Brexit: We Asked 18 of the World's Leading Experts What Happens Next
A National Interest Symposium.
Westminster and Brussels have just half a year left before they must agree on a deal for the UK to leave the EU. Resignations of Foreign Minister Boris Johnson and chief negotiator David Davis in July signaled the difficulty of getting a deal done. The People’s Vote campaign is calling for a second referendum, while strong ‘leavers’ are decrying even a ‘soft Brexit’ as a “crisis of democracy.” The possibility exists that the UK will depart with no deal.
With these developments in mind, the National Interest asked scholars and experts the following questions:
Where do Britain and the EU go from here on Brexit? Can and should Britain stay in the EU (from a legal, political, public opinion, or another standpoint) or is separation best? Should Britons get another vote on Brexit or on the final deal? What will Britain’s future relationship with the EU look like, and what kind of an effect will it have on Britain’s economy?
We present eighteen responses in alphabetical order. (The views of authors expressed are their own and not necessarily those of their institution.) Click on the links below to go to each expert’s response.
Kenneth Armstrong is a professor of European law at the University of Cambridge and author of Brexit Time—Leaving the EU: Why, How and When?
The United Kingdom only has seven months of its EU membership remaining. It now has to agree on the terms of its withdrawal with the EU and to put in place a framework that will guide negotiations on the UK’s future relationship with the EU once the UK has finally left on March 29, 2019.
Finalizing the terms of the UK’s departure is a task not without its challenges. Although the foundation for a deal on some key issues—settlement of the UK’s financial liabilities and the basis for the protection of citizens’ rights post-membership—has been in place since the end of 2017, the adage that “nothing is agreed till everything is agreed” means that failure to reach a consensus on other issues could lead to a disorderly exit for the UK.
Foremost among the remaining problems to be solved is the issue of the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. The UK government’s insistence that Brexit means leaving the EU single market and customs union risks the emergence of frontier controls between the UK and Ireland along the border between the two jurisdictions on the island of Ireland. Any solution needs to overcome a potential “trilemma” of competing interests—those of the UK, the EU, and the Irish government—while also having to anticipate what a future UK-EU economic arrangement might require.
The domestic political debate about what sort of future relationship the UK should seek with the EU, nonetheless, exposes an ongoing lack of clarity about the UK’s stance. It was only this summer that Prime Minister May finally summoned her cabinet to agree to a collective position to be published in a White Paper. It immediately prompted the resignation of her Brexit Secretary of State and her Foreign Secretary. While making some version of this plan work is now key to how negotiations with the EU will proceed, it is proving difficult for the PM to sell even to her own colleagues.
Regardless of whether a consensus is achieved by negotiators, there is a growing sense that the people should also have their say. The “People’s Vote” campaign is pushing for a referendum on the text of a withdrawal agreement. But it is not clear that there is either time to hold a referendum or time to manage the consequences of a popular rejection of any deal. Time shapes Brexit. And time is short.
Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook is the executive director of the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School.
We are headed for a precarious “no deal” cliff following Brussels’s de facto rejection of the latest UK “soft Brexit” plan, in which the UK flatly ignored the indivisibility of the EU’s sacred “four freedoms”—the free movement of goods, capital, services and labor.
Fall deadlines loom large. Time to March 2019 is ticking down. Yet, amidst all looming questions, separation remains the only game in town. Prime Minister Theresa May is feeling squeezed by her own party and has uncertain support in parliament, where she would need the approval of a compromise Brexit deal, while the EU’s chief negotiator seems fully prepared to watch her flounder.
Yet “no deal” is the most dangerous of outcome for both sides. It will rip a deep hole in the EU’s budget. It would bring EU-UK security cooperation to a halt. Borders would harden. It would halt financial industry business-as-usual in London’s City. Tariffs could cripple the UK’s big industries for decades to come. And all that to say nothing of the direct impact on citizens’ rights and movement of people on both sides.
Ahead of a “no deal” cliff, and with the EU still in the stronger position, chief negotiator Michel Barnier will aim to force May to accept further concessions, making her political future at home even more insecure. Polls indicate that a new referendum to choose between a potential compromise deal and staying in the EU—providing the EU would agree to support a Brexit reversal—would lead to an outright ‘remain’ victory.
Could a referendum be achieved between now and March 2019? Unlikely. For now, it remains in both sides’ interest to continue to negotiate in good faith, as far as possible, to give the UK parliament a deal to vote up or down in the interest of retaining the public’s faith in the political system before March 2019. If Britain leaves on a mutually-negotiated path, an eventual return to the EU in the long term remains a possibility. Deal or no deal, in near term both sides will feel the pain.
