The Brexit drama: life imitating art

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 forEurope, or even for Britain? Perhaps, but only in the sense that trainwrecks yield lessons about what to avoid.British political actors know they are putting on a performance, andthey speak candidly about life imitating art. Their model is thebackstabbing drama of Game of Thrones or the dark comedy of House ofCards (the British version, not the long-winded American imitation thathas been cancelled in the wake of sexual-assault allegations against itsstar, Kevin Spacey).Unlike in Hamlet, where everyone ends up dead, and an outsider(Fortinbras) shows up to reestablish normality, modern fictionalisedpolitical dramas never have a satisfying resolution. The Brexit drama,then, is faithfully imitating art: it cannot have anything but a messyconclusion.Brexit is not just a political upheaval; it is a revolution.Historically, radical political realignments have been rather rare inBritish politics. One example is the Glorious Revolution of 1688, whichproduced a two-party system comprising Whigs, who supported the newsettlement, and Tories, who resisted it.That system lasted for more than a century, until the 1840s, when Whigbecame synonymous with Liberal, and Tory with Conservative. But then, in1846, the Conservative Party split over curtailing protective tariffsfor grain, which was bad for the party’s rural farming base, but goodfor manufacturing, and for society generally. The resulting politicalbalance lasted for almost a century, until the 1920s, when the LabourParty 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 upthe Conservative Party’s image as the “nasty party.” But her Brexitstrategy, in which she has avoided taking any clear positions, hastransformed 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. TheConservative Party’s bloc in Parliament includes a small minority whoregard Brexit as a disaster, others who want a well-negotiatedcompromise, and a substantial group who oppose any compromise and haveembraced the idea of a clean break with the European Union.Labour is similarly divided. The party’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, ishostile to the EU, because it could prevent him from implementing hisutopian socialist programme. At the same time, many Labour MPs recognisethat the EU plays a central role in providing economic opportunitiesand social mobility for British citizens.Because no fundamental issues separate pro-EU Conservatives from pro-EULabourites, practical cross-party co-operation has started to occur. Butfor any such parliamentary alliance to have democratic legitimacy, itwill have to present itself not just as a coalition of likeminded MPs,but as a new political party, with a programme to confront realisticallythe challenges of technological change and globalisation.Similar shifts have occurred in other European countries whenestablished parties and traditions fell apart. In the 1990s, Italy’slargely bipartisan system disintegrated when Christian Democracy wasengulfed by corruption scandals and the Communist Party was pulled apartby the collapse of the Soviet Union. Italian politics has been plaguedby instability ever since.In France, President Emmanuel Macron’s new political party, LaRepublique en Marche!, has effectively supplanted the old centre-rightGaullist party, Les Republicains, as well the centre-left Socialists.Still, Macron rightly recognises that his overhaul of French politicswill not succeed unless it is matched at the European level. If aEurope-wide shift does happen, it will owe much to the cautionary taleplaying out in Britain.In Germany, the breakdown of coalition negotiations between theChristian Democratic Union, the Christian Social Union, the FreeDemocrats, and the Greens suggests that a political realignment may benecessary there, too.In fact, realignments may have a better chance of succeeding elsewherein Europe than in the UK. After all, Britain’s malaise runs much deeperthan party politics. Brexit has ushered in a revolution in a countrywithout a revolutionary tradition. Withdrawing from the EU will requireuprooting 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 beenproblematic. For example, if Britain liberalises its trade andregulatory policies, British workers could end up worse off than theywere under the EU regime. Inevitably, every concrete step out of the EUis 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 theUK crashes out of the European single market and customs union. Thestage will be littered with political corpses, and an economic disasterwill ensue.In the second scenario, common sense prevails: Macron-style pragmatismtakes root in Britain, supplanting the Poujade-style populism thatfuelled the anti-EU “Leave” campaign. This assumes that Macronismsucceeds at the European level, so that it can serve as a foil to thedysfunctional, distorted politics of the United States, Russia, andTurkey, and to the new instability in Germany.That outcome would also be Shakespearian, recalling nothing so much asAll’s Well that Ends Well – one of the bleakest “comedies” inShakespeare’s oeuvre. - Project Syndicate* Harold James is professor of History and International Affairs atPrinceton University and a senior fellow at the Centre for InternationalGovernance Innovation.