Tag Archive for: Britain

Little England and not-so-Great Britain

Image courtesy of Flickr user Alan Wilson

As an Anglo-Dutchman—British mother, Dutch father—I cannot help but take Brexit rather personally. I’m not a wholehearted Euro-enthusiast, but a European Union without Britain feels like losing a limb in a terrible accident.

Not all my fellow citizens are unhappy. The Dutch anti-EU, anti-Muslim demagogue Geert Wilders tweeted: ‘Hurrah for the British! Now it is our turn.’ This kind of sentiment is more alarming, and more ominous, than Brexit’s implications for the future of the British economy. The urge to destroy can be contagious.

The United Kingdom’s image has changed literally overnight. For more than 200 years, Britain represented a certain ideal of liberty and tolerance (at least for many Europeans; Indians might have taken a somewhat different view). Anglophiles admired Britain for many reasons, including its relative openness to refugees from illiberal continental regimes. It was a place where a man of Sephardic Jewish origin, Benjamin Disraeli, could become Prime Minister. And it stood up to Hitler virtually alone in 1940.

The Hungarian-born writer Arthur Koestler, a former Communist who knew all about European political catastrophes, and was almost executed by Spanish fascists, escaped to Britain in 1940. He called his adoptive country the ‘Davos for internally bruised veterans of the totalitarian age.’

My generation, born not long after the war, grew up with myths based on truth, promoted in comic books and Hollywood movies: myths of Spitfires fighting Messerschmitts over the home counties, of Winston Churchill’s growling defiance, and Scottish bagpipers walking onto the beaches of Normandy.

The image of Britain as a country of freedom was boosted further by the youth culture of the 1960s. Spitfire pilots were replaced as vigorous symbols of liberty by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Kinks, whose music swept across Europe and the United States like a gust of fresh air. Having a British mother filled me with a naive and undeserved sense of pride. For me, despite its industrial decline, shrinking global influence, and increasingly inept football, something about Britain always remained best.

There were, of course, many reasons why 52% of those who voted backed the ‘Leave’ campaign. There are reasonable grounds for victims of industrial decline to feel aggrieved. Neither the left nor the right looked after the interests of the old working class in busted mining towns, rusting ports, and decaying smokestack cities. When those left behind by globalization and London’s Big Bang complained that immigrants were making it even harder to find jobs, they were too easily dismissed as racists.

But this cannot excuse an ugly strain of English nationalism, whipped up by Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party and cynically exploited by the Conservative Party’s Brexiteers, led by former London Mayor Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, the justice secretary in Prime Minister David Cameron’s cabinet. English xenophobia has thrived especially in areas where foreigners are rarely seen. London, where most foreigners live, voted to remain in the EU by a wide margin. Rural Cornwall, which benefits hugely from EU subsidies, voted to leave.

The most sickening irony for a European of my age and disposition lies in the way narrow-minded and dispiriting nationalism is so often expressed. Bigotry against immigrants is cloaked in the very symbols of freedom that we grew up admiring, including film clips of Spitfires and references to Churchill’s finest hour.

The wilder Brexiteers—shaven heads, national flag tattoos—resemble the English football hooligans infesting European stadiums with their particular brand of violence. But the genteel ladies and gentlemen in the shires of Little England, cheering the lies of Farage and Johnson with the kind of ecstasy once reserved for British rock stars abroad, are no less disquieting.

Many Brexiteers will say that there is no contradiction. The wartime symbols were not misplaced at all. To them, the argument for leaving the EU is no less about freedom than World War II was. ‘Brussels,’ after all, is a dictatorship, they say, and the British—or, rather, the English—are standing up for democracy. Millions of Europeans, we are told, agree with them.

It is indeed true that many Europeans take this view. But most are followers of Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, and other populist rabble-rousers, who promote plebiscites to undermine elected governments and abuse popular fears and resentments to clear their own paths to power.

