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The UK stock market is emblematic of the country’s decline. The FTSE 100 ended last week lower than at the end of the last century. Value investors believe that it is one of the cheapest markets in the world. Skeptics believe the reasons for that dismal performance have not changed and that Brexit, deal or no deal, will accelerate Britain’s downfall.
There are so many extraordinary characteristics of the current malaise. The patriotism of the tabloid press – and the Conservative MP – over the deployment of warships in the English Channel reminds me of the headlines during the Falklands War. Commandos must be authorized to rappel down from helicopters onto French fishing vessels.
The late Helmut Kohl, a former chancellor of Germany, said long ago that the European project was a question of “war and peace in the 21st century.” The UK is threatening today with military action against NATO allies.
I doubt that many ministers, including Boris Johnson, believe in Brexit, at least in terms of economic benefits. They know that Brexit has generated the largest conservative majority in 30 years. The key belief is that Brexit is what enough voters want, which is why democracy demands it.
Evolutionary psychologists argue that anxiety about loss of social status is the fuel that fuels populism. Identity politics allows Donald Trump to convince working-class white Americans that liberal elites look down on them. In the UK, the working class of the North join forces with the nativist and elegant Southerners against mocking Londoners and evil Brussels.
The important idea is that Trump and Johnson were the first to adopt a winning political strategy that recognized, exploited and widened these divisions. Trump’s exit and the delivery of Brexit are just next steps on a downward path with no end in sight.
Best country
Europe is an anti-nationalist project. Brexit is the expression of pure English nativism (sorry stop voting in Wales, you are the useful idiots in this narrative).
Watch videos of education secretary Gavin Williamson punching the air proclaiming that Britain is the best country in the world – “better than the French, better than the Belgians” – following the UK’s approval of the Pfizer vaccine. The EU is not a home for nationalists. Sinn Féin has known this for decades.
Brexit is the logical result of the resurgence of English nationalism. I can easily see how that relates to state anxiety. There is also a straight line to authoritarianism, another stubborn psychological affliction.
Nationalists hate the EU. And it’s hate now: don’t underestimate how things have evolved – worsened – in Britain since the referendum. Hate that leads him to push for the certainty of full tariffs now rather than the possibility of them in the future.
Logic explains why nationalists pushed the Brexit agenda for four decades. Nativists do not belong to a bloc that seeks an “ever closer union.” Follow that logic to the end. If English nationalists do not belong to the EU, they do not belong to any kind of political union. That includes the UK. English nationalism, the new raison d’être of the ruling Conservative Party, dictates that the union is over. The fact that Scotland also wants its independence just adds to the argument. Wales and Northern Ireland should take note.
The status of England itself may be at stake, such is the division. Particularly the one between London and the rest of the country.
The coronavirus restrictions have turned into a battle between London and the regions. The Home Secretary makes speeches disparaging ‘North Londoners’. Johnson’s rock-solid political base is everywhere except London.
Northern Ireland, one foot in the EU and the other in the UK, is in an unsustainable place. The disappearance of the UK is an obvious vulnerability. Even if English nationalism takes an unexpected turn and immolates itself, being in the UK a little and elsewhere can’t last long. Great turbulence is brewing in Ireland, deal or no deal.
Easy bet
The economy is secondary to the politics of all this. But there are economic consequences. An easy bet is that Ireland will have to absorb the consequences of the political union that the North ultimately decides to be a part of.
The immediate consequence of Brexit will be congestion in ports. The lines for the trucks will be long or very long. That will only last for a few uncomfortable months: companies will get used to red tape, and the government will deliver the necessary IT systems after the usual failures.
All those long-term things about jobs and the economy will be less visible than the short-term shortages caused by the trucks stuck in Calais. The only people who will really worry about higher unemployment will be the families of the 300,000 workers (an official estimate) who will lose their jobs if a deal is not reached, in addition to the many more lost jobs, whatever the type of Brexit.
Nobody lives the counterfactual. People like me can think of how much better the economy would have been, how many more jobs, more money for the NHS, if Britain had followed a different path. But all that does not count if the engine of politics is nationalism. But politics ultimately matters, whether driven by political ideology or economic pragmatism. Politics will always have consequences. Economic prosperity is not predetermined.
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