The impact of Brexit, 2016-2026, edited by Anthony Seldon Review – Life Without the EU | History books

THis huge collection of essays by 43 different authors, including seven princes, four barons, one lady and three knights of the realm, is perhaps the closest we will ever come to quasi-formal thinking about the causes and consequences of Brexit. Its editor, Sir Anthony Seldon, is an honorary historian at 10 Downing Street and has written definitive works on successive British administrations in the twenty-first century.

However, the phrase “English nationalism” appears precisely once in its six hundred pages – a cursory reference to the line the Daily Mail took during the 2016 referendum campaign. Surprisingly, while there is a wonderful article by Eileen McHarg called “On Scotland,” there is none called “On England.” There is no attempt to provide even an overview of the tensions, contradictions and concerns within the part of the UK that Brexit won: non-metropolitan England. It seems that for a large part of the political and intellectual establishment, the English language is still the condition that does not dare to speak in its name.

This absence is important not only for understanding the recent past, but also for the immediate future of the United Kingdom. It sidesteps the more pressing question: Why, when so many of those who voted for Brexit now regard it as a failure, why is the man who did his best to make it happen a reasonable contender to be the next prime minister?

Peter Kilner, in his insightful contribution, shows that a third of those who voted for Leave now say it was a failure, and surprisingly a quarter of that group say Nigel Farage is “very” responsible for their disappointment. Slightly more of them blame Farage than the EU itself. However, Farage still sets the political agenda in England (and to some extent in Wales).

But if a distinguished contemporary historian like Seldon feels it is not worth trying to understand the nationalist motivations that led to Brexit, then Farage’s success becomes impossible to explain. The collection doesn’t even have a specific essay on it – making it, if not Hamlet without the Prince, perhaps a Punch and Judy show without Mr. Punch.

The fact that Brexit was indeed an objective failure is not worth denying. The latest independent study, from Stanford University, found that by 2025 Brexit would have reduced UK GDP by 6% to 8% compared to what it would have been. Investment contracted by 12% to 18%, while employment and productivity fell by 3% to 4%.

For all their chatter about the dawn of a new golden age, the clever Brexiteers pretty much knew something like this would happen. What they really believed was that economic pain was a price worth paying for political renewal. Taking back control, as the winning slogan said, was the actual point. Perhaps there is some nobility in this matter, for there is more to life than economics.

But as the jurist and historian Jonathan Sumption says in a rundown introduction to the book: “Britain’s ability to exercise ‘control’ over its own destiny is inevitably more limited outside the EU.” The UK remains heavily influenced by, but has no say in, EU decisions. As for immigration – seen by many voters as tangible evidence of a loss of control – Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory, reminds us that it has already risen to record levels after Brexit, which has thus failed “astonishingly to deliver on its clearest promises”.

If voters trade growth for sovereignty, they get a bad deal on both sides of the equation. Britain’s exit from the European Union did not herald the re-emergence of a liberal ruling class whose brilliance had been hindered by continental clouds. Surprisingly, former pro-Brexit Conservative MP Conor Burns wrote in his column that Simon Case, Boris Johnson’s Cabinet Secretary, was a “lightweight” – “that’s why he was appointed”.

This is amusing because Case himself also stands out for spreading blame: “The vision of a nation freed from the shackles of Brussels bureaucracy soon became a reality of muddled thinking, fruitless negotiations, parliamentary quagmire, and administrative confusion.”

Douglas Carswell, the veteran anti-EU campaigner and former UKIP MP, concludes: “The Leave vote may have won us self-government. We still have to govern ourselves well.” Six prime ministers since 2016 and a seventh on the way make one wonder whether post-Brexit Britain is governable at all.

However, disappointment was always part of the package. The nature of Brexit was that it was doomed to become an immediate lost cause – a mirage that dissipated as soon as it was approached. Victory had been taken away, and as Carswell said: “We still have the European disease.” Gisela Stewart, a former Labor MP who was prominent in the Leave campaign, believes Britain is “still overshadowed by the ghosts of fifty years of EU membership”. Paul Stevenson, communications director for the Vote Leave campaign, now describes its victory as “bittersweet”: “We managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, but then immediately allowed it to be snatched from us again.”

There is no real reckoning among Brexiteers about their failures. Burns refers to the intractable Irish border issue as “problems created by the Irish”, seemingly unaware that Northern Ireland voted to remain, and the Irish government clearly does not want Brexit to happen.

Patrick Minford, the economist who promised a golden age, wrote (in an article co-authored with Zhi Zhu) that while “Brexit would cause disruption in the short term,” its primary aim is “to improve performance in the long term.” Perhaps we should adapt to John Maynard Keynes and ask whether all Leave voters will die in the long run before they see these economic benefits. Economists Paul Johnson and Robert Johnson argue here that, in fact, “it seems unlikely that the long-run hit to national income will be less than 4 percent, and perhaps more.”

However, there is little evidence in this book that Remainers are any better at confronting the identity crisis that underlies Brexit. In her article, Susan Greenfield acknowledges that “the very important question of whether to leave or remain in the EU was somehow linked to our identity.” But (reasonably enough for a neuroscientist) she continues to think about identity only at a cognitive level. This is fascinating in itself, but it largely serves to draw attention to the absence of any real attempt to define this “one way or another” in concrete political and social terms.

To this end, one has to turn elsewhere – for example, to the popular Future of England polls conducted by the political scientists Ailsa Henderson and Richard Wynne Jones. The most recent finds Farage’s supporters ranking “being English” above “being a father” as a marker of who they believe they are.

Those for whom English is core to their identity were not happy in 2016, and they are not happier now. Henderson and Wyn Jones find them “acutely aware of what they clearly see as a stark contrast between past glories and a decadent present; an England whose eponymous national group seems to feel under siege from within and without; an England that has secured major changes (not least, Brexit) in order to allay its fears, but which remains deeply dissatisfied with the results.”

Brexit was a dishonest and self-harming response to the English question. But the great and the good seem loathe to even hear it, let alone try to provide a better answer.