Viva Lewes Issue #134 November 2017

ON THIS MONTH: TALK
Why Brexit happened
OpenDemocracy founder Anthony Barnett
Was the Brexit referendum
result the consequence of
a protest vote? Brexit must
be understood as the consequence
of what I call ‘combined
determination’. It didn’t have
just a single cause. The failure of
the economy since the financial
crash, with lower real incomes
and mounting insecurity, was
one. The failings of the EU
another. A third was the general
collapse of trust in the British
state and its main political parties.
This dates back to the Iraq
War when a double-blow took
place: the deception of a Prime
Minister lying to the country and the way we lost.
You also suggest in your latest book ‘The Lure
of Greatness’ that ‘it was England’s Brexit’.
This is a further very important cause of Brexit.
England without London voted by a massive 11%
majority for Leave. As the largest entity, it carried
the day as it overwhelmed majorities for Remain
in London, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which
were proportionally even higher. Brexit was an
expression of Englishness. It’s peculiar because
England has no institutions that represent it, unlike
Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales or London.
It is trapped in the Anglo-British institutions of
Westminster. The English have an added level of
discontent, therefore, namely their lack of representation.
This is displaced onto the European
Union as the cause of their loss, whereas its origin
lies here at home in the Empire State of Britain.
Has Brexit made the disintegration of the
UK inevitable? The breakup of the UK is not
inevitable, but it would be beneficial compared to
what is going on now. The nations
would be normalised and
become part of the European
family arguing for its democratisation.
The forces pushing
towards either a constitutional
federal outcome or separation
of the UK will continue decade
after decade.
Has the result of June’s election
– called since your latest
book was written – significantly
changed the nature of
the post–Brexit-referendum
crisis, and if so how? It has
accelerated it. For example, [in
The Lure of Greatness] I set out
at some length why Theresa May was not qualified
to be Prime Minister, and would be unsuccessful,
when she had a 20% lead in the polls and looked
unassailable. What I thought would take five years
took five weeks! The most interesting change
is with the Labour Party. I was right to see that
Momentum, and its Bernie Sanders-style politics,
was the important new force. I didn’t expect the
Labour Party itself to revive in the way that it has.
On the contrary. One of the reasons for Brexit,
however, was that no positive case for being in Europe
was made by the Remain campaign. I argue
this should have been articulated by the Labour
Party and the Left and isn’t being done, except
by the Greens, and this remains the case today.
Interview by Alex Leith
Anthony, author of ‘The Lure of Greatness’, will
talk at the Lewes Labour Party Open Meeting,
November 6th, 7.30pm, Phoenix Centre. A much
longer version of this interview can be found at
opendemocracy.net
41