel like an actual Brexit while
building in a realistic transition period to iron out the details of a future
trading relationship and avoid disrupting too many lives, whether of EU
citizens living in the UK or UK citizens living in the EU. As she tried to find
the formula, she struggled against the somewhat unimaginative EU approach of
waiting for UK proposals and then finding them wanting. The main problem lay in
a country that was divided on the issues of principle while progressively bored
with the technical matters of negotiation. It was hard for voters to express a
preference for ‘Norway minus’ or ‘Canada plus’ as visions for the future, and
unclear whether May could get a parliamentary majority behind any deal. The
Labour Party wanted to force another election, although it was not clear they
would improve on their 2017 position. Remainers, frustrated with Labour’s
equivocation, increasingly organised around demands for a second referendum; the
only reason to suspect a different result was the hostile reaction of Leavers
to the very idea.
Meanwhile,
the clock was ticking and the prospect of the country simply crashing out of
the EU without any withdrawal agreement growing, with the potential for a huge
economic and political crisis. This would affect the rest of the EU, although
the UK would suffer most. While most of the withdrawal agreement had been
drafted for some time, the fixation on the Irish border problem meant that many
of its other provisions were left largely unscrutinised. Some of the ministers
from the Leave camp charged with responsibility for the negotiations left when
it was clear that May was prepared for a softer Brexit than they wished. When
released from cabinet responsibility, they were conspicuously unable to come up
with a credible alternative, doing little more than demanding a tougher
negotiating stance.
Assuming the
UK manages to extract itself from the EU, the Remainers will stress the damage
done to the country’s standing and the many inconveniences to which UK citizens
are subject. Of course, they may well be joined by Leavers lamenting that the
project had been betrayed or ineptly handled. If somehow the country – as a
result perhaps of a second referendum – decided to reverse its position and
stay in, the Leavers would be in full told-you-so mode, as either the drive for
an ever-closer union resumed, or the EU became more fractious and dysfunctional
because of nationalist objections to continued migration and the restraints of
the eurozone. In counterpoint, Remainers might highlight the damage inflicted
on Britain’s ability to influence events by three chaotic years.
***
Trumpism and
Brexit were never the same. Both were symptomatic of divided countries, but
Trump was associated with clear policy preferences that his victory allowed him
to carry through. In the end, his victory reflected a stage in the normal
political cycle. The referendum mandated a more detached relationship between
the UK and the EU, but left unclear how detached and in precisely what areas.
The idea behind the referendum was to settle the European issue in British
politics once and for all, but all it achieved was to escalate the issue to a
new and more vexatious level and stoke arguments and recriminations likely to
continue for years to come.
Another
obvious difference between Trumpism and Brexit was that, whereas Trump has
relished his chance to disengage from a whole range of international treaties
and obligations, and has taken pride in his ability to upset allied
governments, May needed all the international support she could get to make
Brexit happen and then forge new trading relationships. In 2017, she tried to
get close to the newly elected Trump, but on successive issues – Jerusalem,
Iran, climate change – she has sided with other European leaders. The
president’s slogan was ‘America First’; the prime minister’s was ‘Global
Britain’. Post-Brexit Britain was not going to be strong enough to demand
consideration from others. It was going to have to work hard to demonstrate
that whatever happened with the EU, it would be a good citizen elsewhere – for
example, in the UN and NATO. Yet in one respect Trump and Brexit did seem to be
part of the same phenomenon. These two countries had, in their times, been
world leaders. But even before Trump’s ascendance, the US was tiring of that
role and the UK was increasingly unable to marshal the resources required to
play it effectively. As the Brexit debate raged, there was a separate but
related one about whether Britain really could – or should – be considered a
major military power anymore. France and Germany are found together at summits
on Ukraine or Syria, while the UK is absent.
Since 1962,
the British establishment has been pondering Dean Acheson’s jibe that it had
lost an empire and failed to find a role. The special relationship with the US
was one remedy, and London’s determination to be central to almost any
international initiative was another. ‘Global Britain’ carries the implication
that the UK is still a country to be reckoned with. But there was always
another answer to Acheson: that the country did not need a role. Surrounded by
water and protected by its own nuclear deterrent, well away from the world’s
worst trouble spots, the UK arguably could dispense with leadership positions
and making extraordinary exertions to address other people’s problems. Trump
claimed to be about Making America Great Again, although he seemed to mean that
to be in the sense of economic and military strength rather than any concrete
achievements. UK foreign policy has tended to depend on a big joint project
with the US – the Second World War, the Cold War and its end, globalisation and
then the war on terror. If there are to be no more great projects shared with
the US, then the UK will have little to latch on to. An alternative might have
been some sort of shared leadership role in Europe, but that was also ruled
out. Nobody said so explicitly, and all British politicians might deny the
inference, but one interpretation of Brexit was that it represented a moment
when Britain decided to retire from greatness and lead a quieter life.
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