Peter Catterall is a professor of history and policy at the University of Westminster and author of British History, 1945-1987: An Annotated Bibliography.
Two years after the Brexit vote, the ruling Conservative party in Britain still has not agreed among themselves on what Brexit means, let alone come up with proposals for future relations with the EU compatible with that organization’s rules. The ignorance shown by members of the British government about modern trade policy, the art of negotiation and the binding requirements of treaties have all contributed to the air of unreality about their posturing. So have the mutual incompatibilities of their various positions on Northern Ireland.
Many of these problems flow from Theresa May’s failure to set out what she meant by Brexit when she had the political authority to do so. Her studied vagueness at the start of her premiership has become a millstone around her neck. The resulting failure to rally her government around a feasible position is making a “no deal” scenario daily more likely.
Meanwhile, the British national obsession with the Second World War and the fantasy that they somehow “muddled through” this with minimal outside assistance ensures that much of the country remains wrapped in complacency. Some of this might not be entirely misplaced, as it still possible that some extended transition period will materialize whereby in practice minimal British adjustment is required until, as May has requested, 2023. This would postpone more painful adjustments until after the next general election.
The economy is, however, already visibly slowing comparing to EU counterparts, and the decline in investment prompted by uncertainty over future trading relations is unlikely to be reversed soon. That election, due in 2022, would therefore likely be fought against this unpromising economic background and, on present trends, with the two major British parties still internally divided over how they see future relations with the EU.
These internal divisions in a party system which Brexit has exposed as not up to the task, have contributed significantly to the British political classes’ difficulties in coming up with an agreed, let alone workable, view of future UK/EU relations. But then Brexit has always been as much about how the British see themselves and their own internal cultural divisions as it has been about their relations with the EU. Brexit, with or without a further referendum which currently remains only theoretically possible, in the short-run is only likely to continue to exacerbate these divisions.
Deborah Mattinson is the founding partner and Tomo Clarkson is the research director of BritainThinks, an international insight and strategy consultancy.
For two years, British public opinion has hardly changed on the divisive topic of Brexit. Consistently, “leave” voters have told us that they have no regrets over the way they voted; for their part, “remain” voters have struggled to articulate many (if any) positives to the UK leaving the EU. Deeply divided on issues including multiculturalism, feminism and environmentalism, one of the few things that these tribes have had in common is their boredom with the day-to-day of Brexit and their perception that negotiations are progressing poorly: “It’s been like the blind leading the blind.”
But is opinion shifting? In the last few weeks, several pollsters have released data suggesting that change may be afoot—that an increasing number of “leave” voters are having second thoughts about exiting the EU. Our research suggests reasons to be cautious about proclaiming a decisive shift in opinion at this stage. In focus groups, we’ve met “leave” voters who are increasingly disillusioned with the government’s course of action—but their views on what the UK should do as a result are rarely particularly strongly held. And more urgently, many leavers still believe that, even if Brexit causes considerable short-term pain, it will bring long-term gains that are worth waiting for. As one voter told us: “Brexit is like David Beckham, because it’s going to get better with age. Once we’re out of the EU, it will get better, but it will take some time.”
What happens next? In the short term, there appears tolerance of (although rarely strong appetite for) a public vote on any outcome of negotiations between the UK and the EU. The way the public votes in any such referendum will depend strongly on the choice presented on the ballot paper—and, undoubtedly, on how those choices are framed ahead of a vote.
In the longer term, the broader public opinion challenges highlighted by the referendum seem unlikely to go away. The core reasons why 52 percent of voters opted to leave the EU—particularly disillusionment with an out-of-touch elite and concern about the impact of immigration – have not been adequately addressed by the UK’s main political figures. If the main political parties cannot find answers to these questions, Brexit may be the least of their worries.
Swati Dhingra is an associate professor of economics and Josh De Lyon is a research assistant at the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics.
In July 2018, the British government published its first comprehensive proposal on its future relationship with the EU. It includes a “free-trade” area for goods, a looser arrangement on financial services, and continued membership of many EU regulatory agencies. It is essentially a proposal of a single market for goods, with a customs arrangement that allows the UK freedom to decide its own external tariffs.
The proposal begins to address the main economic issue surrounding Brexit: that the UK is highly integrated with the EU and its separation will be hugely disruptive. To take just one example, modern manufacturing firms have complex global supply chains whereby they require intermediate inputs from abroad, and the production process can, therefore, span many borders. After Brexit, these goods may be subject to tariffs so that customs checks will be necessary. Furthermore, there may be a divergence in regulation between the UK and EU such that regulatory checks are required. All goods sold in the EU would need to satisfy rules of origin checks, which can add between 4 and 15 percent to the cost of a good. Because the UK has become so integrated with the EU economy, the costs of a sharp separation would be large.
