Correspondence Chapter1 The UK and Europe after Brexit

A Series of correspondence between Mr. Bill Emmott, a former editor of the Economist, and Professor Masayuki Tadokoro, the Chair of Asteion Editorial Committee.

Masayuki Tadokoro > Bill Emmott
Bill, more than a month after the shocking result of the EU referendum, we are now in a better position to think about longer-term implications of Brexit.

But before that, we Japanese cannot help wondering why membership of the EU is such an emotional issue for you Brits. We know that you have distinctive traditions, history and institutions. Yes, EU bureaucracy is annoying. But after all, European states are all liberal democracies with no prospect of military conflicts among themselves. Being a part of the EU is different from becoming a tributary state of the reemerging Chinese Empire. Nevertheless, it seems that the result of the referendum has more to do with the success of the Leave Camp in tapping into the frustration of British people on the street rather than in offering better analyses on the tangible benefits of Brexit. Will you tell me where this British hostility to the EU comes from?

Bill Emmott > Masayuki Tadokoro
In trying to explain British hostility towards the European Union, I find myself always torn between long-term historical explanations, which feel powerful but not necessarily adequate in contemporary circumstances, and more short-term reasons which feel adequate but not really powerful enough to explain a hostility that is so contrary to what all British governments for the past 60 years have considered as the country’s strategic interests. So it must be a combination of the two. Let us first remember however how narrow was the referendum result: 48.1% of voters wanted Britain to stay in the EU.

Our historical hostility to influence from the continent of Europe needs to be dated back to the 16th century, when our King Henry VIII broke the country away from the Roman Catholic Church and hence from rulings by the Pope in Rome. This is an important watershed because in our history before that time (the 1530s) England was closely tied to many parts of Europe. Sometimes we were invaded (Roman Empire in 43 AD, Viking raiders from Scandinavia in the ninth century, Norman kings from France in 1066), sometimes our kings fought in and occupied parts of France (15th century). But after the schism with Rome, England (as it then was, not yet Britain) for most of the time over the next five centuries treated continental powers as enemies who might invade us at any moment. That was not always true – we imported royal families from the Netherlands (1688) and Germany (18th century onwards) – but still our foreign policy treated Europe as a threat more than as a partnership. As Britain became stronger thanks to our “Industrial Revolution” our strategic policy became one of intervention in Europe so as to ensure that no power there could dominate and so become a threat to us.

Is this relevant today? Only to the extent that it pervades our culture and some of our traditions. On November 5th every year, for example, we celebrate “Guy Fawkes day”, which celebrates a failed terrorist attack on our Parliament in 1605 led by an English Catholic who had fought for Spain during that country’s long war in the Netherlands. He was therefore the 17th century equivalent of a jihadi terrorist in Europe today who fought in Syria for Islamic State and then returned to, say, France and carried out an atrocity.

Then to that history needs to be added our constitutional tradition. Britain has no written, formal constitution but instead considers all sovereignty to be in the hands of our Parliament. A long constitutional tradition, dating back to John Locke, our great political philosopher from the 17th century, holds that in our system of representative government the people delegate all power to their elected representatives in Parliament, except that those representatives cannot decide to transfer their own lawmaking power to other bodies. That is what they did when Britain joined the EU in 1973, which is in turn why our then government was forced to hold the country’s first ever national referendum in 1975, on that membership.

So (with apologies for being so long, Masayuki, but the issues are complicated!) our final puzzle must be why did British citizens vote so decisively in 1975 to confirm our membership of the EU (with 67% in favour and 33% against) but then vote narrowly in June of this year (51.9% to leave, 48.1% to stay) to depart? This is where pragmatic issues come in. History means that the British have never loved the EU. But in 1975, most felt they needed it, because Britain was economically weak (it was known as “the sick man of Europe”) while France and the then West Germany were economically strong. We needed to be part of the successful European project. Now, in 2016, the continental European countries are economically weak, thanks to the euro sovereign debt crisis over the past five years, and Britain feels economically stronger. That economic strength has meant that Britain has been attractive to immigrants from other EU countries, coming in search of jobs. Which then, in the campaign about EU membership, helped tip the balance in favour of leaving. Immigration is not a huge problem for Britain, in fact, but at a time when plenty of Britons have suffered falling incomes in the years after the Lehman Shock of 2008, it proved an easy target for populist politicians. And it is unarguable that as long as Britain is a member of the EU, it was not allowed by the treaties to put limits of the immigration of EU citizens (just as UK citizens have the right, too, to live elsewhere in the EU if they want). Now, having held what was only the third ever national referendum in our history and through it having chosen to leave the EU, we are now going to have to work out what this means – politically, economically, strategically.

Masayuki Tadokoro > Bill Emmott
British parliamentary politics have long been the model for Japanese. But we are now less sure about it. It is striking that both leaders of the Conservatives and Labour took the same position and lost. While the established parties are not effective in representing and integrating various views among the public, we do not see any alternative political forces that can govern the UK either. It is ironical that both Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, the two most prominent leaders of Brexit campaign shied away from responsibility to lead the country out of the EU. Now it is Theresa May, a remainer that is leading the exit-negotiation with the EU apparently trying to minimize impacts of Brexit. One has to wonder, then, why you need to leave the EU in the first place. This somewhat reminds me of the awkward Article 9, which can neither be strictly implemented, nor ignored easily. Does Brexit imply the beginning of the end of the two party system in British Politics? If so, what is likely to come next?

