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Frexit? Dexit? Auxit? No Way. Britain Is Special.
Britons’ vote to leave the European Union on June 23 incited a wave of panic among centrists across the Continent. Far-right populists pounced on the opportunity. Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s National Front, called Britain’s decision to leave the union the beginning of a “people’s spring.” Ms. Le Pen’s fellow travelers, such as Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Frauke Petry of Germany and Heinz-Christian Strache of Austria, have suggested similar referendums in their countries.
Europe’s centrist politicians are right to be nervous about the long-term consequences of a Brexit for Europe’s economy and political stability. But a Frexit, Dexit or Auxit should not be their top concern. Britain is not, and never has been, a typical member of the European Union, and in no country but Britain do populists and other Euroskeptic forces have the 51 percent of votes needed to pull their countries from the union.
Long before any talk of a Brexit, Britain was a cautious European Union member that valued its physical and cultural separation from the Continent. In the years after World War II, Britons were not eager to form an alliance led by their former enemy, Germany. When the European Coal and Steel Community, a trade organization that preceded the European Union, was formed in 1951, Britain stayed out. In 1957, London declined an invitation to be a founder of the European Economic Community, the permanent international governmental organization that created the Brussels political complex dedicated to “an ever closer union.” At that time, it included Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
Revelers sang the national anthem during Queen Elizabeth II’s 90th birthday celebrations in London last month.
CHRIS RATCLIFFE / GETTY IMAGES
And Europe didn’t always welcome Britain with open arms, either. As Britain’s postwar recovery remained sluggish, Britons looked at West Germany and France’s booming economies and thought it might be time to reconsider. But when Britain applied to join the European Economic Community — first in 1961 and again in 1967 — it was denied. France’s president, Charles de Gaulle, vetoed Britain’s membership, accusing Britain of wanting to join only for selfish economic reasons while being unwilling to commit to the necessary economic transformation required by the common market.
After Britain finally joined the common market in 1973, London’s relationship with Brussels was anything but smooth sailing. In the 1980s, as the European Economic Community grew to include Greece, Spain and Portugal and moved toward closer political integration under the European Commission’s president, the Socialist Jacques Delors, an ideological rift emerged with Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. In a famous speech in 1988, Mrs. Thatcher railed against Europe’s encroachment on national sovereignty and the notion of a “United States” of Europe. Sounding much like Ms. Le Pen today, Mrs. Thatcher declared, “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level with a European superstate exercising a new dominance from Brussels.”
Mrs. Thatcher’s successor as prime minister, John Major, negotiated the Maastricht Treaty, which established the European Union as we know it, in 1992. Mr. Major praised the treaty as one “which safeguards and advances our national interests,” but with the caveat that Britain be granted permission to remain out of plans for the common currency, the euro. Many members of Mr. Major’s Conservative Party resisted the treaty. The so-called Maastricht rebels, supported by Mrs. Thatcher, revolted against their own party over what they saw as an expansion of European power over British politics. This party infighting over the European Union, some analysts say, eventually contributed to the Conservatives’ humiliating defeat in the 1997 elections.
Perhaps because of this, Britons have long been more nationalistic than other Europeans. In 2015, 64 percent of British citizens said they would identify as British over European, compared with only 36 percent of Frenchmen, 26 percent of the Dutch and 25 percent of Germans, according to the Eurobarometer, the European Commission’s public opinion survey. Unlike Britons, in Continental Europe, the majority of citizens see themselves, at least partly, as Europeans. Polls carried out over the last decade by the Pew Research Center show similar trends. With the exception of Greece (where a Grexit vote failed), Britain was the only country where a majority wanted to see some powers returned to the national governments from the European Union, according to Pew.
Britain’s vote to leave the European Union is undoubtedly a major setback for the European project. But it is also another episode in the island’s long-running love-hate relationship with the rest of the Continent. While Europeans are not happy with the European Union’s handling of the refugee crisis or economic stagnation, Europe’s leaders should not misread this discontent as a popular desire for Brexit-style referendums. Rather, they should call out far-right populists’ political opportunism and use this moment of collective soul-searching about the future of the European Union to create policies that address the people’s concerns.
Alina Polyakova is deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and the author of “The Dark Side of European Integration.” Neil Fligstein is a professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of “Euroclash.”
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