Two years of Brexiting begins, a long road ends
One of the things that is ending with Brexit may well be two
speed Europe.
Two speed Europe was a concept to explain how some countries
used the Euro currency and some did not and that some countries dropped border
controls and some did not. And so on,
but currency and border controls were two of the big ones, maybe biggest.
Another way of explaining Two Speed Europe was: England lagged behind.
The French and the Germans were leading the European
Economic Community, as it was called before it became the European Union, and
the chair was out for England to be a leader too, but England never sat down in
that chair. England was late to join,
only joined halfheartedly, and now is the first to leave.
Under both ‘two speed’ and ‘Franco-German leadership’
visions of Europe our press treated membership as if there only one thing that
being part of Europe meant and somehow whole nations were treated as if they
were only one person.
Of course each of these nations are way to complex, multifaceted
and politically divided to begin to speak of “what England wants” or “what the
Germans will do”. That is sort of
treating the United States as if we all made the decision to have Trump as our
leader. The Europeans do not do
Thanksgiving dinner, but European families do have to set politics aside when
they sit down to eat together.
Different parts of British, French and German society want
different things and the relative influence of different people in those three
nations over the European Union is now going to evolve.
European’s as individuals support political movements that
are a lot more different from each other than our semi-official two party
state.
The two year exit negotiations deadline is only one of the
factors that will shape a changing Europe.
Other large factors will be the extent of anti-EU sentiment
inside other nations, the successes and failures of different sectors of the
economies, the ongoing flood of political refugees and desperate economic
migrants, the relationship with Russia and the results of austerity
politics.
Brexit negotiations starting does not mean it will take the
full two years to complete. It just
means that official membership will end in two years at the latest. Some things will get worked out beforehand
and some negotiations will always be somewhat open.
Elections will be held soon in France and Germany. Both will probably result in a pro EU, pro
NATO center right government with Germany’s right more stable and France’s
extreme right more influential.
Spiegel, a German news magazine of reference, had an op-ed
for Brexit Day that states British Prime Minister May has a five front struggle
that she cannot win. According to Markus
Becker the five fronts are:
·
Brussels, meaning the social-economic divorce negotiations.
·
Scotland, meaning a nation that decided to stay
in the UK based on promise that Brexit breaks.
·
Northern Ireland, where staying part of the EU
may mean reunification with the south.
·
The British Economy, which will have many Brexit
winners and losers.
·
British Internal Politics, as there will be another
election, and Labor might win.
The front page of the leading Spanish newspaper site, EL
PAÍS, was an op-ed by British writer John Carlin called Brexit: The will of the
people. On the day the UK triggers
Article 50, many are wondering whether the shot will be fatal, or whether there
is still hope that the patient will recover.
Between the one comment about British internal politics and
the other about how the people are not a single item there is also the fact
that the United Kingdom is not very democratic.
The current Tory government was elected with only 37% of the
vote. Two thirds of Britons voted against the conservatives and at the time,
the conservatives were in favor of staying in the EU and lead by a different
Prime Minister, David Cameron.
The Brexit vote itself did not require a minimum voter
turnout, a larger than 50% +1 majority, nor did it allow young people to vote
at age 16, as the Scottish independance referendum did.
With Scotland and Northern Ireland voting in a decisive
majority for “Remain” (to stay in the EU) there is some constitutional question
of if England and Wales have the right to take this move without the agreement
of their “Union” partners of the United Kingdom.
The bitterness is only made worse because the Brexit vote
comes so soon after the Scottish national referendum where it is fair to say
that Scotts voted to stay in the UK in large part because if they didn’t, they
were threatened with exile from the European Union. No wonder the Scottish government has asked
to hold another referendum and no wonder that the London government,
representing only a third of Britons, made up an excuse to turn them down. That excuse was the need for “unity during
these important negotiations” the Scotts have voted twice to never have.
The President of France will be elected by a majority vote
in a runoff between the top two placing candidates in the first round to be
held on April 23rd. The Chancellor of Germany will be elected by the
Bundestag, where all political parties with more than 5% of the national vote,
or the plurality of the vote in a district are represented. The leaders of most nations of Europe, and
the commissioners of the European Union will all have a much more legitimate
mandate than Prime Minister Theresa May as we go through these Brexit
talks. Despite that, there will be very
little chance of the UK undergoing any constitutional reform at the same time
as they are working out a new trade deal.
If the UK held its next election following the Brexit under representative
rules, which would be an unexpected surprise.
Which part of the UK economy benefits from Europe and which
needed to not be “all in”?
The first place to look would be the Euro. Why did some in the UK so adamantly fight to
keep a separate currency? The UK
equivalent of Wall Street is “The City” and it lead the part of the British
economy that is more international, focused on banking, insurance, investing,
shipping and commodities trade. Like our US “investment sector” there are parts
of the UK economy that thrives despite high unemployment, loss of industrial
jobs and agricultural subsidies.
That the UK international investment sector needs an independent
Pound Sterling seems obvious, but there are probably some exceptions to that. Some
of the big firms are now setting up satellite companies on the continent,
especially in Paris. Some of that
investing was making good use of EU membership, but that may be easily fixed
for the stockholders.
The Brexit negotiations are getting media attention for two
major issues.