Bill Emmott > Masayuki Tadokoro
I think the two-party system in British politics has been dying for a long time, which is one of the reasons why the referendum result was so different to the results of our general elections. In our 1970 general election, the Labour and Conservative parties collected between them 88.7% of the total vote. In the 2015 general election, those two parties collected 67.3% of the vote. That is still quite a high proportion, but thanks to our winner-takes-all electoral system in single member constituencies the result in Parliament has become more and more unrepresentative. In 2015 the Conservatives achieved an overall majority of seats in Parliament with just 36.1% of the vote, on an electoral turnout of just 66.1%. So they are in government having won the votes of only about one-fifth of the total electorate. When Margaret Thatcher won her first general election and absolute majority in 1979 she did so with 44% of the vote on a turnout of 76%.

We in Britain like our tradition of single-party governments that are able to make decisions quickly, without long negotiations with coalition partners. But this is causing an increasing distance between the governing parties and the people, one that partly explains the referendum result. General elections in 2010 and 2015 had not provided any real opportunity for anti-EU opinions to gain an expression in Parliament. And the left-wing party, the Labour Party, did not have a strong incentive to seek the votes of poorer people, ones who might have lost their jobs and sense of security thanks to globalisation, the Lehman Shock and other huge forces, because in the winner-takes-all system they fought for middle-class voters and didn’t need to fight for working-class ones. It is rather like the rise of Donald Trump in the Republican primaries, winning support from white working class voters who have felt neglected.

This is why now, in the wake of the Brexit vote, the party that is in most turmoil is the Labour Party. They will probably now split. There might be formed a new centrist pro-European party too, and the anti-immigrant UK Independence Party is also fighting for working class votes. So the fragmentation of our party system will grow even more important. This means that the case for a major electoral reform in Britain, one that moves our system towards some form of proportional representation, is growing. In the short term, however, the Conservative Party is going to be so dominant that it will not consider electoral reform to be in its interests. But I wonder how long that will last. Brexit is going to be very hard and divisive in the Conservative Party too. So that might mean another split – and, I hope, a serious consideration of electoral reform.

Masayuki Tadokoro > Bill Emmott
I, however, am now inclined to think that Britain can manage to live reasonably well outside the EU. Divorce may not be nice, but an amicable separation could be better than continuing an unhappy marriage. After all, you have never been a part of the Schengen and the Euro. But here is the dilemma. Successful Brexit would encourage anti-EU forces in the continent. We may see growing popularity of Front Nationale, AfD and M5S. While it is still unlikely that Marie Le Pen will be the President and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) will come into power in elections next year, Italy looks like the weakest link in the chain. I am curious about your assessment of the knock-on effects of Brexit on the future of the EU.

Bill Emmott > Masayuki Tadokoro
I think everything depends on a combination of economic performance and terrorism. Brexit has certainly strengthened and brought more confidence to anti-EU parties such as France’s Front National and Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, but I don’t think it has brought them close to power, and won’t do so unless terrorism or a new economic shock really further discredits the mainstream parties. Italy is different: it has the weakest economy of any of the major EU countries, and the Five Star Movement is neck and neck in the opinion polls with the governing party, the centre-left Democratic Party of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Italy too has a referendum coming, in October about constitutional reform. Mr Renzi has said he will resign if he loses, and currently he looks quite likely to lose. This could mean Italy will be forced to hold a general election in early 2017. The Five Star Movement is quite chaotic, but it has the potential to win. It is not really anti-EU, but it does want a referendum on Italy’s membership of the euro, which would be incredibly destabilising for financial markets. So I agree with you that Italy is the biggest threat to the EU’s stability. On Brexit, I think Britain will feel quite a lot of economic pain over the next two or three years but, yes, we can then recover as long as our governments remain committed to openness on trade and capital, which I expect they will. I am less optimistic about the stability of the EU.

Masayuki Tadokoro > Bill Emmott
I have to confess that I had thought common sense would prevail after all and the Remain side would win a narrow victory. Likewise, I did not take Donald Trump’s republican candidacy seriously, again wrongly. How should we interpret the rises of “populism” rebellions against the political and intellectual establishment on both sides of the Atlantic? Do you see any common dynamism at work beneath them? By the time our dialogue is sent to the press (sorry it is very slow because of translation and so on), we will see a new American president. Should we see president Trump, the consequences would be no doubt much more serious than Brexit. I would still bet that this will not come true, but Brexit tells us that the world is full of surprises.

Bill Emmott > Masayuki Tadokoro
I think the common ground is the 2008 financial crisis and its resulting recession, which have been the deepest and longest since the 1930s. This really has hit the confidence of many ordinary citizens in their economic and political systems, and has made them susceptible to new voices, new promises, and new apparent political magicians. This is especially dangerous in winner-takes-all political systems such as those in America and Britain, for in such systems alienated minorities are poorly represented. We really have to think about whether our political systems are still able to maintain one of their most fundamental principles, which is the equality of political rights and voice.


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Dr. Masayuki Tadokoro
Professor of International Relations at Keio University, Tokyo, Japan. His primary field is international political economy, but he works also on Japanese foreign and security policy. His publications include International Political Economy (Nagoya University Press); The Dollar goes beyond “America” (Chuokoron Shinsha). He also edited with David Welch and Yoshihide Soeya, Japan as a 'Normal Country'? (Toronto U.P.)

Bill Emmott

Bill Emmott
An independent writer, lecturer and consultant on international affairs, based in Oxford and Somerset, write columns for La Stampa in Italy, Nikkei Business in Japan and Project Syndicate worldwide. He was Editor of “The Economist” from 1993 until 2006. He is now the Chairman of The Wake Up Foundation, a charity dedicated to public education about the dangers of decline in western, liberal societies, the UK's communications regulator. His book "The Sun Also Sets: the limits to Japan's economic power" was a bestseller in Japanese, with more than 300,000 copies sold. His new book, "The Fate of the West", will be published in May 2017 by Public Affairs in the US and in July in Japanese translation by Nikkei Books.