The EU is not a democracy; nor does it pretend to be one. But European decisions are still made by sovereign—and, more important, elected—national governments after endless deliberation. This process is often opaque and leaves much to be desired. But the liberties of Europeans will not be better served by blowing up the institutions that were carefully constructed in the ruins of the last calamitous European war.

If Brexit triggers a Europe-wide revolt against liberal elites, it would be the first time in history that Britain leads a wave of illiberalism in Europe. This would be a great tragedy—for Britain, for Europe, and for a world in which most of the major powers already are turning toward increasingly illiberal politics.

The final irony is that the last hope for turning this tide and preserving the freedoms for which so much blood was shed probably now lies with Germany, the country that my generation grew up hating as the symbol of bloody tyranny. But, so far at least, the Germans appear to have learned the lessons of history better than a disturbing number of Brits.

The view from London: avoiding a European meltdown after Brexit

If this was victory, it certainly didn’t feel like one. The motley collection of ‘patriots’ who persuaded a narrow majority of the British electorate to vote for their country’s exit from the European Union have now gone to ground, proclaiming that it’s not their responsibility, but rather that of the British government to pick up the smouldering pieces of their national wreckage.

Meanwhile, both Britain’s ruling Conservatives and the opposition Labour parties are fumbling not only for new leaders, but also for any policy to reconnect with an electorate they no longer either control or understand. And in the rest of Europe, pointless grandstanding is the first response to Brexit: most European governments still prefer to pretend that the current crisis concerns only wayward Britain, and that the best response to the rejection of European Union integration should be more EU integration. ‘If it’s a Yes, we will say “on we go”, but if it’s a No we will say “we continue”’, as EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker once memorably explained his way of dealing with referendums in Europe.

But the reality is both more mundane and more tragic. Britain’s decision to leave the European Union is the biggest political blow to the European project of forging greater unity since World War Two. It’s also a leap into a legal dark hole, a journey through an uncharted period in European history. The way the ‘divorce’ deal between Britain and the EU is conducted will shape Europe’s character for a long time. And one wrong move by either side in the arduous negotiations which lie ahead could well doom an entire European continent to decades of mayhem.

Notwithstanding the official denials from London, the fact remains that Britain will be too preoccupied with licking its own internal wounds to be a significant actor on the world stage until at least 2020. Any government formed after Prime Minister David Cameron’s departure sometime in September or October this year will be preoccupied not only with handling the separation negotiations with the EU, but also with holding the country together by keeping the Scottish and Irish nationalists at bay.

A new general election may well be called before the end of this year. Yet even if no early ballots take place, both of the country’s main political parties will concentrate their efforts on trying to prevent populist movements such as the UK Independence Party from becoming a permanent feature of British political life, a domestic preoccupation which will be all-absorbing.

Of course, British diplomats will rediscover a sudden interest in the Commonwealth and the English-speaking world, and will emphasise Britain’s contribution to the United Nations. But at least for the next few years, this will be more of a cosmetic exercise designed to show that Britain is not bereft of international options, rather than a serious new foreign policy engagement. Finance Minister George Osborne, the architect of Britain’s ‘pivot’ to China, will soon be out of a job. But Britain’s solicitous—if not downright servile—attitude towards the Chinese will continue, if only in order to minimise the damage which Brexit will inflict on inward investment and on the position of the City of London as Europe’s top financial destination.

The snag is, however, that Britain’s weakness is also Europe’s weakness—a fact that most European leaders privately accept, but publicly refuse to acknowledge. That’s not necessarily because Britain’s decision to leave the Union is likely to be followed by copycat demands for similar referendums elsewhere in the EU, for that danger is much-exaggerated.

Still, the British example will encourage a rejectionist trend: the temptation of member states to hold ‘mini-referendums’ not about their continued membership in the EU, but about key EU obligations they no longer wish to respect. That’s what has already happened in the Netherlands, where the electorate recently rejected a trade deal between the EU and Ukraine, and that’s what’s likely to happen in Hungary later this year, when a referendum on immigration is held. The British have succeeded in killing a fundamental tenant of the EU: the ability of politicians to decide on new integration initiatives without having to refer every issue to the electorate. And that will act as a permanent damper on what the EU will be able to achieve in the future.