The white paper proposal makes strides to minimize any increase in trade frictions in goods. However, it remains vague on services, which make up 80 percent of the UK economy. Even the most ambitious trade agreements of the EU, like those with South Korea and Canada, have substantially less market access for services that what the UK currently has.
Another issue for the UK is that Brussels will not accept the proposal in its current form. The EU has persistently indicated that it will not separate the “four freedoms” of the Single Market.
Worryingly, the prospect of a “no deal” Brexit appears to be back in the cards. This would have severe consequences for the UK, including a huge burden on customs procedures and regulatory checks at UK borders that would drastically increase the cost of trade with the EU. For example, research suggests that an increase of two minutes spent at the border by each vehicle could more than triple the existing queues around the port of Dover—to twenty-nine miles—meaning nearly five-hour delays. Furthermore, it is not clear what would happen to the Irish border in the case of no deal, which is of great social and political importance.
The trade-off faced by the UK is that alignment with EU regulations restricts its ability to negotiate deep free trade agreements with non-EU countries. But the EU is by far the UK’s largest trading partner, and the evidence suggests that the UK stands to lose more by diverging from the EU than it is likely to gain from deals with new countries such as the U.S.
Michael Emerson is an associate senior research fellow for Europe in the World at the Centre for European Policy Studies.
A large majority of professional people in the UK—in business, government, academia, civil society—regard Brexit as the biggest unforced error that a democratic state ever inflicted upon itself. A Times Higher Education survey at the time of voting found that 90 percent of Brits working in higher education supported remaining, and a study by Aihua Zhang of the University of Leicester found a strong correlation between the percentage of voters in a region that voted to remain and high levels of higher education. As negotiations have taken place, the factors that make Brexit a mistake have only been made clearer.
A small group of little-England nationalist ideologues and media owners have mobilized all the destructive potential of political populism. The U.S. is experiencing the right-wing populism of Trump, but his time is limited. Brexit would be irreversible.
Yes, of course, the electorate should get a second vote with the choice between whatever May gets as a deal and the alternative of remaining in. The 2016 referendum was an abuse of democratic procedure on multiple accounts. Legally, it was only an “advisory” vote, but it was taken by the Tory party as binding. It posed the question between the known status quo to remain versus the unknown nature of withdrawal.
Making matters worse still, the Brexit campaign was riddled with lies, like the promise to return large sums of money back to the National Health Service. Just the next morning after the vote, Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage admitted the £350 million claim was a lie.
More fundamentally the UK has had a solid tradition as a parliamentary democracy. Unlike the Swiss, the UK lacks much of a direct democracy tradition. It was also a constitutional aberration since most advanced democracies have provisions for a “constitutional majority,” of normally a two-thirds majority, to pass legislation of constitutional significance, which of course applies to Brexit. Back to current politics, the Tory party has now spent two years fighting over whether Brexit should be “soft,” “hard” or “no deal,” which reveals that the body politic has no coherent idea over Brexit at all.
Outside the EU, Britain will be a depressing place, with major manufacturing and financial corporations disinvesting, while crucial sectors such as the health service, construction and agriculture damaged by shortages of labor coming from the continent. Academia also will suffer as many of the best and brightest of the upcoming generation will emigrate. The state of the national psychology will be totally confused, and the sustainability of the United Kingdom itself will become uncertain (with possible the separation of Northern Ireland and/or Scotland).
Federico Fabbrini is a law professor at the School of Law & Government of Dublin City University (DCU) and the director of the DCU Brexit Institute.
The withdrawal of the UK from the EU appears an irreversible process—for two reasons.
First, from a practical point of view, there simply is not enough time between now and March 29, 2019, to host another referendum—which would surely be needed to reverse the decision the British people took in June 2016. So, in the short term, the question is whether the UK will crash out of the EU without a deal, or whether it will be able to compromise and accept the withdrawal agreement on offer from the EU, which includes a transition period to phase out of the EU smoothly.
Second, from a structural point of view, the decision of the UK to leave the EU finds its roots in a deep misunderstanding of what the project of European integration is about. When it acceded the EU in 1973, the UK thought it was joining purely a common market—but the project of European integration had always been political, and since this dimension became visible in the 1990s the UK started feeling at unease within the EU. So, in the long term, the question is whether the UK will be able to craft a relationship with the EU that allows it to remain connected to the common market (the economic dimension of integration the UK always loved). The catch is doing so without being associated to the EU political project—that is increasingly relevant for the EU, but the UK cannot accept.
