Viva Lewes Issue #134 November 2017
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ON THIS MONTH: TALK<br />
Why Brexit happened<br />
OpenDemocracy founder Anthony Barnett<br />
Was the Brexit referendum<br />
result the consequence of<br />
a protest vote? Brexit must<br />
be understood as the consequence<br />
of what I call ‘combined<br />
determination’. It didn’t have<br />
just a single cause. The failure of<br />
the economy since the financial<br />
crash, with lower real incomes<br />
and mounting insecurity, was<br />
one. The failings of the EU<br />
another. A third was the general<br />
collapse of trust in the British<br />
state and its main political parties.<br />
This dates back to the Iraq<br />
War when a double-blow took<br />
place: the deception of a Prime<br />
Minister lying to the country and the way we lost.<br />
You also suggest in your latest book ‘The Lure<br />
of Greatness’ that ‘it was England’s Brexit’.<br />
This is a further very important cause of Brexit.<br />
England without London voted by a massive 11%<br />
majority for Leave. As the largest entity, it carried<br />
the day as it overwhelmed majorities for Remain<br />
in London, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which<br />
were proportionally even higher. Brexit was an<br />
expression of Englishness. It’s peculiar because<br />
England has no institutions that represent it, unlike<br />
Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales or London.<br />
It is trapped in the Anglo-British institutions of<br />
Westminster. The English have an added level of<br />
discontent, therefore, namely their lack of representation.<br />
This is displaced onto the European<br />
Union as the cause of their loss, whereas its origin<br />
lies here at home in the Empire State of Britain.<br />
Has Brexit made the disintegration of the<br />
UK inevitable? The breakup of the UK is not<br />
inevitable, but it would be beneficial compared to<br />
what is going on now. The nations<br />
would be normalised and<br />
become part of the European<br />
family arguing for its democratisation.<br />
The forces pushing<br />
towards either a constitutional<br />
federal outcome or separation<br />
of the UK will continue decade<br />
after decade.<br />
Has the result of June’s election<br />
– called since your latest<br />
book was written – significantly<br />
changed the nature of<br />
the post–Brexit-referendum<br />
crisis, and if so how? It has<br />
accelerated it. For example, [in<br />
The Lure of Greatness] I set out<br />
at some length why Theresa May was not qualified<br />
to be Prime Minister, and would be unsuccessful,<br />
when she had a 20% lead in the polls and looked<br />
unassailable. What I thought would take five years<br />
took five weeks! The most interesting change<br />
is with the Labour Party. I was right to see that<br />
Momentum, and its Bernie Sanders-style politics,<br />
was the important new force. I didn’t expect the<br />
Labour Party itself to revive in the way that it has.<br />
On the contrary. One of the reasons for Brexit,<br />
however, was that no positive case for being in Europe<br />
was made by the Remain campaign. I argue<br />
this should have been articulated by the Labour<br />
Party and the Left and isn’t being done, except<br />
by the Greens, and this remains the case today.<br />
Interview by Alex Leith<br />
Anthony, author of ‘The Lure of Greatness’, will<br />
talk at the <strong>Lewes</strong> Labour Party Open Meeting,<br />
<strong>November</strong> 6th, 7.30pm, Phoenix Centre. A much<br />
longer version of this interview can be found at<br />
opendemocracy.net<br />
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