Some of the initial shock and sensationalism has subsided since Britain’s exit from the EU last week, but questions, vacuums, misunderstanding and possibilities persist. The immediate response seemed to be, among the informal majority-youth online communities I was keeping track of, an outpouring of dismay and disbelief that the United Kingdom would really go so far as to leave the European Union in what was widely deemed a sort of shortsighted tantrum, motivated solely by xenophobia. The New York Times and other senior largely mimicked that hysteria, but here and there, when I searched for them, I found small voices of opposition or calm, better analyzing the nuances of the “Brexit” for the positive facets as well as the disappointing.
Though sites like Twitter and Tumblr exploded with posts calling the Brexit a betrayal of the youth by older voters, and lamenting it as an inconceivably stupid and terrible move, we ought to first stop and consider exactly what Britain has done: left the EU. This is a game-changer and a notable event, but is it really a crisis? To answer that, one might have to ask whether the European Union is actually a beneficial entity to begin with, for the UK or for any other country. Upending this status quo may well be a good thing.
Think of Greece, which considered exiting the Eurozone last year because of its ongoing neoliberal strangulation. That exit didn’t go through, but the austerity policies forced on Greece met with a resounding denouncement in a vote by the populace. The Syriza government has largely kowtowed to the demands of the Troika, but there was real resentment against the ways in which Greece was forced to manage its economic crisis due to its membership in the EU.
Britain’s resentment is premised on different grievances, though the fallout of austerity has not skipped them either. Can the Brexit vote, too, be viewed as a rejection of the EU’s neoliberal economics, the harmful doctrine of rapacious capitalist globalization? Could the UK’s exit be considered a triumph for the delegitimization of that globalization? Was it a resounding expression of anti-elite anger coming from the working class?
At least, it offers a serious shock to the accepted status quo of the EU. Every entity may seem unquestionable until it is shaken, and perhaps it’s about time the EU was shaken.
The EU serves a couple of functions: it is a dysfunctional and not very democratic bureaucracy, a military tool to fall in line with the US, and a neoliberal enforcement machine. However, if any country ought to leave the EU for chiefly reasons of disillusionment with and opposition to globalization, it would seem more logical that that country be a country like Greece, Ireland, or Spain, whose economies have been severely damaged since 2008 and whose people have been punished by austerity. That it was Britain, not quite one of the most economically downtrodden EU countries, that exited brings into question the triumphant rationale put forth by some of the far left, such as the Socialist Party in the UK, which endorsed the Leave position--that this was at its core a major denouncement of the EU’s neoliberal, anti-working-class politics.
In a referendum, it’s a yes-or-no vote, and we don’t know precisely who voted for what reasons. It is probably no more truthful to make the sweeping statement that the Brexit was a resounding defeat for neoliberalism than it is to say that it was an absolute victory for racism and xenophobia.
It’s important to recognize that although the working class in majority voted to leave, that doesn’t mean that their rationale was overwhelmingly based on opposing the EU and economic oppression. That level of class consciousness can’t be assumed, and we don’t know, again, why which people voted the way they did. We ought to remember, too, that a lot of working class support goes to people like Donald Trump, in the US, as well as to the left, because legitimate frustration at being systematically disempowered can just as easily be channeled into anger at fellow have-nots of a different condition--be that race, citizenship, etc.--as it can be aimed at the elites.
But as skeptical as we should be of the monolithic narrative that says this represented a working class revolt, we must also be skeptical of the monolithic narrative that says it was entirely a stunt pulled in the name of racism, xenophobia, and nationalism. Certainly, those forces are on the rise in Europe, and other countries--Netherlands, France, Germany--have seen their right wing elements take heart from the Brexit and raise their own calls for referenda on exiting the EU. And certainly the Brexit owes its success in part to racism and xenophobia.
Still, it is an exaggeration to say that the older generations, by supporting Leave, committed a mass betrayal of the youth, who largely voted to stay, and although conservative mentalities predicated on nationalism and xenophobia may have motivated many of the older voters, they are also the ones who may remember Britain before the EU and are more able to evaluate its negative effects. Memories of stronger working class protections and less neoliberalism may also exist more with those older voters. Still, it is irresponsible and dangerous to discount the fact that the youth considered the forces of racism and xenophobia such significant, central threats that they voted en masse against the Brexit.