The U.S. has an indirect, but important role in influencing the answers to two questions above.
If U.S. national interest remains the one consistently followed by Democratic and Republican administrations—from Ike to Obama—the U.S. will push for preserving the unity of Europe. Thus, Washington would promote in the short term an orderly withdrawal of the UK from the EU, and in the long run as close as possible an economic relationship between the UK and the EU, along a logic of concentric circles. If, however, the U.S. administration will move in a new direction of seeking to restructure the world order it established post–World War II, and thus regard the UK withdrawal as a positive sign of the weakening of the EU, the risks of a disorderly Brexit increase—and with it negative spillovers on the stability of Europe and its transatlantic allies.
Elaine Glaser, Writer, broadcaster, and author of Anti-Politics: On the Demonization of Ideology, Authority and the State.
I am a Eurosceptic remainer. I believe in jurisdiction at the level of national government rather than a supranational body like the European Union. In particular, I regarded the behavior of “the Troika” towards Greece and other Southern Union countries after the financial crash as punitive and counterproductive.
That said, I voted “remain” because that position represented the rejection of closed, small-island, anti-immigration sentiment. Since the referendum, it has become abundantly clear that the decision to leave the EU is pretty disastrous from an economic and bureaucratic point of view. British politics should be concerning itself with the urgent priorities of inequality, corporate depredation, and climate change, but is instead mired in technical questions about the manner in which we are to extricate ourselves from Europe. At present, clear answers to these questions seem remote.
Intractable as these problems are, for me the most serious and damaging consequence of the EU referendum is the destruction of British democracy. One of the effects of the referendum has been to set up a conflict between two rival forms of democracy: direct and representative. This is in part a consequence of our lack of a written constitution.
“Brexiteers” and their tabloid newspaper supporters portray MPs who voted to remain, the House of Lords, and the judiciary as “enemies of the people.” The 27 percent of the population who voted for Brexit, by contrast, are portrayed as representing “the will of the people.” Using working-class voters as legitimation, right-wing, Eton-educated MPs like Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg are concentrating power in the hands of the executive by embedding so-called Henry VIII powers in the EU Withdrawal Bill. In doing so, they are creating a “blank slate” Britain on which they can enact policies that will not benefit “ordinary people”—minimal regulation of business, eroded labor rights, and a shrunken welfare state. While Brexit is represented as embodying democracy, it is essentially anti-democratic, because it vilifies Parliament in favor of oligarchic majoritarianism.
Should there be a second referendum? The answer is probably yes, but we probably won’t get one. Absurdly, polling suggests a majority now accept the rational view that exiting the EU is a bad idea; yet even to call the remainer position “rational” provokes populist rage. Brexit was won with the help of disinformation and dark money, yet Britain appears unable to exit back through the looking-glass.
Erik Jones is the director of European and Eurasian Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of The Year the European Crisis Ended.
Britain’s decision to leave the European Union revealed just how complicated it is for a country to extricate itself from a common market. Although many Britons worried about the implications of the free movement of people and they expressed frustration with the regulatory requirements for the free movement of goods and services, very few people on either side of the debate could imagine a formula to address that discontent without disrupting Britain’s economic relationship with the European Union across all dimensions. Indeed, that formula remains elusive.
A strict sovereigntist approach jeopardizes the delicate political balance in Northern Ireland, the constitutional relationship between England and Scotland, and the complex pattern of distributed manufacturing across the United Kingdom. Such an approach also places enormous demands on British public officials to develop new technologies for the management of cross-border customs arrangements, to recreate regulatory and certification facilities across a range of products, and to renegotiate third-party relationships with major economies like the United States and China that will not add to the disruption of commerce between the UK and the rest of Europe.
Any approach that concedes authority to the European Union to manage customs, set regulatory standards, preside over dispute resolution, or compel budgetary contributions, would leave the original concerns raised in Britain’s popular referendum to leave the EU unaddressed. The economic and political implications of the sovereigntist approach might be mitigated, but a whole new raft of political concerns would be created.
Britain’s future relationship is more likely to involve some kind of concession than to hew toward a strict sovereigntist approach. The implications will be unsatisfactory in political terms, at least for those who voted to leave the EU, and yet still painful in economic terms. Both employment and investment are already leaving the country. The government will have to provide more services in terms of regulation, certification, and border controls, that will impose costs without generating added value (or tax revenues). A number of high-value industries will relocate to other jurisdictions, taking their tax revenues and employment along with them. Innovation will suffer as British universities work less intensively with their counterparts on the Continent. The combined result will not be disaster for the British economy, but it will dampen growth and future prosperity.
