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Brexit

Wolff: Will Britain head for the exit?

Michael Wolff
USA TODAY
London's Mayor Boris Johnson rides a bicycle during the launch of the London Cycle Hire bicycle program July 30, 2010. Johnson has stirred controversy by saying President Obama's Kenyan roots are behind a lack of loyalty to the United Kingdom.

What is an American to make of “Brexit,” the hard-to-pronounce movement in Britain to exit the European Union, which will have its dénouement in a national referendum June 23?

With some polls favoring an exit vote, President Obama, trying to exert American self interest, recently wandered into this increasingly bitter debate. In an effort to help the remain side (“Bremain”), Obama rather casually opined that the European Union works well enough for the U.S., and seemingly well enough for Britain, so why rock the boat? And he added, if Britain does secede from the EU, it shouldn’t look to the U.S. for help.

Obama gives U.K. 'friendly' advice: Stay in the European Union

This immediately prompted controversy about his perceived condescension and for the sense that many Brits have long had that, unlike past presidents, Obama had no particular loyalty to the Anglo-Saxon mother country. (In a cover drawing, the British satirical magazine Private Eye contrasted Obama with a bubble saying “Yes we can,” with another saying “No you can’t.”)

Boris Johnson, the popular conservative politician, London mayor and possible future British prime minister, suggested this had to do with Obama’s Kenyan ancestry and antipathy to historic colonialism, which promptly plunged Johnson into a round of accusations of racism from the left.

London mayor criticized for Obama 'part-Kenyan' remark

Johnson also brought up the bust of Winston Churchill in the White House that had unceremoniously been shipped back to the U.K. when Obama became president. That in turn led to more fact checking of contradictory statements the White House had made about the disappearing bust. He had replaced it, Obama now said, after various different accounts from the White House, with a bust of Dr. Martin Luther King. Churchill, he said, had been sent back only in the interests of avoiding clutter, which rather seemed to confirm his minimal affection for Winston — and, in general, the U.S.’s waning regard for Britain.

And yet, a British exit from Europe, however marginal an issue in the U.S., could indeed upend the world order. It might presage further exits from the EU, give Russia various new and trouble-making diplomatic openings, set trade wars in motion and result in Scotland finally leaving the UK, which might galvanize other breakaway regions in other countries.

Or not. As likely, nothing dramatic will happen. Or, put another way, it is a curious referendum in that the Brexit side does not really know what it is voting for — the outcome is entirely a mystery. It could tank the UK economy or it could boost it. But, in this, mystery and its exotic possibilities may have a stronger attraction than the status quo. People know what continued membership in the EU and the administrative thumb of Brussels is like — relatively speaking a good life, but, arguably, not an inspired or principled one.

Brexit: Treasury says U.K. could lose billions

Anyway, without knowing what the vote is actually for, and not even really opposing what it’s against — the pro-Brexits have lived peaceably and prosperously in the EU — the arguments have largely played out in subtext.

Part of that subtext is immigration. Angela Merkel’s government in Germany, which the Brexit Brits regard, no doubt rightly, as the dominant force in the EU, has opened EU member states to an unprecedented level of immigration — giving most everyone in the UK some pause. But since Brexit, and its implied opposition to EU immigration policies, is supported by the far right British parties, this has helped push the left and much of the establishment center right, including the Cameron government — all heretofore ambivalent about EU membership — firmly into the remain camp.

It is this establishment, the true north of the Cameron government, that most hotly and logically opposes Brexit. That center is deeply pro-business — that mostly means pro-financial industry, which might face the most disruption and uncertainty from leaving the EU.

It is that sort of elite, globalized banking class — remote, unaccountable, self-interested — that, as part of the subtext, the Brexits are in part standing against. In this regard, Brexit inclinations intersect with Trump and Sanders emotions.

Toby Young, a well-known British writer and conservative activist (and an old friend of mine), has accused the remains of condescending to the Brexits because Brexits are not of the urban and political elite — of whom, curiously, Young is himself a distinguished example.

In a sense, that gets to the most complex part of the subtext, the search for an identity politics, or a dissatisfaction with the identities politics now offers. For many conservatives in Britain, as for many Republicans in the U.S. — in fact, for many Democrats too — their parties' yuppification and aspirationalism represents just standard political soullessness and self-interest. Nobody is elevated.

Brexit, with its strong streak of nativism, is about a narrative or fantasy of British exceptionalism. If, on the one hand, that sounds like a kind of primitivism when expressed by the far right UKIP party, it can sound kind of uplifting, or rousingly eccentric, when expressed by Toby Young or Boris Johnson (to the Bremains, they sound merely foolish and opportunistic). Indeed, Brexit is something of a vote for or against Johnson, a representative of British uniqueness (or, as it were, foolishness).

Still, it is hard not to also interpret Brexit, in a Trumpian context, as “Make Britain great again” — at the same time, that is quite a bit more against the odds, and therefore perhaps notably more inspiring, then “Make America great again.”

It is too, and has this in common with the larger inchoate political yearnings, an effort against the platform hegemony of modern life — what the Brexits call the fundamental sovereignty issue. In a sense,, the Brexits seek to reject Brussels as Brussels itself, in the form of increasing anti-monopoly, seeks to reject the ever-greater dominance of Google.

To which Obama said fat chance. The world is as it is. So suck it up.

Wolff is an author and award-winning columnist for USA TODAY. You can follow him on Twitter: @MichaelWolffNYC.

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