First is the three million odd EU citizens living in the UK
and the only slightly less number of British citizens living the European Union
life in Spain, Ireland and scattered around the other 27 EU states. Brussels has made resolving this issue their perquisite
that needs to be agreed before even starting on the second major issue: Trade.
EU membership means (for the UK meant) free movement of
people, goods and services around the member states under EU standards, but basically
tariff free.
So now Prime Minister May is asking to have controls over
immigration and still have open trade with the EU on a bilateral basis. Sort of a deal where they keep the Poles out,
but still get to send their sheep to France.
Brussels has said that if Britton wants to have free trade, there needs
to be free movement of labor. That is what we members of the public are called in economic
trade negotiations: ‘labor’.
On the other side of the channel, different groups feel differently about UK membership with some being happy to see an end to Anglo-Saxon capitalist sociopathy, others who will miss it and all kinds of different reactions to the economic changes including wanting to trade their own goods in the absence of English competition. We should expect a lot of talk about free movement of the people and a lot of back room dealings that are less friendly to the free movement of goods and services.
The UK has ironically now put forward the incorporation of
EU rules into British law “for the transition” so that they can have the
stability of the EU regulations that they are supposedly now ‘freeing’
themselves from.
So, if they want to keep some, or most of the foreign
workers, keep their own ‘labor’ moving freely inside the other 27, want to keep
selling their sheep and Rovers to France, then why Brexit?
There has been an anti-European drumbeat in the UK ever
since De Gaul and Adenauer broke with Franco-German historic antagonism at a
time when the rubble of the Second World War had not yet been all picked
up.
That discourse has been strong in the British press, much of
which is tabloid and sensationalist, in a tone that was at times anti-German,
anti-French or anti-social-welfare-state, or all of the above. The two political parties that benefit from forming
governments with a majority of the seats with a minority of the votes also
chimed in with cheap critiques of proportional representation pointing shallow
ridicule at Italy. This has been part of
British chauvinism in popular culture for so long, much of the British public
does not doubt the truth of it.
In British popular culture France is a failed state with a
failed economy, Italy is an unstable nation, both are failed military powers,
and the social contract ideas of German and other continental governments are
some kind of oppressive poverty akin to England’s own housing projects that
they call “housing estates”. This same
kind of reporting would have one believe that the Eurozone and the continental
open boarders are some kind of failure. Thought-out
these reports that pass for journalism there has been an aftertaste of
disparaging characterization of whole nations and of course a sense of British
superiority.
We Americans can compare the UK media ‘discussing’ Europe to
our own media on the subject of Canadian health care or anything related to Mexico. We can also see British chauvinism as a
cousin of American Exceptionalism.
Fortunately there are many people in the US and UK who do
not drink the Kool-Aide.
But many do. In the
UK our Donald Trump has a kindred spirit in the person of Boris Johnson. He was
almost Prime Minister, but instead stepped aside for May, who appointed him to
hold the foreign affairs portfolio called Secretary of State for Foreign and
Commonwealth Affairs. This guy has been
something of a belligerent buffoon in British politics for a while. He served as the anti-everything-progressive Mayor
of London who never saw any private property rights he did not want to “unleashed”. During the ‘Leave’ campaign he ran around
with a bus spouting off whopping lies about how much money the EU was costing
National Health every day and describing the EU regulations as coming down from
‘faceless bureaucrats’ in Brussels who he made sound post Nazi and post
Soviet. Like The Donald he comes from
the wealth of elite to which he adds title and privilege (and a long string of
names) of the old British class system. He
is part of the privileged elite that former Prime Minister David Cameron belonged
to. He even has funny looking blond hair.
So the May administration has a Trump like character at
foreign affairs. This is the guy who leads
the new relationship with Europe.
The UK had nuttier, further right wing extremists than the ‘Eurosceptic’
right wing Tories. The main group today
is UKIP, the UK Independence Party, who led the main part of the ‘Leave’
campaign. They also score high in
national elections, but the unfair voting system keeps them out of parliament
for the most part. Ironically, UKIP is a
large part of the UK delegation to the European Parliament, which is elected
more democratically.
UKIP has been playing the anti-immigration card and flirted
with the British harder right, once represented by a National Front and now
splintered into some smaller group for whom UKIP is too moderate. This is a smaller fringe, but let’s remember
that the UK is one of the original homes of the right wing skinhead movement,
part of which had a history of violence against visible minorities when they
were called ‘Paki-bashers’. Not too long
ago this faction would have been vehemently anti-Irish. An American white nationalist, militia
member, clan member or border Minuteman could find friends in the UK. (Some do
and some minimal relationships between these groups exists)
Back in the mainstream, there has been a lot of
opportunism. Different groups had an
interest in feeding enough of this chauvinism and xenophobia to carve out a
special deal for themselves. The existence
of a Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party along with an even more
anti-Europe fringe made it easier for special deals to be cut for the UK, which
has Europe’s largest banks, some of the largest productive economy, free access
to the European market for everything from sheep to North Sea Oil and Western
Europe’s largest military.
Two speed Europe has been good for the UK.
So, in order to win an election, David Cameron promised to hold a referendum on
leaving the EU that he never expected to lose.
There has been no move to hold that vote over again even when there was
some constitutional justification, so the UK elites do not seem to be upset
about the outcome enough to do something about this. So maybe they find that they can cut their
own deal and continue to be in Europe on their own terms.
How badly this will
hurt the people of the UK is still to be seen.