Philippe Legrain is a visiting senior fellow at the London School of Economics’ European Institute and author of European Spring: Why Our Economies and Politics are in a Mess—and How to Put Them Right.
Brexit is a disastrous blunder. It will disrupt Britain’s trade, harm its security and polarize its politics, making the UK—and to a lesser extent the EU-27—poorer, less safe and less stable. At a time when Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a growing threat, and Donald Trump seems intent on wrecking the postwar international order by starting trade wars, undermining NATO and encouraging far-right populism, it is a reckless act of self-harm.
But a majority of Britons voted in 2016 to leave the EU—and in a democracy where referendums are rare, that mistake is hard to correct.
There is certainly a strong democratic case for a referendum on the exit deal. Back in 2016 voters didn’t know what leaving the EU would entail. Many backed Leave for contradictory reasons. And the UK’s exit deal and future trading relationship with the EU are likely to be much worse than prominent “leave” campaigners such as Boris Johnson promised. So voters have a right to change their minds. Since MPs dare not make that judgment for voters, that would require a referendum.
It is conceivable that MPs, most of whom realize that Brexit is a disaster and among whom there is no majority for any feasible form of Brexit, will come to see a people’s vote as a solution to their conundrum. But for now, both Prime Minister Theresa May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn are opposed to one. And to stop Brexit, such a referendum would need to include the option to remain in the EU—either as a straight alternative to the exit deal or along with the third option of leaving without a deal—and be won.
In the absence of a majority in Parliament for any feasible deal with the EU that the government might strike, there is a growing fear that the UK might crash out without one. Three groups are playing a game of chicken: remainers who hope the prospect of no-deal chaos forces a second referendum, Labour MPs who hope this prompts a general election that their party wins, and hardline Conservative Brexiteers, who hope the UK will leave without the constraints of a deal.
My baseline scenario remains that the threat of no-deal chaos will ultimately lead the UK government to cave to all the EU’s demands and Parliament to approve the deal. But a no-deal Brexit, or none at all, cannot be ruled out.
J. Scott Marcus is a senior fellow at Bruegel and an independent consultant.
Nothing is firmly settled yet. There is still much to be negotiated and debated in Europe and the UK, but the most likely scenarios are either (1) an agreement based more or less on the UK White Paper, or (2) the UK crashes out in March 2019 with no agreement. Crashing out would cause serious problems and would be much worse than any likely agreement.
The UK will proportionally lose even more than the EU27 from exiting. Leave or remain is a judgment for the UK to make, but my view is that the UK would be far better off continuing as an EU Member State. Next best would be to become an EEA member like Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein. It could still be done—there is no defined procedure for the UK to reverse its Article 50 notification, but if they made the request it would probably work out somehow.
In principle, the British public should have the final say on the deal on whether the UK should in fact withdraw, and if so, on the form that the withdrawal should take. There are increasingly insistent calls in the UK for a second referendum on the withdrawal, but it is difficult to see how the schedule to March 2019 could accommodate this. The UK has run out of time. In any case, a new vote would not necessarily lead to greater clarity and might not lead to a different outcome.
In any scenario, the UK’s GDP will decline somewhat. Detailed impacts depend on the form of withdrawal that is taken, and on the specifics of the deal, but some things are certain: London’s centrality in global finance will decline. The UK will face serious challenges in filling certain jobs, such as for healthcare professionals. There will be many years of legal and regulatory uncertainty.
Under the most likely UK White Paper-based outcomes, the EU27-UK relationship would look a bit like that of the EU with Turkey in the recent past (before things went downhill there). There is likely to be free trade in goods but not in services, and no free movement of individuals. Under a crashing out, only general WTO obligations would remain, and the UK would have to put forward its own WTO commitments. One hopes that EU27-UK cooperation could continue in defense, law enforcement, and more. Research cooperation under H2020 could continue even in a crashing out scenario, assuming that the future UK-EU27 relationship is cooperative.
Anand Menon is a professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs and author of Brexit and British Politics.
Brexit has taken its toll on Britain. It has profoundly disrupted its politics and significant elements of its constitutional settlement. In addition, while the economic impact of the decision to leave the European Union was not as profound, nor as immediate, as government forecasts had suggested it might be, that impact is starting to be felt and forecasts concerning the impact of actually leaving the EU make for grim reading.
That being said, there is little prospect of the decision being reversed. Opinion polls show little if any evidence of a widespread change of heart among those who voted for Brexit. The British people remain more or less evenly divided with opinion, if anything, becoming more entrenched.
