Yesterday marked ten years since the successful Brexit vote. That day helped supercharge what had been an already-growing wave of populism into a tsunami, which in turn washed over Britain and the wider West.
But it was the day after Brexit which marks, for Britain and the wider West, an anniversary which is nearly as significant: The reaction to Brexit. Because all the chaos, all the destruction of institutional trust and norms – all of it did not have to happen had reactions been different. Everything that happened after the vote – recalcitrant establishments refusing to accept the changes voters were trying to force on them to the collapse of the old international order – was due to a failure truly to grapple with the shifts going on in the Western political system.
The day after Brexit, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron resigned; having opposed the referendum and publicly campaigned against it, he felt he could not fairly carry out its result. Quickly, it became obvious that the new leader would be Theresa May, who had also opposed Brexit, and not Boris Johnson, who had been the de facto leader of the Brexit campaign.
One of the reasons why Johnson was not able to become prime minister in 2016 was because he was unable to get enough support from the establishmentarians who, loudly or quietly, did not want Brexit to happen. But he also was unable because of splits in the Right, with individuals like Michael Gove splintering Brexit supporters. As a result, Britain would not get a leader supportive of Brexit for over three years after the vote, when Johnson finally became prime minister after May – who never believed in the Brexit project – failed to land a deal.
But the chaos did not end there. Ten years on, the United Kingdom has gone through six prime ministers, with Keir Starmer’s recent resignation announcement (in that time, Italy – famous for churning through their prime ministers – went through five). But the United Kingdom is not alone: Austria went through seven and Bulgaria six.
Even presidential republics have had issues forming steady governments. France has ripped through their prime ministers: Emmanuel Macron has had seven prime ministers since taking office. His previous two presidential successors – Nicholas Sarkozy and François Hollande, each of whom served one term – combined had only four. Plus, Macron is toxically unpopular and has been for most of his term, having managed to win re-election thanks to a poor opponent in Marine Le Pen.
The United States has likewise had issues with political stability. No Speaker of the House has served for more than four years straight since the early 2010s. And the White House has swapped back-and-forth: From Democrats to Republicans to Democrats to Republicans from 2012 until today. The last time the White House went back-and-forth in three successive presidential elections? The 1880s.
There are many reasons the entire West is unstable, all of which are reflected in the metaphor of Brexit. Partially, instability is due to an establishment which was totally unprepared for the people to lose faith in them. Had they assumed the Brexit referendum could actually pass, they would likely have framed it differently, such as not allowing such a momentous vote to go forward using an up-or-down, 50 per cent-plus-1 vote system.
They were also unwilling to accept the results. For years, major figures argued the vote was illegitimate, due to having been so narrowly won. Anti-Brexiteers pushed a “People’s Vote,” a second referendum which would have essentially just been a repeat of the first, and as late as 2019, the Labour Party was running on a manifesto which would have seen their party launch another referendum had they won, asking voters to support whatever deal they came up with or remaining in the EU – which would have had the effect of reducing the actual Brexit referendum to a mere question of whether or not the UK should look into leaving.
Across the Atlantic, President Donald Trump’s entire first term was marred with accusations of “possible collusion” between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. The entire thing was a hoax, pushed by individuals who were totally unwilling to accept Trumps’ victory as legitimate. A multi-year investigation by Robert Muller, who had been treated as something of a saint by anti-Trump figures, failed to uncover any such collusion. In the 2020 election, there was a comprehensive effort by Big Tech, government agencies, and other figures to wrest power away from Trump. This, in contrast, is no hoax: They openly bragged about it in the pages of Time.
Austria has also been a victim of recalcitrant establishments. An unwillingness to work with the Freedom Party or respect its growing popularity has created a succession of governments which only exist due to disliking the Freedom Party: Unlikely combinations like the centre-right People’s Party and the Greens, or the People’s Party, centre-left Social Democrats, and the centrist NEOS, all requiring contortions and failing to make real change, all while voters were desperate for it.
But establishment recalcitrance is not the only reason. The other was arguably defined by Henry Kissinger, when he was discussing the 45th and, later, 47th President of the United States: “I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretences.”
Brexit was a break with the old liberal international order, a shot into the heart of the notion that humanity was pre-ordained to walk toward supranationalism. As was President Trump’s victory in 2016, proving that America was not destined to stay on the path of free trade and holding up the international order forever. As was the Freedom Party’s rise and win in Austria’s recent elections, proving that German-speaking peoples had not permanently turned from right-populism.
But all of this – the instability, the degradation of trust in Western institutions, the shredding of societal fabric – did not have to happen. After Brexit our elites could have accepted reality and shaped policy around it.
But they didn’t.
Instead, they shaped policy around a reality which no longer existed, rendering it a guaranteed failure. They refused to see that the previous era was ending, and instead sought to hold up the previous age – while refusing to see that they were already standing in its rubble.
And their failure to grapple with this reality started the day after Brexit.
