Brexit is the climax of a 75-year collective nervous breakdown — it’s time to look in the mirror
By: Lee Williscroft-Ferris
Tags: No Deal Brexit, France, European Union, Brexit, United Kingdom

It has always struck me that the UK (with side-eye fixed on England) suffers from a self-confidence that exceeds its stature and a lack of self-awareness rivalling even the most deluded X Factor contestant. Nothing exemplifies this as transparently as the Brexit calamity of the last four years.

Britain likes nothing more than to sing its own praises, from the exaggerated references to the ‘mother of all Parliaments’ to the much-repeated mantra that the UK is ‘the most successful family of nations in the world’. Both of these claims belie a critical democratic deficit and inequality festering at the heart of a country tearing itself asunder but refusing to look in the mirror and ask itself why.

One does not need to dig especially deep to locate evidence of this communal midlife crisis. Conservative MPs like Daniel Kawczynski and Andrew Bridgen, both vehement Brexiteers, have both used their social media platforms recently to indulge in extraordinary sabre-rattling. The target of their anger? France. While Kawczynski called for the Royal Navy to be deployed against French fishing vessels in the Channel immediately after an increasingly likely no-deal Brexit, Bridgen took to Twitter to imply that France’s decision to close its border with the UK to protect itself against a new strain of COVID-19 was, in fact, a ploy to blackmail us into a less favourable trade deal. Both assertions would be laughable were we not in such a desperate predicament.

In many ways, it’s unsurprising that France and Germany often find themselves the focus of Brexiteer foot-stomping. After all, both countries are self-confident, outward-looking nations with hugely successful economies. In France’s case, however, there is an added ingredient in the cauldron of bile stirred by the likes of Kawczynski and Bridgen. Unlike Britain, France is capable of being immensely proud of its national identity, of flying its flag and singing La Marseillaise with aplomb, and of closely identifying with its neighbours and accepting the realities of a globalised 21st-Century world. This riles the Brextremists because their warped interpretation of ‘sovereignty’ is as subtle as a sledgehammer and coupled with a far-right populist agenda emanating from an abject failure to accept the decline of empire and the evolution of our role on the international stage.

It was always inevitable, therefore, that France, and Emmanuel Macron personally, would bear the brunt of Brexiteer deflection. France’s refusal to sacrifice its coastal communities on the Brexit bonfire has led to the kind of xenophobic headlines that shame us collectively. The suggestion by one national newspaper that Macron contracting COVID is a form of ‘karma’ for his obstinance is an utter disgrace.

Yet, despite decades of passive-aggressive sniping from the sidelines as a reluctant member of the European Union followed by our post-referendum spiral into outright jingoism, nationalism, isolationism and xenophobia, our European neighbours have maintained a palpable pragmatism, unity and level-headedness in the face of relentless provocation. This refusal to ‘rise to the bait’ or adopt unreasonable positions out of spite exasperates the Brextremists, who want nothing more than a tit-for-tat exchange of hostilities with our nearest neighbours and largest trading partners. Angela Merkel’s characteristic coolness in response to baseless personal attacks and European leaders unifying around a resolute rejection of Boris Johnson’s increasingly desperate attempts at a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy stand in stark contrast to the ever more facile, juvenile approach adopted by the Conservatives and their client media mouthpieces.

Anecdotally, I see none of the xenophobic spite that characterises Brexit in the response of European friends. Reactions to the progressively ludicrous acts in the Brexit panto range from sympathetic pity to sheer bewilderment that a country like the UK (typically seen, rightly or wrongly, as a bastion of common sense and rationality) would choose to damage its own economy by erecting extreme barriers to trade where none previously existed, while curtailing its citizens’ freedoms by taking a razor-thin referendum outcome and exploiting it to the most hardcore manifestation possible. Proponents of Brexit, conversely, twist any expression of genuine regret at the UK’s departure into the profoundly offensive view that countries like France, Germany, Italy and Spain will simply ‘miss our money’. We are like the schoolchild who simply cannot accept praise, instead reacting negatively to positivity lest anyone should interpret openness as weakness.

Brexiteers will not back down in the face of a tsunami of evidence that their pet project is an unmitigated catastrophe of criminal proportions. Instead, they will persist in playing to the gallery by obsessing about fishing (which accounts for less than 0.1% of GDP) and hypocritically and arrogantly demanding that the EU abandon the core principle of the European project — the integrity of its Single Market — while at the same time calling upon the other parties to respect their arbitrary, fantastical perception of the notion of sovereignty.

We stand on the precipice of a chaotic, no-deal exit from the transition period because a national nervous breakdown 75 years in the making has reached its tragic climax. Having never accepted our diminished role in the global arena in the post-war period, our collective psyche is dominated by a destructive blend of rose-tinted nostalgia, a political system marred by a lack of meaningful representation and a deep mistrust of the ‘outsider’. Not until the UK acknowledges its deep-rooted issues and finds the backbone to implement the changes it so desperately needs will the gaping wounds be healed and this national midlife crisis end.

@MXOFO