Thus, even in the (unlikely) event of another referendum, and even if (far from certain) the outcome of this were to be a vote to remain, this would only be by a narrow margin. In all likelihood, this would create significant political unrest, act as a fillip for populism, and ensure that the issue of EU membership continues to roil British politics for the foreseeable future. The UK thus faces an uncomfortable choice: an outcome that threatens to damage the national economy, and one that wreaks havoc with Britain’s politics. And, of course, the former itself will have disruptive political repercussions should leave voters feel that what they voted for has not been adequately delivered.
There are, then, no easy answers, which makes the current polarization and simplification of debate (Brexit is either all good or all bad) all the more frustrating. Much will hinge on the deal made with the EU, but current indications are that this will significantly disrupt trade with the UK’s largest trading partner, and hence the national economy. Even once it has left the EU, then, the UK will continue to be haunted by the implications of that fateful vote in 2016.
Robert Patman is professor of international relations at the University of Otago and principal editor of New Zealand and the world: Past, present, and future.
The tide is rapidly turning against Brexit in the UK. The brutal reality is that the May government will either have to accept the exit terms offered by the other twenty-seven members of the EU or embrace a catastrophic no-deal solution. The latter would, according to the UK Government’s own Department for Exiting the European Union and the Office of National Statistics, would lower the UK GDP by 8 percent or £158 billion ($304.6b) and cost 2.8 million jobs.
The key to the immediate future of UK-EU relations lies in the hands of the Eurosceptic Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn. If Corbyn caves to mounting internal pressures within his party to stop backing Mrs. May’s Brexit policy and come out clearly against Brexit or at least back a second referendum on EU membership, then the UK is likely to remain in the EU.
It was always a stretch to claim a 3.8-point margin of victory for the “leave” camp in a non-binding referendum was sufficient justification for the greatest change in Britain’s external policy since World War II. But we now know the integrity of the EU referendum result was fundamentally tainted by illegal money, data crimes, and Russian involvement. Two key Brexit groups—Leave.EU and Vote Leave, headed by several cabinet ministers—were both found guilty by the UK Electoral Commission of serious violations of British electoral law, including a 10 percent overspend in a referendum contest decided by a margin of just 3.8 points.
All of this leads to but one clear conclusion: The June 2016 referendum did not provide a legitimate mandate for Brexit. Given large-scale cheating occurred during the EU referendum on June 23, 2016, the outcome of that referendum must be declared null and void, and a second referendum must be held to ensure a fair and free contest on the question of British membership of the EU.
The UK’s international reputation has been severely tarnished in Europe and beyond. Brexit is an own goal of monumental proportions. The idea that Britain could “go global” when it clearly failed to demonstrate any leadership amongst a community of twenty-seven like-minded democracies in its own backyard is both delusional and sad.
The May government’s announcement that Britain was leaving the EU has already had a serious impact on the UK economy. In the space of two years, the UK has gone from being one of the fastest growing economies in the EU to one of the slowest growing economies in Europe.
Even if Brexit does not happen, it will take the UK a long time to rebuild its relationship with the EU and repair the substantial damage it has inflicted on its own economy.
Eleonora Poli is a research fellow at the Istituto Affari Internazionali and author of Antitrust Institutions and Policies in the Globalising Economy.
Two years after the “in or out” referendum, Brexit looks more like a sword of Damocles hanging over the British cabinet and the EU. By October 2018, the UK government should agree upon a draft deal defining the future relations with the EU. Yet, chances are that Britain could leave the European Union without a deal in March 2019. A no-deal scenario must be avoided.
Brexit already represents a fundamental challenge for the European countries for at least two opposite reasons. Some fear an unprecedented EU integration process, led by France and Germany, once they get rid of UK skepticism. Others are concerned by the need to discourage a “Brexit domino effect” EU-wide and they do not wish for an extremely convenient Brexit deal for the UK. However, everyone is aware that a “no deal” would be unsustainable both politically, as it would discredit the Union, and economically, as it could worsen trade relationships by aggravating uncertainty.
A “no deal” would be bad for the UK as well, as it will not allow for a transition period up to 2020 to smoothly accompany the UK outside the Union with agreements on trade relations and sustainable options for the Irish border issue, intra-EU migration and the financial service market.