Ways around those difficulties do exist. The British negotiating strategy with Europe would be to keep talking for as long as possible, in the hope that, as time goes by, the Europeans would either relent and offer better conditions, or that the mood of the British electorate would change, and the UK could aim for a closer relationship with Europe. The European negotiating stance is precisely the opposite: to push for a quick resolution of the British drama, and to make sure that the British pay a heavy price for their ‘defection’.

But punishing Britain, as tempting as it may be, will be a fools’ errand. According to existing treaties, Britain can refuse to sign any deal it considers unfavourable, at least for the next two years allotted to the negotiations. So, being vengeful on the British will only increase the turmoil in Europe and may also unleash unintended consequences, such as a new rivalry between the European Union and NATO, the institution in which Britain will remain a major player, and whose importance it’s now likely to champion even more. Far better, therefore, is to conduct the divorce negotiations without drama and bitter emotions, and to allow Britain to slide out as quietly as possible, in the hope that it may actually slide back into Europe at a non-too-distant future. Anything else will hurt Europe as much as it will hurt the British.

Are the Europeans capable of such magnanimity and self-restraint? Perhaps, although all that will require European leaders who are fiendishly clever, heroically patient and amazingly visionary. And none of those qualities are in great supply in Europe at the moment.

The case for Brexit: for Britain, for Australia

To Brexit, or not to Brexit—that is the question. 

The answer will have seismic ramifications for the future of democracy, sovereignty and freedom.

Notwithstanding the potentially significant short-term transaction costs of Brexit, there’s a strong case for Brexit, both for Britons and for Australians.

Brexit is about righting a wrong that was done to the British people. Britons never gave their consent to a political union with Europe. And there’s no social contract between Britons and the European superstate; rather, European bureaucrats have conquered Britain by stealth.

Britons have, without their consent, been roped into the EU and its web of institutions and extraordinary breadth of competencies including customs, competition, monetary policy for Eurozone members, fisheries, agriculture, trade, environment, consumer protection, immigration, social policy and employment, transport, trans-European networks, energy, the areas of freedom, security and justice, public health, culture, tourism, education and youth. The EU has its own foreign minister with embassies around the world, and is developing its own defence policy, with plans for a European Army down the track if Germany gets its way.

In an understated and typically British way, Prime Minister David Cameron remarked in 2013 that Britons ‘feel that the EU is heading in a direction that they never signed up to.’

The case for Brexit is principally a case for reasserting the primacy of the great British institutions of British parliamentary sovereignty, the rule of British law and an independent British judiciary, small government and economic liberalism. Remaining part of the EU will condemn Britain to further integration into what has become an anti-democratic and illiberal European federation.

In addition to encroaching on British parliamentary democracy, the British judiciary and the British system of common law, Europe has failed to deliver on its promised prosperity with a near-decade long crisis in the Eurozone and sluggish economic growth.

Instead, European red tape abounds, stifling growth and job creation. Over 50% of UK legislation is now derived from EU law—laws which Britain must apply and over which it doesn’t have a veto. European courts dictate who Britain can deport. EU citizens and their families can live and work freely in Britain, without limitation. Britain’s net contribution to the EU is in the order of £10 billion which angers Britons who query what benefit they get from such a significant investment of taxpayer funds.

The ‘Remain’ camp invoke the good that Europe has done in bringing peace to the continent, and the dangers to regional and global stability that Brexit would bring. But is that really the case?

It’s NATO—led by the United States, not the EU—that has underwritten post-war peace in Europe and beyond. As a 28 member bloc, the EU is simply unable to make effective decisions when confronted with important and difficult issues like the Russian invasion of Ukraine or the flood of migrants from the Middle East. It’s incredibly difficult to get 28 countries to agree to any policy, and when it does, the policy is very often weak and incredibly compromised—a policy of the lowest common denominator.

