THE BREXIT CONUNDRUM AND THE MIDNIGHT COWBOY.pdf (original) (raw)

At the time of writing this piece in mid November 2018, nobody knows the outcome of the current crisis within the UK and the EU. However, the British inconvenience cannot be 'tidied up' and forgotten about. It is symptomatic of a EU wide malaise. On this occasion the continental troublemaker is Britain, but the name in the frame could easily have been, and may soon be, either Germany with its rising Alternative für Deutschland or France with the ambitious Marine Le Pen. These are all symptoms of the intense Europe-wide discomfort at the continent being displaced from the global seat of majesty it enjoyed during the nineteenth century. Everyone should think again before it is too late. Key words: European Union, Brexit, Yalta, Potsdam, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Alternative für Deutschland, Marine Le Pen, populism, Suez, Italy, Benelux, referendum, Conservative party, Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn, Theresa May, Singapore, Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, City of London, Turkey, Caribbean, Algeria, Soviet Bloc, Yugoslavia.

The British need time to work through the still unresolved bereavement trauma caused by their loss of global power. Perhaps they can learn something from a comparison between the UK and Spain. Both countries took a massive blow when it struck home that their glory days as imperial top dogs were over. They subsequently made the journey from would-be global mastery to would-be continental solidarity in Europe. Britain joined the European Union (EU), then the Common Market, in 1973. Spain joined in 1986. Spain has, so far at least, been manifestly more settled in the EU than has Britain, even though the political weather there has by no means been perfect. What, historically, explains this difference between the British and Spanish attitudes towards the EU and what can it tell us about Brexit? Key words. Spain, Britain, European Union, politics, economics, Brexit, the West, Brussels, Cold War, world wars, Boer wars, Latin America, United States, Russia, Soviet Union, remain, leave, India, Queen Victoria, liberalism, extremism, pragmatism,

The Brexit referendum triggered a feverish debate over the future of Britain. Critics warn of a country stripped of its international influence, while advocates insist that it marks the beginning of a new phase in British engagement with the world. This article explores a notable development in the ideological debate. Some prominent Brexit supporters, both in Britain and elsewhere, endorse the idea of CANZUK, a union of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. We analyse CANZUK as an attempt to develop a fruitful post-Brexit imaginary and as a case of transnational elite advocacy. We begin by placing CANZUK in the context of debates over the “Anglosphere.” We then map the CANZUK advocacy network. Next we examine past plans for uniting English-speaking polities, tracing the idea back to late nineteenth century debates over settler colonialism. We end by sketching some reasons to be sceptical about the project.

This article considers whether the 2016 EU referendum can be perceived as an English nationalist movement. Specifically, attention is given to examining how memories of the former British Empire were nostalgically enveloped in anxieties regarding England’s location within the devolved UK state. The comments and work of Enoch Powell and George Orwell are used to help explore the link between nostalgia and anxiety in accounts of English nationalism. Despite their opposing political orientations, when considered together, it is argued that both men provide a unique cross-political perspective on Englishness, empire and nostalgia. By way of exploring these themes in relation to the EU referendum, Aughey’s assertion that English nationalism can be perceived as both a ‘mood’ and ‘movement’ is used to highlight how a sense of English anxiety regarding its lack of national sovereignty (mood), as well as a desire to reclaim this sovereignty by renegotiating trade relations with the ‘Anglo-sphere’ (movement), were conjoined in the popular referendum slogan, ‘take back control’. In conclusion, it is argued that the contextualization of the referendum can be predicated upon an orientation to empire that steers away from glorifying pro-imperial images of England/Britain, towards a more positive and progressive appropriation of the EU referendum as a statement of national change and belonging.

Abstract: A very useful European habit is stopping the clock during negotiations if it helps to clear logjams. It seems likely that we may very soon be in logjam territory. Stopping the clock and stretching the calendar, perhaps for months rather than days, will give everyone a chance to calm down and reflect carefully, thinking things through. Why not do it that way? Time pressures are artificial and human-made, in this case at least. What is the rush? Brexit is big stuff. Holding more than one referendum on the same issue in fairly quick succession is also business as usual in the EU, a well-established European variant of democratic practice: ask the Danes, the French and the Irish. Why not the British also? They are grown-up enough to handle it. Key words. Brexit, European Union, David Cameron, Theresa May, Tony Blair, British Empire, Russia, Jean-Claude Juncker, European Commission, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Eurozone, Lehmann Brothers, Brussels, Labour, Conservatives, International Monetary Fund, Washington Consensus, UKIP, Brexiteers, Momentum, populism.

Theresa May's claim that 'Brexit means Brexit' demonstrates the malleability of the concept. The referendum campaign showed that 'Brexit' can be articulated to a variety of post-Brexit scenarios. While it is important to analyse how Brexit gives rise to contestation in the United Kingdom, Brexit is also constructed from the outside. Brexit signifies more than the technical complexities of the United Kingdom withdrawing from the European Union. It works both as a promise of a different future and performatively to establish a particular past. Brexit works as a frame with potential to shape perceptions in three domains. The first is identity. How does 'Brexit' shape national and European identities in distinct national environments? The second is how Brexit shapes understandings of geopolitical reality and influences conceptions of what is diplomatically possible. Third is the global economy. How does 'Brexit' work within intersubjective frames about the nature of global economic order?

Brexit has become one of the most contentious issues in the political history of the United Kingdom. As the Brexit deadline of March 29th 2019 approaches quickly, uncertainties surrounding the UK’s ‘divorce’ from the EU still exist. The government of Theresa May finds itself in a predicament, seeking to arrive at a deal that will see an orderly exit from the European Union. This report covers all phases of Brexit, from the historical background to the factors that led to Brexit referendum itself, and the reasons for the success of the ‘Leave’ campaign. The report also examines the political and economic implications of Brexit for both the UK and the EU.

This contribution focuses on internationalism as a key driver of discourses of Brexit. It examines a corpus of official documents published by the newly created Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) in which the British government sets out its vision for ‘a new partnership with the European Union’ and ‘a truly global Britain’. This data is analysed through argumentation theory (Fairclough and Fairclough, 2012) to identify how specific representations of internationalism act as legitimizing tools of Brexit. This contribution argues that the official vision of a new, global, and out-of-the-EU Britain imagined in the texts legitimises Brexit through shifting national, European, and global contexts as both rupture and continuity of liberal international narratives. On the one hand, the ideological approach to ‘global Britain’ and free trade perpetrates historical discourses informed by mercantile rationales and indulges in post-imperial nostalgia and a resurgent English nationalism. On the other hand, such vision rejects the EU’s transnational social and political project in favour of economic neoliberalism, which raises the ultimate question of who will benefit from Brexit and ‘global Britain’.

The Brexit negotiations present a puzzle for scholars of international bargaining, who tend to assume hard bargaining follows from advantages in bargaining power. In spite of its relative weakness vis-à-vis the EU27, however, the UK’s negotiating strategy bears all the hallmarks of hard bargaining. Drawing upon a series of elite interviews conducted in late 2017, this working paper argues that British hard bargaining is a consequence of three ideational factors particular to the UK case: the dominance of a conservative ideology of statecraft, a majoritarian institutional culture, and weak socialisation into European structures. These three factors not only predisposed UK policymakers to favour harder bargaining strategies, ceteris paribus, but also contributed to a misperception that Britain possessed more bargaining power than was actually the case. This paper argues that the UK’s bargaining strategy comes with a high risk of immediate failure, as well as longer term self-harm.

This paper does not discuss the political or economic implications of the EU referendum for British society. Instead, it tackles an equally puzzling issue: why it produced the result it did.