Prime Minister Theresa May’s proposal for a softer Brexit, which could provide some access to the Common Market under the EU trade rules, has recently resulted in calls for a referendum on the exit deal, as it could undermine the independence of UK institutions vis-à-vis the EU. Yet, a second referendum might not impact significantly the chance of the UK to remain in the EU. To date, only the Liberal Democrats have a pro-European agenda, while no other political forces in the UK have formally adopted a pro-remain political strategy. Against this backdrop, a second plebiscite could result in the above-mentioned no deal, as it might push citizens to refuse the arrangement proposed and negotiated with the EU, without challenging the idea of leaving the European Union.
In conclusion, while no more cherry-picking of EU benefits will be allowed by the remaining member countries, which are convinced the UK already had the best possible EU membership deal, British government’s attempts to structure a profitable arrangement might result in a zero-sum game, which will satisfy neither the “Brexiters” nor the “Remainers.”
Thomas Sampson is an assistant professor of economists at London School of Economics.
Support for Brexit comes from a coalition of three groups: nation-state traditionalists, who view the EU’s supranational institutions as an undesirable restriction on UK sovereignty; free-market radicals, who want to reshape the UK’s economy along American lines by reducing regulation and cutting support for the welfare state; and voters who blame the EU for their dissatisfaction with the state of modern Britain. These left-behind voters have been encouraged by the anti-EU voices that dominate Britain’s media to view EU membership, and particularly the free movement of workers within the EU, as the cause of their discontent.
In negotiating the terms of the UK’s departure, Theresa May’s government is struggling to reconcile the objectives of these groups with the interests of remain voters and the economic reality that leaving the EU will hurt the UK economy. In 2015 the EU accounted for 44 percent of the UK’s exports and 53 percent of its imports and total UK-EU trade was 3.2 times larger than the UK’s trade with the U.S., its second largest trade partner. Economists estimate that increased trade barriers following Brexit will reduce income per capita in the UK by between 1 percent and 10 percent depending on what form Brexit takes.
There is a trade-off between reclaiming national sovereignty by severing ties with the EU and minimizing the economic costs of Brexit. A “soft Brexit” where the UK remains in the EU’s Single Market and continues to adhere to EU regulations, trade policy and free movement of labor would be the best option for the UK’s economy. But it would also be viewed as a betrayal by most Brexit voters. On the other hand, there is only minority support in the UK for rejecting the European social model in favor of its American counterpart and left-behind voters may reconsider their opposition to European integration as the costs of divorce become apparent.
The heart of the problem is that Brexit has divided the UK, not only between leavers and remainers, but also over what should replace EU membership. There is no option that a majority of the country supports. Theresa May will try to muddle through, forging a compromise that can keep her government in power. But it is hard to envisage any scenario that does not leave the UK poorer and more isolated from its traditional allies than if there had never been a Brexit referendum.
Jonathan Story is emeritus professor of international political economy and author of The Political Economy of Financial Integration in Europe: The Battle of the Systems.
Prime Minister May was a remainer and has remained a remainer. She has ensured that Whitehall leads the negotiation with Brussels. Since Whitehall is part of the Brussels establishment, it is the establishment negotiating with itself about how best to dilute or even negate the referendum result of June 23, 2016. The same people who negotiated between the time of Prime Minister Cameron’s Bloomberg speech in January 2013 and Cameron’s announcement of his proposed deal with the EU in February 2016 have also negotiated the Chequers deal. Cameron’s February 2016 speech was greeted by a Sun headline: “Who do EU think you are kidding.” May’s Chequers proposal has had a similar welcome. Cameron’s February 2016 announcement of the package was greeted by a Sun headline: “Who do EU think you are kidding.” May’s Chequers proposal has had a similar welcome.
Britain could have stayed in the EU prior to June 23, had Cameron revoked the Heath definition of the EU as a supranational institution, to which the UK is subordinate. Neither France, nor Germany, nor Italy recognize such a definition. Remainers do not want to follow the Germans and have a more national definition of the EU. They are campaigning to keep the UK in an EU where the UK remains supranationalist No Uno. Trouble is: it doesn’t sing at home.
It’s for the British government to decide whether they should vote again. Since polls are now completely politicized, it would be unwise of either side to think they would win. In the 1960s, 13 percent of voters were floaters; by the early 2000s, it was 40 percent. It is probably rather higher now. Labour has veered sharply left and is defining itself by identity politics and anti-Semitism. It is being led by a man who thinks that all the sins of the world are caused by Israel and the West. Corbyn is as extreme as the U.S. far right.
If May has her way, the UK will be a vassal state; the pretense will be that the UK is independent. The aim of Whitehall, Brussels, and 10 Downing Street is to either keep the UK semi-attached or to get it back in. But if it goes back in it will pay its full dues and have to join the Euro.
