[ad_1]
secondBritain faces an uncertain future when it finally moves away from the EU orbit, continental commentators predicted, its reputation for pragmatism and probity shattered by a Brexit process that most consider deeply populist and dangerously dishonest.
“For us, the UK has always been seen as like-minded: economically progressive, politically stable, respect for the rule of law, a beacon of Western liberal democracy,” said Rem Korteweg of the Clingendael Institute think tank on the Netherlands.
“I am afraid it has been seriously affected for the last four years. The Dutch have seen a country in a deep identity crisis; It has been like watching a close friend go through a very, very difficult time. Brexit is an exercise in emotion, not rationality; in choosing your own facts. And it is not clear how it will end. “
Britain’s polished and pragmatic image had been “seriously tarnished,” agreed Nicolai von Ondarza of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. But confidence in the UK had also been affected by the Brexit rollercoaster.
“That has been particularly the case over the past year,” Von Ondarza said. “Boris Johnson has always been seen as a player, showing some… flexibility with the truth. But watching him as prime minister has only made things worse. “
Germans tended to view international politics “largely through the prism of international law,” Von Ondarza said, so Johnson’s willingness to ignore it, particularly in the form of domestic market law, was deeply shocking. .
“The idea that he would voluntarily violate an international treaty that he negotiated and signed just eight months earlier … That is not something that is done between the allies,” he said. “That whole episode really hurt Britain’s credibility.”
Others were even more brutal. In Der Spiegel, Nikolaus Blome said that “there was absolutely nothing good about Brexit … which would never have happened if conservative politicians had not misled and lied to their people to an unprecedented degree.”
Much of the British media, Blome said, “were complicit, constantly trampling on justice and facts,” leaving Britain “captured by the gambling liars, frivolous clowns and their paid cheerleaders. They have destroyed my Europe, to which the United Kingdom belonged as much as France or Germany ”.
But Johnson’s lies were the biggest of all, he said: “’Take back control,’ Johnson lied to his citizens. But all that the British government will finally have achieved is to regain control of a small shovel and a small sand castle. “
The “sovereignty” in whose name Brexit was made remains essentially a myth, said Jean-Dominique Giuliani of the Robert Schuman Foundation in France. “It is the history, geography, culture, language and traditions that make up the identity of a people,” Giuliani said, “not its political organization.”
It is “wrong to believe that peoples and states can permanently liberate themselves from each other or make decisions without considering the consequences for their citizens and partners. ‘Regaining control’ is a nationalist and populist slogan that ignores the reality of an interdependent world … Our maritime neighbor will be greatly weakened. “
German historian Helene von Bismarck doubted Brexit would end what she described as a very British type of populism. “British populism is a political method, not an ideology, and it does not become redundant with Brexit,” he said.
Von Bismarck identified two key elements in this method: an emotionalization and oversimplification of highly complex issues, such as Brexit, the Covid pandemic or migration, and a reliance on bogeymen or enemies inside and outside the country.
“Populists depend on enemies, real or imagined, to legitimize their actions and divert their own shortcomings,” he said. If the EU has been the “enemy abroad” since 2016, it will constantly be replaced by “enemies within”: parliamentarians, civil servants, judges, lawyers, experts, the BBC.
“People and institutions that dare to limit the power of the executive, even if it is just by asking questions, run the constant risk of being denounced as ‘activists'” by the Johnson administration, said Von Bismarck. “They all have political motives, except the government, which seeks to define ‘neutrality.’
Brexit itself is framed as’ the great way out, the moment when the UK is finally free and sovereign, when all issues can be solved with common sense and optimism, justifying a more ‘pragmatic’ approach to the rules , constitutional conventions and institutions “which in reality amounts to a” disturbing disregard for the rule of law. “
“British populism” would continue, he said, especially as the real and harsh consequences of the pandemic and Brexit began to affect.
“It is naive to expect a political style that ridicules complexity, presents people with ghosts to despise, and prides itself on ‘doing whatever it takes’ even if ‘elites’ and institutions get in the way, losing its appeal. in times of trouble, “she said.
Elvire Fabry, from the Institut Jacques Delors in France, said that the last four years had shown Europeans and British “how little we really knew each other.” They had also revealed, he said, the fragility of a parliamentary system seen by many on the continent as a benchmark.
“It has been difficult for us to anticipate, sometimes even interpret, what happened” in the UK, Fabry said. “The direction in which Johnson has taken the Conservative Party, we didn’t see it coming. The course it is setting for the country. Polarization. And the way MPs have been overlooked since he became prime minister … “
Most surprising of all, he said, was how the prevailing politics in Britain had “detached itself from geopolitical reality, from the way the world develops. It is a political vision turned towards the world of yesterday. Ideological. The way the trade deal focused on goods at the expense of services … is not the way the world is going. “
However painful the Brexit process may have been for Europeans, it had at least demonstrated “the reality and value of the single market, its rules and regulations, and the EU legal basis,” Fabry said. “Those are at the heart of European identity, and defending them has given the union a new political maturity.”
Also, Korteweg concluded, it had served as a warning. “I think it has taught us all how vulnerable our political processes are,” he said. “Just eight years ago, leaving the EU was a very marginal proposition in British politics, and now look where you are. So we have seen how fragile everything is, what we have built and what is worth defending ”.
[ad_2]
