By Tolga Dişçi
Brexit has once again moved up the political agenda in the UK. Its economic and political consequences are being debated anew.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has joined the debate, saying that Brexit “has harmed the UK’s economic growth.” He criticised the promises made during the 2016 Brexit campaign that “we would take back control and everything would be much easier.” He also claimed that Russia had interfered in the 2016 referendum.
Radhika Desai, Professor of Political Science at the University of Manitoba, gave an interview to Aydınlık Europe about the renewed Brexit debate and its consequences.
Why now?
Why is Britain reopening the debate over Brexit today?
The debate on Brexit has been reopened because of the confluence of two factors. On the one hand, the extent of the damage done by Brexit has become clear to more and more people in the UK and a very high percentage of people, and you can check the actual percentage, now believes Brexit to have been a mistake. The Brexit vote was 52-48%, decisive enough but also close. At the same time, the Conservative party and the Reform party remain too committed to the idea of Brexit. So, the second factor is that the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, sees an opportunity to profit from this sentiment by being the first to reopen the subject of Brexit. This would make reversing Brexit his issue….
The economic cost of Brexit
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said that Brexit has been particularly damaging to the UK’s economic growth. Several years have passed since the Brexit. Looking at the state of the British economy today, what has been the economic cost of Brexit for the country?
The effect of Brexit has been really enormous. No matter the rights and wrongs of the European Union, and there is no doubt there was, and remains, much that is wrong with the EU, Britain’s problems had more to do with decisions taken within Britain than with Britain’s relationship with the EU. That relationship had always been far more conditional than that of any other EU member. Britain was not part of the Eurozone. Britain had various opt outs on social policy and so on. So Britain’s problems had always been directly traceable to its own homegrown neoliberalism. So, Brexit had amounted to cutting off a couple of limbs of your body. Your body was not going to recover from that very well. The number of small businesses that had to close up because of the difficulty of doing business with the European Union, shortage of labor, the decline in the status of the City of London as an important bridge between the eurozone and the rest of the world, lower growth and investment all of these things have affected Britain extremely badly.
Who has benefited from Brexit, and who has lost out?
The only people to have benefited from Brexit were those who attained high office by campaigning for Brexit such as former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Practically no one else has actually benefited from Brexit.
“Covert way of referring to restricting immigration”
One of the central slogans of the Brexit campaign was “Take back control.” Why has that promise failed to meet expectations?
Take back control was a slogan that was used as a covert way of referring to restricting immigration. There was never any serious promise of taking charge of the British economy. The underlying neoliberalism, the idea that somehow the market would take care of everything, was never challenged throughout the Brexit debates. There was some sloganeering about global Britain and all that has amounted to is the increasing takeover of British assets and businesses by foreign capital mostly from the United states.
Could rejoining the EU resolve Britain’s problems with economic growth, wages, housing and the cost of living?
Re-joining the European Union would depend on the terms on which such rejoining takes place. On the one hand, some European governments such as those of France or Spain have made some welcoming noises about Britain rejoining. On the other it is practically inconceivable that the opt outs and privileges that had obtained over the course of several decades of evolving membership could ever be regained. However, it is undoubtedly true that Britain needs to have closer relations closer economic relations with the European Union simply because it is the largest market which is close to Britain.
More dependent on the US
Has Brexit made Britain more independent?
No. Brexit has only made Britain more dependent on the United States and on other powerful forces buffeting the world economy which Britain cannot control. That includes for example the effects of the Ukraine and Iran wars.
Has Britain’s departure from the EU strengthened Europe’s strategic autonomy vis-à-vis the US, or has it deepened political and economic divisions among European countries?
Brexit might have increased the autonomy of Europe from the United States given that Britain was always something of a Trojan horse for US interests within the European Union. However this possibility has not been realized for the simple reason that in recent years the leaderships of various European countries have turned out to be as Atlanticist as Britain if not more so.
Exploiting the discontents of neoliberalism
Do you see a realistic possibility of Britain rejoining the EU within a single parliamentary term? If it did, what would that mean for Europe?
It is next to impossible that Britain can rejoin the European Union anytime soon. Any process of rejoining that begins now will take years to complete, certainly longer than a single parliamentary term.
Finally, what is the most important lesson that the people of Britain and Europe should draw from the Brexit experience?
They seem far-fetched, if the proper lessons of decades of neoliberalism are to be learned, if society is to benefit from learning this and go in a progressive direction, nothing is more important than a revival of left forces. The reason I say this is because Brexit was the result of the far right exploiting the discontents of neoliberalism in a destructive and wasteful manner and preventing those discontents from building a better, more progressive future.