Brexit — The Shock of Departure

Last time, we watched the north-south rift deepen amid the euro crisis, and saw how the conflict over austerity quietly nurtured a distrust of the EU. As a shared currency tested the bonds of unity, a feeling took root in people’s hearts: that a faraway Brussels was deciding the shape of their daily lives.

There was one country where that distrust erupted in the most dramatic form. Britain. The island nation, separated from the continent by sea, had always kept itself half-in, half-out of integration. It did not join the euro, and it kept its distance from common border controls. In such a country, a day arrived when the people themselves would choose whether to stay in the EU or leave. In this chapter, I want to trace the story of the departure that came to be called Brexit as quietly as possible, taking the side of neither support nor scepticism.

The Half-In Island — The Distance Between Britain and the EU

The relationship between Britain and European integration was somehow awkward from the very start. As we saw in the third chapter, when the common market first began to move, Britain was reluctant to join. By the time it did wish to take part, it was rebuffed twice by France’s President de Gaulle, and membership was finally achieved only in 1973.

Even after joining, Britain held on to its own distinct position. It did not take part in the common currency, the euro, but kept its own currency, the pound. It kept its distance from the border agreement that frees the movement of people. Discontent that it was paying too much into the EU had long smouldered, and a special mechanism was even set up to refund part of its contribution. Within the circle of integration, yet always with one foot outside it — that, you could say, was its stance.

Beneath this sense of distance lay a long history and a feeling peculiar to an island nation. The memory of an empire that once spread across the world, pride in its parliamentary tradition, and a self-assurance that it had walked a different path from the continent. Whereas the continental countries sought to pool their sovereignty so as to ‘never go to war again,’ in Britain, it is said, the sense of sovereignty — ‘we decide our own affairs’ — remained more strongly intact.

Toward the Referendum — Immigration, Sovereignty, and Euroscepticism

From the 2000s into the 2010s, discontent with the EU mounted within Britain. Several elements were intertwined in the background.

One was the issue of immigration. Because people could move freely within the EU, many workers from Eastern Europe and elsewhere flowed into Britain. While some welcomed them as a driving force of the economy, no small number of people felt anxious about the effect on wages, public services, and life in their communities. Another was a sense over sovereignty. Resistance to so many decisions — on fishing, regulation, the budget — being made in Brussels was distilled into the phrase ‘take back control.’ The scepticism toward integration itself, heightened by the euro crisis, gave this current a further push.

In this climate, the Cameron government promised to review its relationship with the EU and decided to hold a vote asking the people directly whether to remain or leave. On 23 June 2016, that day arrived.

The narrow result was almost like a victory with no victor. For those who wished to leave, it meant the recovery of sovereignty; for those who wished to remain, it looked like an irreparable loss. Within one and the same country, utterly different visions of the future crossed paths.

Three and a Half Years of Turmoil — On the Brink of a No-Deal Departure

The referendum was, after all, only a signpost showing a direction. The procedure for actually leaving the EU became a long and difficult road from there.

The EU’s founding treaty sets out a clause by which a member state may withdraw. In 2017, Britain, on the basis of this clause, formally notified the EU of its departure, and negotiations with a two-year limit began. Yet the talks repeatedly hit a wall. One of the greatest difficulties was the question of how to handle the border between Northern Ireland, linked to mainland Britain, and Ireland, which remained in the EU. In this region, which had once experienced grave conflict, both sides wished to avoid setting up a physical border again. But without a border, how were people and goods to be managed? This difficult question set the negotiations adrift again and again.

Britain’s own parliament was split apart. The agreement over the terms of departure was rejected by parliament again and again, and it even came to a change of prime minister. At one point, it came close to the brink of a ‘no-deal departure’ — leaving with no arrangement settled at all.

In the end, a withdrawal agreement was reached under the Johnson government. As for Northern Ireland, a complex compromise was sought: by continuing to apply some of the EU’s rules, a land border would be avoided. This arrangement would later become the spark for new friction as well, but in any case, the path to departure was set.

A Shrunken EU — The Merits and Costs Are Not Yet Settled

On 31 January 2020, Britain formally left the EU. It was the first time in the history of the EU that a country had departed from the circle of integration. It was the moment when a community that had kept on expanding shrank for the first time. Immediately after the departure, a transition period was set, and many of the arrangements continued as they were until the end of that year. Then, on 31 December 2020, the transition period too came to an end, and Britain and the EU stepped out into a new relationship.

What did Brexit bring about for Britain, and for the EU? Its assessment is still not clearly settled even now. Those who supported leaving speak of having recovered the sovereignty to decide their own country’s affairs for themselves. Some emphasise the significance of being able to hold their own trade policy and regulations. On the other hand, there are no few who point out that trade procedures increased and burdened the economy, and that it brought about labour shortages and disruptions to logistics. It is also said to have posed new questions about the unity of the United Kingdom — over the handling of Northern Ireland, and over arguments for Scottish independence. There are grounds for both views, and the reality is that it is hard to measure the merits and costs by a single yardstick.

For the EU’s side, too, Brexit left a heavy question. The reality that a member state could leave showed that the march of integration was not something that could never be reversed. At the same time, it is said that seeing the turmoil of departure up close in fact bound the remaining countries more closely together. With people dissatisfied with the EU in every country, Brexit thrust forward, as one concrete example, the question: ‘Then, will you be happy if you leave?’

The surge of populism — a strong rebellion against established politics and elites — was, in this period, growing in presence here and there across Europe. Brexit, you could say, was one of the largest events to occur within that current. The ideal of integration, and the voices of people who could not be fully convinced of it — that tension remained, not easily dissolved.

And right beside an EU whose wounds had not yet healed, the situation everyone had feared became real. To this continent, which was supposed to have begun so as never to go to war again, the real fires of war once more drew near.