Sun, Oct 16, 2016 page7

• The revolutionary dynamic behind ‘hard’ Brexit’s political logic

  • By Jacek Rostowski
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  A little more than three months after Britain’s decision in June to leave the EU, Brexit politics are careening out of control in the UK. An almost revolutionary — and very un-British — dynamic has taken hold, and, as British Prime Minister Theresa May indicated in her “Little Englander” speech at the Conservative Party conference this month, the UK is heading for a “hard Brexit.”

  That outcome would run counter to British public opinion, which remains moderate on the question of fully breaking with the EU. According to a July BBC/ComRes poll, 66 percent of respondents considered “maintaining access to the single market” to be more important than restricting freedom of movement.

  In an ICM poll the same month, only 10 percent of respondents said they would prioritize ending free movement over maintaining access to the single market, while 30 percent viewed the two as equally important and 38 percent considered maintaining full access to the single market the priority.

  These findings would surprise only those who buy into the narrative that the West is confronting a large-scale xenophobic revolt against the elites. While the “Leave” camp certainly included many hard Brexiteers whose primary motivation was to end free movement, it also comprised people who believed Boris Johnson, the former London mayor and current foreign secretary, when he promised (as he still does) that the UK could have its cake and eat it.

  In fact, despite Leave’s large faction of angry white working-class voters, middle-class trade-friendly Brexiteers, together with the “Remain” camp, constitute a clear majority of everyone who voted in the June referendum. Under normal circumstances, one would expect the government’s policy to reflect the majority’s preference, and to aim for a “soft Brexit.”

  Instead, a classic revolutionary pattern has emerged.

  According to the Brexiteers, the people have spoken, and it is the government’s duty to deliver a “true” Brexit. However, the government must overcome the spoilers, such as senior civil servants and the Remain majority in the British House of Commons, who favor a Brexit in name only — a “false” version that could never deliver the benefits of the real thing.

  In this revolutionary narrative, the worst elements of Europe’s political tradition have crowded out British pragmatism. What a majority of British voters want is considered irrelevant. With a hard Brexit, the Leave camp can avoid being seen by voters as the supplicant in negotiations with the EU — which it inevitably would be, no matter how often May denies it.

  The EU will have the upper hand in negotiations for two simple reasons. First, the UK has more to lose economically. While other EU countries’ total exports to the UK are double what the UK exports to the rest of the bloc, its exports to the EU amount to three times more as a share of its GDP. Likewise, the UK has a services surplus, which matters far less to the rest of the EU than it does to Britain.

  Second, just like the EU’s Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with Canada, any negotiated arrangement between the EU and the UK would have to be unanimously accepted by all EU member states. Thus, the negotiation would not really be between the UK and the EU, but rather among EU members. The UK, without a presence at those talks, would simply have to accept or reject whatever the EU offers.

  This would be true even if the UK pursued a prepackaged arrangement, such as membership in the European Economic Area or the EU Customs Union; it would be all the more true if the UK seeks a “bespoke” deal, as May has indicated she will.

  If British voters recognized their country’s weak negotiating position, the Brexiteers, who won the referendum on their promise to “take back control,” would face a political disaster. Walking away from substantive negotiations is the simplest way to avoid such an embarrassing unmasking.

  Thus, politically, a hard Brexit is actually the soft option for the government. However, economically a hard Brexit would come at a high price, which the UK would have to pay for years to come.

  The only consolation is that Brexit’s revolutionary momentum might not be sustainable. Shortly after the Leave camp labeled bureaucrats in her Her Majesty’s Civil Service “enemies of the people” — a typical statement in the early stages of a revolution — pro-Brexit British Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox derided British exporters, calling them “too lazy and too fat” to succeed in his brave new free-trading Britain.

  Such rhetoric is a symptom of desperation. It carries echoes of the declining years of the Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev, when Marxist apologists insisted that there was nothing wrong with communism, except that humanity was not yet mature enough for it.

  If developments continue at this pace, the revolutionary zeal we see among British politicians might burn itself out before “hard Brexit” is consummated.

  Jacek Rostowski was Polish minister of finance and deputy prime minister from 2007 to 2013.

  Copyright: Project Syndicate
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