This morning in Ireland, we got the same screaming-headline
news as everyone else – the pound crashing, the UK prime minister resigning and
so on. To my acquaintances here, though -- bus drivers, clerks and farmers – the
news is not an abstraction. They wonder how this will affect their visas, their
UK relatives, their pensions, banks, next car, and all the burning minutiae of
daily life.
My friends in London, Italy and France are all doing the
same; the economies are so deeply intertwined that untangling them will take
years. Imagine how Louisianans would be affected by a “Texit,” and you have
some idea how it feels. As an American here, I also wonder if it makes Donald
Trump’s election look more likely.
It wouldn’t cause a Trump victory, of course, but perhaps
presage it. The UK has always been just a little ahead of the USA; Thatcher preceded
Reagan, Blair preceded Clinton, and Corbyn preceded Sanders. Moreover, Brexit
supporters shared a lot in common with Trump supporters, in both demographics
and frustrations.
The UK and USA are global powers somewhat in decline, with
the UK obviously some decades ahead of us. Both powers saw a flood of Third-World
immigrants in recent decades – in Europe especially, with millions of refugees
escaping the war-torn Middle East --- competing for jobs and causing tension among
working-class natives. Both countries took part in the same Mid-East wars and suffered
the same Great Recession – both supposedly over, but with loved ones still dead
and many working people still unemployed.
Both populist movements promised to make their country great
again, toss aside foreign entanglements, reduce immigration, and bring back
local industry. Both movements were called “far-right,” but were more about
class -- and in both countries the elites of both major parties, along with the
media, opposed and underestimated them until the last moment. In both countries
the debate turned venomous, even violent, with protesters clashing with Trump
supporters in the USA, and a pro-EU minister of Parliament shot and stabbed to
death last week in the UK.
Now that the vote is over, as Daniel Larison pointed out,much will depend on how bitter the divorce settlement will be, but this decision
could trigger a lot of other dominoes.
For
one thing, this could well be the end of Britain after 300 years. The BBC’s county vote map shows the
divide; English counties almost entirely voted to leave the EU, Scottish
counties to stay.
The scheduling of the Scottish independence vote two years
ago could not have been accidental, as Euro-advocates must have hoped the
Scottish vote would anchor Britain -- it didn’t. As the leader of the Scottish
separatist movement put it a few months ago, if the UK leaves Europe, Scotland is likely to leave the UK. (Britain is England plus Scotland, Wales and a few
islands. The UK is all those plus Northern Ireland.)
Here
in Ireland we have the same questions as the rest of Europe, only more so – the
UK is our main trading partner. And we have a unique reason to be wary; we fought
a thousand-year conflict with our neighbour, which came to an end only in the
1990s. Since that time, along a border once patrolled by paramilitary units, a
generation of Irish have grown up travelling between North and South without
even flashing a passport. Now, though, Northern Ireland voted much as Scotland
did, with a majority wanting to remain European; if Scotland goes, they might
want to leave as well.
In
Ireland, meanwhile, voters had their own populist moment earlier this year, and
elected a near-majority of third parties and independents. Chief among them is Sinn Fein, the political
arm of the Irish Republican Army, and if this anti-establishment trend
continues they could lead the next government. That doesn’t mean they would resume
their old ways – they have spent decades working hard to be a respectable
political party, and their younger members are too young to even remember the
terrorism of the 70s and 80s – but within hours of the vote, they did renew their call for Irish reunification.
How
the rest of Europe will handle this remains to be seen – they are left holding
several unenviable crises, including sky-high Mediterranean unemployment and a
million refugees a year flooding into the continent. Right now, the rest of the
world is shaking its head at Britons’ apparent foolishness, and half the UK is
doing the same. For the other half, though, this is their independence day, the
moment they can remake their country in their image.
This
November 9, we’ll see if my native USA looks the same.
