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\u003cp\u003eIn early 2017, at gatherings of the globalist elite, a new word could be heard – ‘Trumpandbrexit’. It captured the idea that the two shocking events of the previous year – the Leave victory in the UK referendum on membership in the European Union and Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 US presidential election – were part of a single mysterious phenomenon that the elite was ill-equipped to understand. Trumpandbrexit appeared as a popular revolt against their most cherished values: multilateralism and international cooperation, liberalism and human rights, open borders and free trade. As the US and UK had historically been two of the most energetic promoters of those values, the rebuff was both distressing and unfathomable. Might Trumpandbrexit be the vanguard of a movement threatening all that had been achieved in the Western world since 1945?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis elite feared that the nationalist virus might spread. In 2015, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany had accepted that putting up barriers to those desperate to flee the wars of the Middle East and North Africa was unconscionable, but also probably futile. The resultant surge of migration into EU territory had galvanised rightist parties. It was not inconceivable that these parties might win elections in all parts of Europe. In 2017, the challenge was beaten back first in the Netherlands, then France and, somewhat less convincingly, in Germany. But it was hard to ignore the harsher tone that had entered into the politics of many countries, and that in some cases intolerant nationalists were in power or getting closer.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe phenomenon could be dramatised as an existential struggle across the Western world between the liberal and illiberal, the global and the parochial, the open and the closed, and the broad-minded and the mean-spirited. It pitted the optimism of big cities against the pessimism of small towns. But presenting the struggle as one between the enlightened and the bigoted, lamenting the ease with which populist demagogues had beguiled those from the poorer, less educated, less travelled and more elderly sections of society, risked patronising and caricaturing these people, and missed the complexity of the phenomenon and the contingent and unique features of the different national settings. Popular grievances were expressed in a variety of ways, in some cases via the far left instead of the far right. Most importantly, there were good reasons for people to be cross. Many had been left behind by the transformational economic changes of recent decades and were then badly hit by the financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath. They saw the wealthy as benefiting from cheap immigrant labour and from the low interest rates that boosted the value of their assets. Levels of inequality were as bad as ever.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe wellsprings of Trump and Brexit did show similarities. These lay not only in migration and the financial crisis, but also in the US and UK’s fraught collaborations on the ‘war on terror’ and the endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. There was even the shared figure of Nigel Farage, who had made his career pushing the case for Leave in the UK and who turned up in 2016 as a confidant of Trump. But the differences were also significant.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTrump won an election, and with a Republican Congress was able to pursue an agenda that was true to his instincts. Subsequent elections could produce reversals of some of his policies even if their effects lingered. Brexit, by contrast, involved a simple in–out proposition. The Leave camp mounted two quite separate campaigns – an official one going for the higher political ground and Farage’s playing on fears of yet more immigrants. Both offered reassurances to uncertain voters that the Leave proposition was far less radical than it might appear. The Leave victory was therefore quite different from Trump’s. It reflected a disgruntled mood but not a coherent philosophy. After the vote, the most enthusiastic Leavers could not claim a mandate for any particular sort of Brexit. Some insisted that 17.4 million people had voted for a sharp break with all EU institutions and practices no matter what. Others argued that, in practice, the ties were bound to stay close, and that the country was merely giving itself a bit more freedom of manoeuvre without cutting itself off from all mutually beneficial trading relations.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eBritish confusion\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCompounding this lack of underlying clarity on the meaning of the project was the speed with which the political class embraced it. Sensing the extent of popular anger, it was loath to dismiss the result as an aberration and work immediately to overturn it. Not respecting this exercise of democracy risked aggravating public cynicism. In retrospect, a new and different debate was now needed, focused not on what had just happened, but on what needed to be done to implement the result of the referendum. Looking forward, this debate might have been informed by a realistic appraisal of the complexity of the task and the range of issues that must now be addressed, set against not only the interests of the UK but also those of the remaining 27 members of the EU.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis debate did not arise for a number of reasons, but the main one was the uneasy consensus behind the project. Those in charge were divided on its meaning, on a spectrum from the hardest to the softest versions, and so was the opposition. Seeking a definitive answer to the question of what it was all about risked opening up divisions and alienating supporters. Though both leaders of the two main political parties supported Remain, they were both always lukewarm in this position. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was on record rejecting the EU as a restraint on a proper socialist platform. Theresa May, as home secretary, had tried to cut back on migration and was aware of the limits on what she could do while the UK was still a member of the EU’s single market. She became prime minister mainly on account of her rivals’ self-destruction, and was not seriously challenged on how she saw the project being taken forward. Her slogan ‘Brexit means Brexit’ was a means of reassuring Leavers that she would not let them down, and of asserting her authority over the Conservative Party, but its banality underscored the lack of clear, agreed objectives and principles informing the project. Both parties described desirable outcomes while ducking questions of whether they were at all negotiable, as if pointing out legal and technical difficulties were bad form and self-defeating. The administrative class in particular saw their task as largely one of damage limitation. Some ardent Remainers were still in key positions in both the cabinet and shadow cabinet. Accordingly, the consensus encompassed varying degrees of enthusiasm and high degrees of blandness.\u003c/p\u003e","className":"richtext reading--content font-secondary"}), document.getElementById("react_gLTHFbz4ukO7ucwtZmfPw"))});
\u003cp\u003eOn a day that Brexit has brought more turmoil to British politics, Lawrence Freedman reflects on how the UK reached this juncture.\u003c/p\u003e
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