If Britain continues to subject itself to a process of European decision-making, then its positions will, by definition, be diluted. That doesn’t make Britain stronger in unity with Europe; it makes Britain weaker.

Beyond Britain, there’s no doubt today’s decision will be felt globally. Freed from the EU, Britain could reassert its global leadership position as an independent liberal democracy, with a focus beyond the current tendency for EU-introspection.

Brexit would have tangible benefits for Australia’s international relations.

The benefits of a Britain–Australia free trade deal would be considerable for Australian and British exporters alike, but Britain currently can’t negotiate such a pact independently of the EU. Moreover, Brexit would restore for Australia an independent peer and sibling sharing many of the same values and systems, including parliamentary democracy and classical liberal values, as well as buttressing Australia’s interests in a range of bilateral and multilateral issues, including defence and trade. Indeed, Australia, as a former British colony, has inherited and developed the very best of Britain. The English language, British institutions, the values of Western civilisation—the rule of law, personal liberty and representative government and the common law. The decline of the British nation state and the sovereignty of its Parliament under EU overlords should be something that Australians mourn.

Britain’s freedom and sovereignty shouldn’t be the sacrificial lamb for the preservation of the EU. Let Britain’s departure be a catalyst for reform of the EU and a reclamation of democracy, sovereignty and individual freedoms. Let it also be a reminder to Australia of the importance of liberal values for a successful and prosperous nation state.

Brexit and the Corbyn conundrum

Image courtesy of Flickr user Clara

‘If the world is increasingly divided between fire fighters and arsonists then Britain has, for centuries been a fire fighter. This is no time for Britain to join the ranks of the arsonists and there should be no doubt that Brexit would be an act of arson on the international order.’

So wrote recently David Miliband, one time British Foreign Secretary, and former candidate for the leadership of the British Labour Party when it went into opposition.

Arguably, had he won that ballot against his less politically effective brother, there would be no referendum on Britain exiting the EU on 23 June. David Miliband would be Prime Minister having seen off one feckless Conservative referendum on Scottish exit from the UK from Opposition and then, by winning the main poll, canned the second.

Miliband’s passionate article went to the significant role played by Britain in contemporary global and European regional crises; the threat to the salience of the Anglo-American alliance that withdrawing the British role in European councils would pose; the confusion at a time of economic fragility that would result from a complex uncoupling. These are compelling arguments. What isn’t arguable is that if there isn’t a solid pro-European turn out of the Labour Party base, then a loss on June 23 will be a certainty.

Controversial Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was an early euro-sceptic. In his youth he voted against Britain joining. His leadership is mocked by the conservative establishment, business and political, and is tearing apart his Caucus. In the case of the latter, the most pro-European element is against him. They all understand they depend on him now.

The issue is on the table because of weak internal Conservative Party management unwilling to face down a divided parliamentary and constituency party. This poll is a product of governmental cowardice. The cost for Labour will be further scepticism about the Party among a section of the British working class who have long been unenthusiastic about Europe.

Labour has been here before during the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence. It shouldn’t have been conducted or alternatively, should have included a third option on autonomy. The government should also have permitted a broader vote from Scots living outside Scotland.

A fortnight out from that vote a howl went out for Labour to save the kingdom. Labour, led in the fight by former British PM, Gordon Brown, defeated it. Labour’s credibility among Scottish workers collapsed. In the subsequent general election Labour lost all but one of its Scottish members. This failure has been followed in the last fortnight by its fall to third place in the Scottish parliament. To rub salt in the wound, David Cameron’s outright victory in the general election was in part due to his engendering fear of the election of a Labour minority government being beholden to a Scottish National Party Westminster Parliamentary Group.

One can foresee a successful defence of British membership now fracturing a part of the Labour Party’s English base. It’s likely that some of their support would divert either to the more Eurosceptical Tories or UKIP, a party devoted to pulling Britain out of Europe. The two outcomes would be an unprecedented political reward for British conservatism’s two most feckless acts.

