Taking Stock of Brexit

UK voters have decided to leave the European Union. It is a decision that will have life-changing consequences for millions of Britons, and Europeans, for decades to come.

On Friday, the pound plummeted to its lowest level in 30 years and stock exchanges around the world fell. But the impact of the result will be more than an immediate loss of economic confidence. As was widely expected, Prime Minister David Cameron has resigned—barely a year since delivering the first Conservative victory in 23 years—pledging to stay on only for a few months in a caretaking role.

There will now be a Conservative Party leadership election, with the new leader in place in time for the party conferences in the autumn. Former Mayor of London Boris Johnson is favorite to win; however, the Conservatives have a history of choosing outsiders as leaders. There may also be pressure for the new prime minister to hold a general election to legitimize the new leadership, although there is no constitutional requirement to do so.

The Labour Party opposition will also not be immune to turbulence at the top. Many will be incensed at the distinctly underwhelming support for the European Union shown by the left-wing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose leadership has consistently been under attack since his win on an anti-establishment mandate last summer. However, with Corbyn retaining solid support among Labour members, many of whom support Brexit, it is unlikely that his MPs will be emboldened to mount a coup, and even less likely that they would be successful.

More broadly, the United Kingdom is now less united than at any time in its history. Support for “Remain” is overwhelmingly high among young voters, and proportionately against among over-50s. London and Scotland account for the large majority of pro-EU votes, with the rural Shires and former industrial heartlands strongly against. Nor did the referendum split along party lines, with strong support for Brexit among core Labour voters.

But it is in the constituent countries of the UK that this result will have the greatest and most serious impact. When Scotland narrowly rejected independence in its own referendum in 2014, the result was said to settle the matter notwithstanding any “material change” in circumstances. The Brexit vote will strengthen calls for a second Scottish referendum, which would almost certainly produce a win for the Scottish nationalists.

In Northern Ireland, Brexit will send a shiver through the hard-won peace process. The prospect of the return of a “hard border” between the North and the Republic—with check points and barricades—may be a provocation too far for moderate nationalists who had come to accept the peace agreement within the comforts of a European free travel area. Responding to the Brexit result, the nationalist Sinn Féin party has already declared that the UK government no longer has a mandate over the political future of Northern Ireland.

How has it come to this? David Cameron has reaped a crisis of his own making, assisted by a virulently right-wing press and a dearth of strong leadership in all political parties. Since the start of Cameron’s leadership in opposition he has indulged anti-EU sentiment in the media and on his own benches, unleashing forces that ultimately he could not control. His attempts at negotiating better deals within the EU were undermined by politically expedient rhetoric which both insulted EU partners and raised expectations at home that he was never going to be able to meet.

Far from being the safety-valve and reality check that he had hoped it might be, the referendum became a vehicle for populist rage at elites, austerity, bureaucracy, perceptions of powerlessness, and loss of identity that allowed the anti-EU campaign to gain a broad base of support—despite acknowledgment of the economic risks and without needing to substantiate any claims about a post-Brexit Britain.

This EU referendum campaign has been one of the most divisive and farcical in recent history, with almost all sides agreeing that new lows in politics have been reached. The campaign saw the wholesale rejection of expertise in favor of populism, the deployment of facts and figures condemned by statisticians as outright lies, the deployment of posters that accidentally or intentionally echoed Nazi propaganda, political leaders suggesting that unless the UK leaves the EU violence would be the next step, fearmongering about the prospect of World War III in Europe, predictions of the end of western civilization, and the spectacle of a flotilla of boats from rival sides clashing on the Thames as if the referendum were a rerun of the Battle of Trafalgar.

What happens next? The prime minister—whoever that may be—will invoke Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, and officially serve notice that the UK wishes to end its membership. This provides for a period of two years of negotiated exit. There will be two principle points to negotiate: how to disentangle the UK from the EU’s treaties, budget, decisions, and directives; and a new relationship with the EU and, in particular, the free market.

But securing such agreements will likely take more than the two years allowed, and possibly as much as a decade. European Union leaders fearful of the existential threat of a domino effect will be in no mood to offer generous terms of divorce. Without an agreement, out will mean completely out.

The ideals of an open society are still alive in the UK, and have strong roots that extend far into history, but these values face severe challenges over the next few years and decades. The day before the vote, I attended a memorial in London for Jo Cox MP, a friend of mine and many in our field, who was murdered serving her constituents last week.

Her murderer may have had mental health problems, but his justification of “death to traitors” suggests that the tone of debate has affected parts of society in ways that should have been predicted. When headlines continually shout that a country is at breaking point, it is no wonder that people will eventually break.

Jo’s death momentarily halted the campaign and sparked some national soul-searching on the state of rhetoric, respect, and civility in our politics and society. Among the mourners in Trafalgar Square on Wednesday was Malala Yousafzai, who remarked with typical understated delivery on the inevitable futility of hate and division, and called for faith in the promise that we have more that unites us than divides us. But the UK is far from united and faces an extremely difficult—and lonely—path ahead.