As the rest of the world looks on with a mixture of amusement and pity,
British politics in the age of Brexit has come to resemble a soap opera.
Can the chaos that is descending on the United Kingdom be good for
Europe, or even for Britain? Perhaps, but only in the sense that train
wrecks yield lessons about what to avoid.
British political actors know they are putting on a performance, and
they speak candidly about life imitating art. Their model is the
backstabbing drama of Game of Thrones or the dark comedy of House of
Cards (the British version, not the long-winded American imitation that
has been cancelled in the wake of sexual-assault allegations against its
star, Kevin Spacey).
Unlike in Hamlet, where everyone ends up dead, and an outsider
(Fortinbras) shows up to reestablish normality, modern fictionalised
political dramas never have a satisfying resolution. The Brexit drama,
then, is faithfully imitating art: it cannot have anything but a messy
conclusion.
Brexit is not just a political upheaval; it is a revolution.
Historically, radical political realignments have been rather rare in
British politics. One example is the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which
produced a two-party system comprising Whigs, who supported the new
settlement, and Tories, who resisted it.
That system lasted for more than a century, until the 1840s, when Whig
became synonymous with Liberal, and Tory with Conservative. But then, in
1846, the Conservative Party split over curtailing protective tariffs
for grain, which was bad for the party’s rural farming base, but good
for manufacturing, and for society generally. The resulting political
balance lasted for almost a century, until the 1920s, when the Labour
Party replaced the Liberals as the alternative to Conservatism.
Arguably, another political realignment may be past due. In the 2000s,
British Prime Minister Theresa May played a crucial role in cleaning up
the Conservative Party’s image as the “nasty party.” But her Brexit
strategy, in which she has avoided taking any clear positions, has
transformed the party into something even worse: a dishonest, divided,
weak political cabal whose decisions could prove lethal.
Brexit transcends the old two-party divide in British politics. The
Conservative Party’s bloc in Parliament includes a small minority who
regard Brexit as a disaster, others who want a well-negotiated
compromise, and a substantial group who oppose any compromise and have
embraced the idea of a clean break with the European Union.
Labour is similarly divided. The party’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is
hostile to the EU, because it could prevent him from implementing his
utopian socialist programme. At the same time, many Labour MPs recognise
that the EU plays a central role in providing economic opportunities
and social mobility for British citizens.
Because no fundamental issues separate pro-EU Conservatives from pro-EU
Labourites, practical cross-party co-operation has started to occur. But
for any such parliamentary alliance to have democratic legitimacy, it
will have to present itself not just as a coalition of likeminded MPs,
but as a new political party, with a programme to confront realistically
the challenges of technological change and globalisation.
Similar shifts have occurred in other European countries when
established parties and traditions fell apart. In the 1990s, Italy’s
largely bipartisan system disintegrated when Christian Democracy was
engulfed by corruption scandals and the Communist Party was pulled apart
by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Italian politics has been plagued
by instability ever since.
In France, President Emmanuel Macron’s new political party, La
Republique en Marche!, has effectively supplanted the old centre-right
Gaullist party, Les Republicains, as well the centre-left Socialists.
Still, Macron rightly recognises that his overhaul of French politics
will not succeed unless it is matched at the European level. If a
Europe-wide shift does happen, it will owe much to the cautionary tale
playing out in Britain.
In Germany, the breakdown of coalition negotiations between the
Christian Democratic Union, the Christian Social Union, the Free
Democrats, and the Greens suggests that a political realignment may be
necessary there, too.
In fact, realignments may have a better chance of succeeding elsewhere
in Europe than in the UK. After all, Britain’s malaise runs much deeper
than party politics. Brexit has ushered in a revolution in a country
without a revolutionary tradition. Withdrawing from the EU will require
uprooting a thicket of complex legal and institutional frameworks,
around which most political norms and conventions revolve.
So far, every alternative arrangement that has been proposed has been
problematic. For example, if Britain liberalises its trade and
regulatory policies, British workers could end up worse off than they
were under the EU regime. Inevitably, every concrete step out of the EU
is bound to lead to deeper factionalism.
Looking ahead, there are two possible scenarios for British politics.
The first is the Hamlet scenario, in which the chaos continues until the
UK crashes out of the European single market and customs union. The
stage will be littered with political corpses, and an economic disaster
will ensue.
In the second scenario, common sense prevails: Macron-style pragmatism
takes root in Britain, supplanting the Poujade-style populism that
fuelled the anti-EU “Leave” campaign. This assumes that Macronism
succeeds at the European level, so that it can serve as a foil to the
dysfunctional, distorted politics of the United States, Russia, and
Turkey, and to the new instability in Germany.
That outcome would also be Shakespearian, recalling nothing so much as
All’s Well that Ends Well – one of the bleakest “comedies” in
Shakespeare’s oeuvre. - Project Syndicate
* Harold James is professor of History and International Affairs at
Princeton University and a senior fellow at the Centre for International
Governance Innovation.
British Prime Minister Theresa May and European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker give a press conference as they meet for Brexit negotiations on December 4, at the European Commission in Brussels.