That Corbyn is in this decisive position is partially related to the outcome of local and regional elections in Britain a fortnight ago. Labour was expected to do badly, in part a product of dissension over Corbyn’s leadership. It didn’t do well but that’s relative. The success of Labour’s London Mayoral candidate, Sadiq Khan, the first directly elected Muslim leader in any major European city, was so spectacular it papered over everything else. It even obliged Donald Trump to say that his ban on Muslims entering the United States wouldn’t apply to Khan—a condescension Khan properly rejected.

Corbyn is still a tenuous prospect to lead Labour at the next election. But for now his Labour opponents want him to lead the fight to keep Britain in Europe. He has stated his opposition to Brexit on a least-worst option basis. However some feel his past scepticism enhances, ironically, his standing in this debate. Getting him on the hustings, though, is a struggle. He urges his supporters to blame not the EU but the Tories for problems of insecure jobs, low pay, unaffordable housing and stagnating living standards.

David Cameron alternatively hopes for a united defence behind a positive picture of European membership. He has only himself to blame for his Labour colleagues’ somewhat tepid rallying cry. Bitten once in Scotland, Labour doesn’t want to be bitten again. Corbyn’s argument is that Britain should support Labour working with European allies to advance workers’ rights and democratic accountability. The Governor of the Bank of England is warning British workers that exiting Europe could produce a recession. Certainly most of British business fears complications in accessing the European market. The city of London worries about losing its leading status. Never, it seems, has capital depended so much on the efforts of an anachronistic old socialist.

Australia has a real interest in sustaining Britain’s EU membership. If Britain leaves we will have to re-focus from London to another point of entry. The French submarine comes one way, and we go the other. But Britain is an important ally. Our interests won’t be advanced by seeing a weak Britain, probably without a Scottish component, and a very introverted polity as it tries to establish a new identity. All strength to the old socialist.

Britain’s global strategic posture: the Brexit wrecks it

It’s astonishing to see the conservative inheritors of Churchill’s mantle clamouring to escape the European Union. It‘s even more astonishing to see the looming destruction of a grand alliance—the purpose of which was to prevent the wars that smashed Europe twice in fifty years—by the forces of nationalism, xenophobia and protectionism. These were the very forces that set Europe on its road to hell in the first place.

It’s easy for nationalism to masquerade as patriotism, especially when those calling for greater sovereignty and independence are a motley collection of establishment figures, conservative eccentrics and right wing ideologues like UKIP. The ultimate test of patriotism, however, is less a stridently nationalistic independence than it is the long-term security of the nation.

That is fundamentally what a ‘Brexit’ calls into question.

The economic consequences for Britain were it to exit the EU have been pretty well canvassed in the media. The Financial Times for instance, examined three possible scenarios ranging from boom to bust, only to conclude that the economic benefit to Britain was somewhere between doubtful and dismal. And The Economist is, as one might expect, even less sanguine at Britain’s post-Brexit prospects.

If the economic downside of a Brexit is significant as many of Britain’s banking and corporate leaders suggest the political downside maybe even more damaging to both Britain and to the EU. Struggling as it is under the weight of members’ debt, their sluggish economies and an enormous refugee burden, the EU faces an uncertain future. The shift in economic, political and strategic balance from Paris to Berlin, together with separatism in Spain, the rise of extremist political groups across Europe, and an increasingly strident Russia would be further exacerbated by a British decision to quit.

Britain emerged from World War Two effectively bankrupt. But it was on the winning side. Its alliance with the US, its position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, its emergence as a Nuclear Weapon State and the gradual reconstruction of its economy afforded it a place in global affairs disproportionate to its real wealth and power. The glory of empire had well and truly faded, yet its strategic posture remained global.

It was able to prosecute the Falklands War to victory at the far end of a supply line that extended more than 12,500 kilometres. It was also able to play a significant part in both the US-led coalition that brought down Saddam Hussein (notwithstanding the attendant policy and legal doubts) and the ‘coalition of the willing’ in Afghanistan.