I propose that the UK’s official supranationalism, which gives it allies in Brussels, is a failure. It was bound to be a failure. Merging a mosaic of states and peoples, with different languages, legal traditions, histories, tax systems, and economic structures—not to speak of cultures—into a United States of Europe was, is and will remain a dream. The trouble with utopias is that they fast become dystopias. The EU is presently a dystopia. A truly European response would be to create a European alliance of democratic constitutional states, with Brussels cut down to size, its pretensions scaled back. If that could be achieved—there is no sign of it—Europe could come into its own. It is already the wealthiest region of the world. Less integrated, it would be more united.
Richard G. Whitman is a professor of politics and international relations at the University of Kent and an associate fellow at the Chatman House.
The Brexit process is now entering its most challenging phase. As the March 2019 deadline for the UK’s departure from the EU moves closer, there are still a formidable range of issues to address through negotiations if there is going to be an amicable Brexit. With all of the negotiations so far focusing on the terms for the UK’s departure, no agreement is likely to be reached on the post-Brexit EU-UK relationship.
If the Brexit negotiations look to have been a tough undertaking, they will be nothing compared to those on the future relationship. A weak government has played a weak negotiating hand poorly—and exacerbated deep divisions within the UK’s political class. The UK government’s poor negotiating performance has been it easy for the EU’s remaining 27-member states to maintain a consistently united position.
It is difficult to see the UK’s relationship with the EU disappearing from UK politics over the next decade—even if the UK does Brexit next March. Polls consistently show “Leave” and “Remain” voters largely holding to their original voting positions. It is also difficult to see how calls for a second referendum on the issue of the future relationship with the EU can be held before the departure date mandated under the Article 50 provisions that cover a country’s departure from the EU.
The current UK government may be planning to leave the EU, but the EU isn’t going to leave British politics. The negotiation and ratification of a future EU-UK relationship is going to extend beyond the next UK General Election scheduled in 2022. The future relationship with the EU is going to be an issue that continues to divide parliamentarians, parties, and set the Scottish and Welsh administrations against Westminster. It will continue to divide the electorate against itself and could lead to the breakup of the existing political party system.
Guntram Wolff is the director of Bruegel and author of An Anatomy of Inclusive Growth in Europe.
In June 2016, British citizens voted to exit from the EU. During the past two years, negotiation on the terms of the divorce made progress, but not the equally important design of the future relationship. The UK government’s recent proposal for its future relations with the EU should be taken seriously in the EU. In its recently released “white paper,” the UK sets out its ideas for an economic and security relationship after Brexit.
The EU has reacted with some skepticism to the proposed economic relationship. The main worry is that the rather complicated arrangement could undermine the legal order of the EU. Some fear that the proposal amounts to cherry-picking, leaving the UK essentially as an EU rules-taker in goods markets but without a similarly close relationship in services trade and free mobility of labor. The fear is that other EU members might find this attractive and decide to leave as well. The situation in Ireland after Brexit also remains a major concern.
All of these worries need to be carefully considered, but they also need to be weighed against the dramatically changing geopolitical situation. Faced with a possible trade war with the U.S. and the continuous rise of China, regional alliances become more important. The UK will not only remain an important European power, it should also remain an important European trade and security partner. As Michel Barnier, the European Commission’s chief Brexit negotiator, wrote in a recent opinion article, the EU has “an interest not only to strengthen the EU’s role in the world but to cooperate with the UK as a close partner.” Specifically, on security—in Mr. Barnier's words—“the EU wants very close cooperation” with the UK, focusing on agreements between law enforcement and intelligence services.
The EU could do more, though, in its negotiations on the future economic relationship. It would benefit from approaching the negotiations as a chance to secure guarantees on its priorities—such as greater clarity on how European jurisprudence will be applied in the UK. The EU could also work to prevent regulatory competition from the UK and ensure an appropriate contribution from the UK towards the EU budget. Finally, the EU could seek greater assurances on customs arrangements and safeguard clauses in case the UK ultimately decided to diverge on regulation.
It makes sense for the EU to negotiate rather than concentrate on staying within pre-set limitations. Agreement on a sensible direction for both parties should still be possible this year. A two-year transition period would then allow for a reasonable, careful negotiation of what is best for both sides. Neither the UK nor the EU would benefit from a no-deal Brexit.
Mitchell Blatt is a freelance writer, Chinese-English translator, and lead author of Panda Guides Hong Kong. He has been published in The Korea Times , Silkwinds magazine, and Areo Magazine , among other outlets. He tweets at @MitchBlatt.
Image: Pro-EU supporters wave flags outside the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London, Britain, July 4, 2018.REUTERS/Simon Dawson