The Bottomless Abyss that is Brexit

Will parliamentary democracy be the first/worst victim of Brexit. Curiously enough both The Economist and George Monbiot think that's quite possible.

First up, The Economist:

BRITAIN should have been better placed than any other country to fight off the populist fever that is spreading around the world. The House of Commons is one of the oldest representative institutions on Earth. The country’s last violent revolution was in the middle of the 17th century.
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Far from fighting off the virus of populism, Britain is becoming its most surprising victim. British politicians may look civilised compared with, say, Hungary’s Viktor Orban or America’s Donald Trump. But Mr Orban rules a country that has been scarred by communism and Mr Trump is hedged in by checks and balances galore. Americans will be rid of Mr Trump by 2021 or 2025. The Brexit referendum will continue to shape British politics for decades to come.

Britain has succumbed to the populist virus because it decided to apply the most powerful tool in the populist toolbox—the referendum—to the most profound question in British political economy—its relationship with its main political and economic partner. The subsequent debate pitted Britain’s entire ruling class, from the leaders of the three main political parties to the heads of multinational companies, against a ragbag army of rebels, troublemakers and mavericks. By voting Leave, the British not only elected to change their relationship with the European Union but also to reorder their political system.

The most visible result of this reordering is the chaos of daily politics. Since the referendum two of Britain’s three main parties have lost their leaders, Theresa May has fought a botched election, the cabinet has been paralysed by infighting and Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s hard-left leader, has become prime-minister-in-waiting. The less visible result is a constitutional revolution. Before the referendum, Parliament was sovereign (though, as Brexiteers rightly pointed out, the EU kept encroaching on that sovereignty). Now, for the first time in Britain’s long parliamentary history, most MPs feel obliged to vote for a policy that they oppose—in other words, to give in to a populist revolution. Three-quarters of MPs voted for Remain. Only two parties, with a combined total of nine MPs—the UK Independence Party with one and the Democratic Unionists with eight—supported Brexit. Still, the chances of Parliament scuppering the withdrawal are small.

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The strongest justification of the referendum is that it was a one-off vote to settle the vexed constitutional question of Britain’s relationship with the EU: once Britain has reasserted its independence, the sovereignty of Parliament will be restored and populism contained. This is wishful thinking. If Britain withdraws from the EU, the economic shock will be profound. Those who will suffer most will be the very people who voted for Brexit as a cry of defiance (the depreciation of sterling since the referendum has already disproportionately hit the lowest-paid, by pushing up the price of food and fuel). Meanwhile, if Parliament somehow scuppers the process, there could be riots in the streets.

George Monbiot sees a post-Brexit Britain in danger of losing its national identity and becoming easy pickings for authoritarian rule.

So what is this country we are asked to love? This might once have been an easy question to answer. National identity was built around a range of institutions, considered to represent the national interest. Rebellion against them was characterised as treason. But one by one, these institutions have been subverted from within.
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We were promised that in leaving the EU we would regain our sovereignty. But in abandoning an association based on equal standing, we expose ourselves to coercion by other nations. Our relationship with the US, especially under the stewardship of the trade secretary Liam Fox, is likely to look like that of servant and master.

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So what remains, to which we might attach ourselves? In countries with a strong cultural sense of nationhood, the question is less pressing. But in the UK as a whole and England in particular, almost every cultural reference point is poorly defined, weak and contested. All that remain as widely shared, commonly accepted sources of national pride are our public services: the NHS, the BBC, the education system, social security, our great libraries and museums. But all have been gutted, disciplined and undermined by those who roundly assert their patriotism.


When the enabling state, providing robust public services and a strong social safety net, is allowed to wither, what remains is the authoritarian state, which must coerce and frighten. Consider the decline of neighbourhood policing – essential for preventing crime and gathering intelligence on everything from vandalism to planned terror attacks – and its replacement with ever more draconian laws.

As the enabling state shrinks, the flags must be unfurled, the national anthem played, schoolchildren taught their kings and queens, and more elaborate pieties offered to dead soldiers, because nothing else is left with which to hold us together. National pride becomes toxic, and is used as a weapon against anyone who seeks to express their love for the country by reforming it. The institutions charged with defending the national interest become its deadly enemies.