But, most significantly, it has been one of the cornerstones of NATO since its inception in 1949. The US, of course, has done most of the heavy lifting. But Britain’s place at the top table has served both to legitimise the continued presence of the US in Western Europe and to substantiate its own strategic position in Europe.  More than any other NATO member, Britain sustained the allied deterrence of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It also provided ballast and credibility to Europe’s ability to deal with a newly confident, ambitious and adventurist Russia following Putin’s accession to the Presidency.

In short, Britain has leveraged membership of the EU while remaining outside the Euro zone and its historical alliance with the US to create for itself a global strategic posture that is without precedent.

Britain would be putting that at risk. While it would remain a partner of the US, and would doubtless be able to maintain its presence in NATO independent of its membership of the EU, it would lack any role or relevance in the broader management of European affairs. It would need to come cap in hand to Brussels to negotiate a new trade deal, only to have its requests rebuffed by German (and French) industrial and treasury interests.

And, for its part, the US would need to look elsewhere to shore up its own strategic position in Europe. There’s no prize for guessing whither the US would turn: Germany.

Britain’s central role in Europe is of enormous geo-strategic advantage to the US as it seeks to manage an increasingly unpredictable Russia and an equally fractious group of partners in Eastern Europe. This isn’t simply a question of shared intelligence arrangements and access to British bases. Rather, Britain’s role in Europe serves in most respects to legitimise the US in the pursuit of its own global strategic interests.  A Brexit would jeopardise that relationship.

But not for long. The US is incredibly agile in securing its interests, and its increased investment in NATO would be more than matched by a significant strengthening of the bilateral relationship with Germany. While such an outcome may not sit easily with former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a strengthened partnership between the US and ‘old Europe’ would certainly change Europe’s strategic makeup. This mightn’t be a bad thing, but it certainly would be different.

Britain’s choice isn’t between change and irrelevance. Rather, it’s between strengthening its strategic position in Europe (thereby enhancing its global strategic posture) or ceding its position to Germany. To paraphrase Churchill, the only thing worse for Britain than being in Europe is not being in Europe.

‘Brexit’ is patriotic for Britons—and smart for Australia, too

Image courtesy of Flickr user slimmer_jimmer.

It’s time for Britain’s leaders to heed the words of US Army general Eric Shinseki: ‘If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less’.

The EU’s current institutions no longer meet its member states’ needs, and its glacially slow processes for reform threaten to allow Europe’s political, economic, and cultural heritage to be fatally weakened. The surprisingly strong electoral showing of the German nationalist party, Alternativen für Deutschland, provides a cautionary tale for governments that claim to ‘know better’ than the citizenry. On the other hand, an economically strong and politically liberal Britain becomes an even more attractive partner for Australia.

An independent and strong Britain holds the potential to reverse the dangerous trend toward a non-national ‘European’ army that directly threatens the viability of NATO. That’s especially important given the continued threat posed to European security by an aggressive, expansionist Russian foreign policy. The half-measures proposed by the US won’t suffice to check a determined Vladimir Putin, and only Britain has the military and moral power to unite the Europeans against him—a task impossible to accomplish as one of 28 co-equal members. In addition to a robust defence of a rules-based international order, the UK National Security Strategy and Australia’s new Defence White Paper echo each other on counterterrorism, international engagement and a desire to seek manoeuvre space between China and the US.

Equating a ‘no’ vote on the issue of Britain’s remaining a member of the EU with a Briton’s patriotic duty is illogical. The EU is the nemesis of national sovereignty and nation-state patriotism, a fact visible in the many binding ‘laws’ it enacts every year. Even Stuart Rose, champion of the ‘Remain’ movement, admits that EU policies depress the wages of British workers and disincentivise the hiring of UK citizens. One can be forgiven for concluding that the European Council would rather ‘dissolve the people and elect another’ than make meaningful procedural changes. In its imperviousness to local opposition, national custom, and (often) common sense, an EU law bears a greater similarity to a tsarist ukase than the product of parliamentary or republican democracy.