We have to acknowledge that right-wing bigots drove the leave effort, but that staying did not guarantee tolerance and good economic conditions. It is a fallacy to memorialize the EU as a functional and beneficial entity. Furthermore, there was a deficit of multifaceted narratives before the vote, with the Leave campaign mainly orchestrated and amplified by the right wing. The left was divided, with socialist support for the exit while the Labor party remained uncertain, and Jeremy Corbyn declined to take a strong position that could have clarified leftist support for the exit. The right wing managed to control most of the narrative around motivations for leaving, but it need not--must not--be reduced to a black-and-white party-line divide.
Rather than concluding that staying would have been the lesser evil, though, we should try to analyze all the points of this exit: that it reflects both the racism-stoked frustration with immigration and the refugee crisis as well as frustration with the austerity policies and general dysfunction of the EU.
In the short term, then, the exit will be turbulent, as it is overwhelmingly portrayed as a victory for racism, not anti-globalization or the working class--although, as a point of interest, the coverage by the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal are treating the Brexit as more of a class revolt than racist stunt. In the long term, it may help to precipitate or lay ground for more exits from the EU on explicitly economic grounds; other countries or territories may be emboldened to follow suit, such as, in Europe, the ones worst impacted by the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis and the austerity politics that followed: Greece, Spain, Ireland. Puerto Rico, facing a massive debt crisis of its own, has also raised the question of exiting the US’s damaging sphere of influence, in similar fashion to Britain and the EU.
It is interesting to note, though, that while the media wails over the lack of coherent leadership or plans for Britain, and as people from immigrants in the UK to British students in the EU face uncertainty and new obstacles, the effects on people are not nearly always at the forefront. The New York Times ran a piece the other day that focused on Obama’s concern that the Brexit may spell disaster in the realm of trade, both for Britain itself, which will have to renegotiate its own deals that formerly were covered by the EU, and, perhaps more significantly, for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Atlantic corollary to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a nefarious neoliberal power-grab. Without the UK to act as the US’s tool in the EU, it will be a great deal harder to force through the unpopular and harmful TTIP. In this sense, then, the Brexit is a victory for anti-globalization and anti-neoliberalism, for a challenging of the status quo that could yield very positive, democratizing effects.
Even if the Brexit were driven by class consciousness and workers rejecting the undemocratic EU, those concerns will not just vaporize with the UK out of the EU. Neither will xenophobia and racism produced by the shifting of demographics and the influx of immigrants and refugees simply disperse. For one, there is a genuine refugee crisis in Europe that people are reacting to--but that crisis is largely of the US’s making, with some European collaboration. Exiting the EU will not help countries deal with the floods of refugees. Better strategies and goals on that front would include pressuring the US to end its wars in the Middle East, ceasing to funnel weapons and military aid into that region, actually providing humanitarian aid through agencies like the UN, and easing the burden on Mediterranean countries by accepting more refugees elsewhere, especially in countries like the US.
As for the immigration issue, the ruling classes and racists of Europe will have to reckon with their lovely policy-ideology contradiction: they depend on the free movement of people so as to provide easy sources of cheap labor for exploitation, yet they simultaneously desire a kind of fortress-Britain, an imaginary, isolated and homogenous society. The Brexit will not solve this issue for them. Like the US, there is huge dependency on immigrant labor, and measures like mass deportations and increased border security will have a serious impact on the demographics and availability of exploitable labor in Britain. To deal with these issues and provide a workable alternative, the shaky left in the UK will need to clarify, solidify, and amplify its platform, membership, and movement.
As Lenin commented, a “United States of Europe” would be either reactionary or impossible--and we are witnessing now that it is both. At this stage, it is most important to recognize that there were valid reasons for leaving as well as bigoted, and time will have to tell which reasons can seize the day and the leadership vacuum, and guide the country from here on out.
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