My thoughts on BREXIT: History is written by the victors
Statue of Cecil John Rhodes, Kimberley Club, 2014. Flickr/ flowcomm. Some rights reserved.In the days that have
followed the shock result of the UK’s referendum on EU membership, a profound
sense of foreboding has settled across liberal and progressive Britain.
Whatever expectations the British people may have entertained throughout the course
of the campaign, it is now painfully clear that the primary result of the
referendum will be to hand control to a small number of right-wing demagogues
dedicated to reversing the advance of modern cosmopolitan Britain. And this
rag-tag cabal looks likely to set the narrative of democratic politics in
Britain for years to come. Amidst flawlessly-crafted cries of ‘we want our
country back’, Britain will be sold a bombastic, populist daydream designed to
efface the memory of an inclusive, egalitarian, and outward-looking liberal
ideal. Brexiteers will seek to confine progressive politics to the dustbin of
history.
Rhodes Must Fall
Amazement at the Leave
victory is all the more resonant because it reflects such a stark contrast with
what came before. Over the last twelve months, left-wing activists
demonstrating in universities and on the streets have been pushing the
boundaries of the broader liberal-progressive ideal. The Rhodes Must Fall (RMF)
movement provoked controversy over its uncompromising demand to end the memorialisation
of historic architect of British imperialism, Cecil B. Rhodes, within college
campuses and throughout public spaces. RMF argued that statues of nationalist
demagogue Rhodes had no place in modern, multicultural Britain. But their
arguments generated a staunch liberal defence of the integrity of history, and
a refusal to be reshaped by a radical political agenda. Barely three months
ago, the battle for tomorrow was being played out in disagreements between
liberal and progressive groups aiming to come to terms with a bloody imperial
past.
Today, Britain is faced
with the rise of the Cecil Rhodes of the twenty-first century. Liberals are
dumbfounded by a living revival of xenophobic populism among prominent
right-wing architects of Brexit. And neither the centre, nor the left, has
fully come to terms with this unwelcome shift in the political reality.
Post-referendum
analysis has focused on the revelation that many who voted to leave the EU did
so because they felt left behind by the pace of globalisation, or ignored by
the trans-national political elite. Writers have lamented the fact that the
masses were primed to swallow the rhetoric of the Brexiteers because of the
failings of a distant progressive discourse, and have called for greater outreach
and education in these communities. And this observation will undoubtedly be
important for social reconstruction in the years to come.
But it is imperative
not to lose sight of the way that the leaders of the leave campaign used
popular discontent in order to manipulate democracy in pursuit of their own
political goals, and in order to legitimise a political culture that challenges
the survival of liberal and progressive ideals. Brexiteers continue to stoke up
aggressive nationalism because they wish to displace arguments grounded in
fairness and the equitable redistribution of wealth from common political
discourse.
Tattered remnants
Over a hundred years
ago, the most vocal champions of imperialism sought to employ the same
techniques. Cecil Rhodes argued for a politics centred on expansionist
nationalism in order to ‘save the forty million inhabitants of the United
Kingdom from a bloody civil war’, caused by popular resentment of social
inequality and widespread poverty. Remarkably, the argument that Rhodes put
forward not only served his own financial interests (in the African colony that
was soon to bear his name); it also served the interests of a broader political
culture saturated with the exploitative values of finance capitalism. Rhodes
sought to channel the enthusiasm of the nascent democracy in Britain towards a
powerful assertion of national superiority, in order to distract the masses
from their own exploitation, derail plans to redress economic inequality
through social welfare reform, and legitimise an economic agenda pursuing the
interests of a small financial elite.
Post-Brexit Britain
faces the threat of an unholy alliance of the right, inspired by a similar
ideological agenda. During the campaign, leading Brexiteers used misleading
campaign promises (since disowned) and jingoistic appeals to national
self-interest in order to whip up a storm of public enthusiasm for their own
vision of an ‘independent’ Britain. They campaigned for an end to EU regulation
on the grounds that this would benefit industry (rather than the everyday
consumer). And – in interviews before and after the referendum result –
they betrayed a troubling ambivalence over the future of the NHS and the
welfare state.
The leaders of the
leave campaign have ushered in a sectional political agenda, justified within a
culture of economic and political nationalism. Liberals and the left are
therefore faced with the very real threat of a contemporary Cecil Rhodes. And
yet, the greatest danger for progressive politics lies with the apparent
triumph of a divisive, xenophobic political culture that seeks to dominate and
shape British political discourse. The right-wing bluster of the Brexit
campaign has begun to displace the progressive political culture that emerged
from the tattered remnants of Britain’s imperial identity in the second half of
the twentieth century, built on fairness, equality of opportunity, and
collective responsibility. Brexit has elevated an atomistic vision of human
nature fixated on sovereignty and the fear of the other – which can only be
embodied in moral individuation and isolation.
Crucially, this
bombastic political culture did not arise overnight, but emerged gradually over
the course of many decades – in Parliamentary posturing against the European
Commission, and in paranoia over immigration whipped up by the less scrupulous
sections of the tabloid press. It does not reflect a totally coordinated (or
even conscious) programme. The suspicion of the foreigner, and the hostility
towards ‘the experts’, that has grown up among thoughtful Brexiteers is not the
effect of political sleight-of-hand. Rather, it is part of pervasive
reactionary mindset, which is simultaneously modern and archaic; which wants to
reinvent Britain, and to drag it back to a fictional golden age assured by
national virility and control. Brexit has revealed a culture war, which the
left has been quietly losing.
Post-Brexit Britain
Liberals and
progressives are now facing a clear threat to their common existence: a
powerful politics of identity that aims to efface the memory of outward-looking
and inclusive Britain. It is a politics that seeks to hijack democracy – and
use it to dictate the terms of a great referendum defeat. How can centrists and
leftists confront this challenge in post-Brexit Britain? In the late-nineteenth
and early-twentieth centuries, Liberal and Socialist parties combined forces in
an electoral alliance in order to counter the potent nationalist appeal
employed by Rhodes and his followers. And a progressive alliance of Labour, the
Liberal Democrats, and the Greens could do much to ensure the integrity of
progressive politics in Britain. Ultimately, however, the survival of
progressive culture will depend on the affirmation of shared values, and a
common struggle to define an alternative, cosmopolitan future.
Liberals and the left
must be willing to put the squabbles of yesterday to one side, in order to
avoid being written out of history entirely. Brexiteers must fall, along with
the divisive and xenophobic culture that they represent.