The EU bureaucracy’s insistence on its right to intervene at every level of member states’ government means that the vast majority of ordinances directly affecting daily life are foreign impositions against which British citizens have no recourse. As Michael Gove so eloquently wrote in his defence of a ‘yes’ vote, ‘… whoever is in Government in London cannot remove or reduce VAT, cannot support a steel plant through troubled times, cannot build the houses we need where they’re needed and cannot deport all the individuals who shouldn’t be in this country.’ This isn’t right, it isn’t just, and it isn’t democracy. A referendum on continued membership is the necessary and preferred solution.

In the late 19th and early 20th Century, members of the ‘progressive’ wings of the US Republican and Democratic parties succeeded in making referendum (as well as such democratic exercises as initiative, referendum and recall) a key element of progressive policies. Comparison of the June ‘Brexit’ referendum to the 1938 Anschluss plebiscite is misleading and inappropriate, since doing so implicitly equates the 1938 one-party Nazi state with the UK’s parliamentary democracy of 2016. In recent years many scholars have argued that referenda, when conducted in countries with a mature democratic political tradition, are crucial correctives for out-of-touch or out-of-control governments (see for example Butler and Ramsey, David B. Magleby, and Nathaniel A. Persily). Australia has its own legacy of referenda since federation; the fact that most failed doesn’t diminish their value as genuine expressions of popular will.  

I am gladdened that patriotic Britons now justify their actions in part by reference to the American Declaration of Independence, that ‘governments…deriv[e] their just powers from the consent of the governed.’ The Declaration also defends the people’s right to dissociate themselves from any government that has demonstrated though ‘a long train of abuses and usurpations’ that it’s less interested in fostering prosperity and freedom than in the arrogation of all power unto itself.

Finally, we should be wary of those who conflate the failed Scots bid for independence with ‘Brexit.’ A British withdrawal from the EU isn’t the equivalent of national disaggregation à la Spain, and won’t be accompanied by the same economic and security risks as Scottish secession posed.

A successful ‘Brexit’ means a revitalised UK—economically, militarily, and diplomatically. It will also present new opportunities for Australia to engage in the exercise of ‘smart power’ with a like-minded nation independent of ANZUS.

The Referendum charade

Referendums are all the rage in Europe. In June, British voters will decide whether the United Kingdom should remain in the European Union. The Hungarian government has called for a referendum on accepting its quota of refugees set by the EU. Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has already said that Hungary would resist letting them in. ‘All the terrorists are basically migrants,’ he said. The referendum is likely to go his way.

Perhaps the oddest referendum will take place in April in the Netherlands, following a successful petition campaign. The question put to Dutch citizens will be whether the Netherlands should sign up to an association agreement between the EU and Ukraine. All other EU member countries have already agreed, but without the Dutch it cannot be ratified.

One might think that the details of trade agreements and tariff barriers with Ukraine would baffle most Dutch voters, and one might also wonder why they should care enough to hold a referendum. But referendums fit the populist mood that is sweeping many countries, from Donald Trump’s America to Orbán’s Hungary.

Referendums are an example of what is known as ‘direct democracy.’ The voice of the people (or rather, the People) is not heard through their elected representatives in government, but directly through plebiscites. When Winston Churchill suggested in 1945 that the British people should vote in a referendum on whether to continue the wartime coalition government, the Labour leader Clement Attlee opposed it. He called referendums un-British and a ‘device of dictators and demagogues.’

Attlee was right. Even though referendums are sometimes used in representative democracies, as when British voters elected to stay in the European Economic Community in 1975, dictators are much keener on them. After invading Austria in 1938, Hitler asked the Austrians in a plebiscite whether they wanted to be annexed by Germany. It was a choice they could not really refuse. Despots like to be backed by plebiscites, because they do not only pretend to represent the People; they are the People.

