34 Time June 17, 2019supposedly about membership in an economic and political
bloc had become, instead, about many things—one of them
immigration—and discussion had become bitter and polar-
ized. The arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage set a low point that
morning, grinning and joking with reporters as he posed be-
fore a gigantic poster showing a column of dark-skinned
migrants lining up to cross an E.U. border. The tagline:
Breaking pOinT: The e.u. has Failed us all. Later that
same day, a far-right extremist murdered a young British law-
maker, Jo Cox, in the street. Few British people went to bed
that night feeling anything but shock and disgust.
Brexit is a lesson in how quickly a country can degenerate
into division and factionalism, and how tenuous are the bonds
that hold us together around the vexed issue of national iden-
tity. Of those two competing representations, which one shows
the real United Kingdom—the intelligent, forward- looking, in-
clusive one articulated in that Olympic ceremony, or the insu-
lar, ungenerous one expressed on that poster? Three years after
the vote, the answer is still far from clear. Britain today is just
as divided as it was in June 2016, if not more so.One thing is certain, at least: Brexit is not primar-
ily about Britain’s membership in the European Union,
and never was. Polls conducted before 2016 show the Brit-
ish public was far more concerned with pressing issues like
housing, education, health and welfare. Instead, the narrow
majority for Leave was patched together from a grumbling
coalition of discontents that had been bubbling away be-
neath the surface of British life for at least 10 years. People
were suffering the effects of a punishing government auster-
ity program, ostensibly designed to deal with the shock of
the 2008 financial crisis. Anxieties about immigration were
being remorselessly stoked by populist newspapers. And
there was a growing mistrust of the political class in general,
after dubious expense claims by lawmakers were the subject
of a lengthy newspaper exposé in 2009.
The majority for Brexit was wafer-thin—just 2% of the
population —and casual observers may wonder how Britain
should have allowed such a radical change in its constitu-
tional and geopolitical arrangements based on such a shaky
mandate. But we Brits live in a winner-takes-all culture: our
first-past-the-post electoral system and addiction to reality-
TV contests are different symptoms
of this. We do not have the political
culture of coalitions and compro-
mises upon which our European
neighbors’ governing systems de-
pend. Our media also thrives on
drama and sensationalism, and in
the days after the referendum, it
celebrated the result with all the
drunken fervor of soccer supporters after a freak goal three
minutes into injury time. The days and weeks after the ref-
erendum vote could have provided a space for reconciliation
and calm reflection. Instead they became an occasion for fren-
zied triumphalism. The rift between Leavers and Remainers
became even more bitter and entrenched, setting the tone for
what was to come.The premiership of Theresa May
set these divisions in stone. Cho-
sen by her party to replace Cam-
eron, she did not attempt to unite
the country around this fractious
issue but instead laid down red
lines and talked in populist slogans
like “Brexit means Brexit.” As her
government twisted itself in knots
negotiating a withdrawal deal with
the E.U. leadership, her authority
slowly slipped away— especially
after the disastrous 2017 election
in which she lost her parliamen-
tary majority. By the time negoti-
ators emerged with a compromise
deal, lawmakers had long refused to
engage with the reality of the sacri-
fices Brexit would require.
At this point, a crucial fact about
Leave’s victory in June 2016 became
impossible to ignore: namely, that
it had not just been narrow, it had
been vague. During the referen-
dum, campaigners had been skillful
at stirring up resentments but had
not set out in sufficient detail the
nuts and bolts of leaving the E.U.
or what Britain’s future relation-
ship with Europe should be. When
Brexit was an ideal, nebulous, un-
defined notion, just about 52% of the electorate could coalesce
around it. When it had to be translated into political reality, no-
body could agree what “it” was meant to look like.
And so, after Parliament repeatedly rejected her deal, May
announced her resignation and became the latest Conserva-
tive Prime Minister—after Cameron, John Major and (argu-
ably) Margaret Thatcher—to have their authority destroyed
by the party’s poisoned relationship with the E.U. Now the
country must temporarily put aside the business of Brexit as
the Conservatives spend time on a wasteful and divisive cam-
paign to find a new leader and Prime Minister. And the lead-
ing contender would appear to be
the artfully shambolic former Lon-
don mayor Boris Johnson.
To understand why this should be
so, you must appreciate that there is
nothing the Brits love more than an
eccentric or, better still, a “charac-
ter.” We pride ourselves on our sense
of humor, but have rarely stopped to
think how often we use it to avoid thinking seriously about
things. It was Johnson, after all, who as a Brussels newspaper
correspondent in the early 1990s began to send back dispatches
from the E.U. making out that the whole thing was a comical
racket run by crazy bureaucrats who filled their time (and wal-
lets) drafting absurd regulations on such ephemera as the shape
of bananas on sale in our supermarkets. The myth took hold and,Essay
Brexit is not
primarily about
membership in the
E.U., and never was