The vogue for referendums today reflects distrust of political representatives. Normally, in a liberal democracy, we vote for men and women expecting them to study and decide on issues that most ordinary citizens have neither the time nor the knowledge to deal with themselves.

Trade agreements are typically something that voters would not be asked to concern themselves with directly. A referendum is not usually an accurate sounding of people’s rational faculties or a test of their expertise. Referendums are about gut feelings, which can be easily manipulated by demagogues. That is why demagogues like them.

So far, the Brexit debate in Britain has been almost entirely emotional, focusing on the historical greatness of Britain, the horrors of foreign tyrannies, or, conversely, fears of what might happen if the status quo were to be upset. Very few British voters have a clue about how the European Commission actually works, or the role of the European Council, but most have some feeling about Britain standing alone against Hitler, or the prospect of being ‘swamped’ by immigrants.

Usually, in a referendum, people decide on where they stand for reasons that have little to do with the question put to them. Some people in Britain might choose to leave the EU just because they don’t like Prime Minister David Cameron, who is in favour of staying in. Voters in the Netherlands and France voted against the proposed EU Constitution in 2005. Very few had probably ever read the Constitution; it is in fact an unreadable document. The ‘no’ vote stemmed from general discontent with political elites associated with ‘Brussels.’

To some extent, this was understandable—and not without justification. EU negotiations are complex and opaque to most people, and EU institutions are remote. No wonder many citizens feel that they have lost control over their political affairs. Democratic national governments look more and more impotent, and the EU is not a democracy. The desire for referendums is not only a sign of internal national divisions; it is yet another symptom of a global populist demand to ‘take back our country.’

This may be mostly delusional (outside the EU, Britain may actually have less power over its fate than if it stays in), but the crisis of confidence needs to be taken seriously. After all, even if referendums are often frivolous, their consequences are not. What happens in Ukraine is important. Britain’s exit from the EU could have devastating results not only for the UK, but for the rest of Europe, too. Hungary’s successful example of refusing to cooperate in solving the refugee crisis could provoke other countries to follow suit.

The fundamental problem is that a large number of people feel unrepresented. Old party politics, governed by old elites working traditional networks of influence, no longer give many citizens a sense of participating in a democracy. The extraordinary influence of a handful of billionaires in the US, and the lack of transparency in EU politics, aggravate this problem.

Direct democracy will not reestablish people’s confidence in their political representatives. But if a greater degree of trust is not restored, power will go to leaders who claim to speak in the People’s voice. And nothing good ever came from that.

FPDA—not fade away

Echidna on the RunThree years ago the Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA) celebrated its 40th birthday, an anniversary that sparked a flutter of international curiosity about this most eclectic of regional security frameworks. By way of animal analogy, the FPDA is an echidna among defence accords: shy, long-lived, unassuming—somewhat odd-looking. Since 2011, it has arguably reverted to type, humbly re-occupying its niche as a sub-treaty legacy agreement, on a separate track to the region’s fast-evolving security architecture. As noted by Tim Huxley in 2012, the FPDA’s ‘anachronistic’ image has tended to obscure its advantages as a unique, evolving tool in Australia’s defence diplomacy. Subsequent developments have borne out that potential, although the FPDA—in its unspectacular way—struggles to compete for attention within a menagerie of competing, ‘alpha’ strategic priorities.

Dubbed the ‘quiet achiever’ by Carl Thayer, the FPDA’s low profile belies a brisk tempo of multinational air, naval, land and command-post exercises held regularly under its auspices among Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Boilerplate-text aside, Australia’s 2013 White Paper was surprisingly effusive on the Five Power arrangements, noting that membership ‘provides Australia with a strategically important presence in Southeast Asia that augments bilateral and other multilateral engagement’. Despite this there’s little public awareness of what the FPDA is for, or the prominent role that Australia plays within it: for instance the fact that a two-star Australian Air Vice-Marshal commands the peninsula-wide Integrated Area Defence System (IADS) from the Malaysian air base at Butterworth—more than a quarter century after the last RAAF squadron was withdrawn from there. Read more