There exist two competing schools of thought that try to explain how "Brexit" has been allowed to happen in the uniquely-disruptive way that it has.
On one hand, there's the thinking that the referendum and the government's slide into anarchic paralysis is the result of a gradual accumulation of amassed incompetence over the years, matched with a complacency of their vaunted position: in other words, a chaotic "Brexit" was made inevitable by the mismanagement and dysfunction at the heart of British politics. In this sense, for the ideological supporters of this (delusional) thinking, "Brexit" is a "coup de grace" that sees the final self-destruction of the "elite", to replaced by something "better".
One the other, there's the argument that "Brexit" is the result of malevolent design: the "disaster capitalism" theory, that sees a group of vested interests take advantage of the opportunities presented in the unique circumstances in British politics after the financial crisis. Put in those terms, "Brexit" is an idea that has been introduced from outside the political sphere, like a bacillus uniquely-designed to poison and divide British society, ripping apart its political class in a way that no other issue could. A hundred years ago, a small group of Russian extremists were able to take control of a weak and paralyzed Russian state, turning society against itself in a civil war, and completely re-shape the country in its own image. That same merciless "Marxist" zeal of ideology seems to guide many of those who support "Brexit" in government, where the only solution to any problem is the one that seems designed to cause the most disruption.
The more obvious analysis is that the truth is somewhere in between: the inherent weakness and disconnected elite of Britain, made clear from the financial crisis onward, are taken advantage of by the "Brexit agenda". Able to easily manipulate events due to this weakness and a society already fragmented by a weak economy and an indifferent government, the establishment falls into every trap set for it.
Russian parallels
Going back to Russia a hundred years ago, some of the parallels with Britain today are disconcerting. The "Brexiteers" take the place in contemporary Britain for the Bolsheviks of Russia; modern-day ideologues hell-bent with missionary zeal. The wider social effect that the financial crisis of 2008 had on Britain was not so dissimilar from that of the 1905 revolution in Russia. Granted, 2008 did not of course lead to "revolution" and anarchy in Britain as it did in Russia in 1905, but that was due Gordon Brown's government bailing-out the banks. If that had not happened, the financial sector would have totally collapsed resulting in unprecedented social disorder, like what really happened (under a different set of factors) in Russia 103 years earlier.
Russia's government action deferred unrest and revolt in 1905; in a similar manner, Brown's actions deferred Britain's social collapse in 2008. But deferring a problem doesn't solve it. This author has written before about how the 2011 riots in England brought to mind some uncomfortable parallels with the mass social unrest in Russia in 1905, but that article was written long before "Brexit" raised its head as an issue.
"Brexit" in this way feels like a social "reckoning" for Britain's government not dealing with the many social and economic issues in the country since the financial crisis; in the same way that the social shock of Russia entering the First World War created the circumstances that allowed the Bolsheviks to take advantage of a time of chaos. In the case of modern-day Britain, however, it is the ideological hard-right of the Libertarians that is taking control of events, shaping them to their own ends.
It took twelve years - 1905 to 1917 - for the Russian central apparatus to collapse under the strain of events; in Britain, it is a period of eleven years from the time from the financial crisis to the Brexit "year zero" to come in 2019. All the signs are that the British government has no idea what it is doing when it comes to Brexit, and leaving the EU without any plan in place next year will bring the structural apparatus of the country to its knees. It is this calamity that the Libertarian "Brexiteers" (read "Marxists") plan to take full advantage of.
The "cock-up" narrative of Brexit follows the same historical trends that happened to the creaking apparatus of Imperial Russia in the run-up to the Bolshevik Revolution. Britain's economy has given the phrase "false economy" a double meaning: the government and the private sector both cutting costs, through "austerity" and the "gig economy" respectively. These twin demons have been the result of a pathology of short-term thinking, cutting costs through an ideology that ends up costing far more to society in the long-run. Equally, the other sense of Britain's "false economy" is that the economy is running, effectively, on empty; it just hasn't become obviously apparent to everyone, as long as everyone keeps on pretending otherwise. The only visible sign of the malaise has been the retail casualties on the high street, which do feel like the first victims of this insidious "disease".
Britain's economy since the financial crisis has had the worst level of growth (i.e. the worst "recovery") of all major industrialized economies. On top of that, wages have stagnated relative to inflation, and jobs are less secure than in living memory. Nobody really has any money, while private debt has spiraled. In this way, there is nothing to hold up the British economy in the face of any national crisis. With those in power stuck in their complacency, Brexit is clearly the "crisis" that no-one in the establishment is remotely qualified to handle.
Imperial Russia's economy in the run-up to the First World War was in robust shape, at least on the surface. 1905 had been a shock, but the powers-that-be had been able to keep the economy going, and the social unrest had been effectively suppressed with the heavy hand of the Imperial secret police, the Okhrana. Thus, in spite of high levels of political violence, superficially the Russian state appeared strong. However, this masked the fact that Russia in 1914 was still a backwardly-ran country with a meagre industrial base compared to its rivals, with a highly-centralized state and enormous levels of deprivation for a "major" power. Much the same can be said of Britain even today.
The "cock-up" on Russia's part in the First World War was in having a policy of supporting a wildly-ambitious (and unruly) Serbian state, and when forced into war against Austrian aggression towards Serbia, Tsar Nicholas allowed his army to mobilize against (at the time, still technically neutral) Germany as well. In this way, Russia's muddled military strategy rapidly escalated a regional war into a continental war, leading to Russia's own eventual internal implosion.
The Bolsheviks have been called by historians as a German "bacillus", planted by the Kaiser into Russia to (successfully) knock them out of the war. The "Brexit Agenda" can be called less a grassroots movement than an "astro-turf" project, in many ways also implanted by "outside interests". In the modern, post-national age, those "interests" are corporate and disparate, faceless and yet omnipresent. In the past, such "revolutions" were the cause of mass movements; today they can be the cause of narrow, shadowy interest groups, able to manipulate events behind the scenes.
The Bolshevik Revolution was a shock to the rest of the world as Russia's highly-centralized state was seen as the last place that the Marxist menace could achieve power. In a similar manner, the way in which "Brexit" has come to transform Britain from a land of careful conservative dependability, to one consumed by irrational ideological zealotry, has blind-sided all foreign observers.
The highly-centralized and deeply-unequal nature of both Imperial Russia and the British state were one of the weak points in both powers, exploited by Bolsheviks and Brexiteers respectively. This allowed a deep well of social resentment outside the capital to fester; all that was required was for someone to find a scapegoat to channel that resentment into popular support. For the Bolsheviks the enemy was the "bourgoisie"; for the Brexiteers, it was the EU.
Equally, as stated elsewhere, the cause of the Bolsheviks and the cause of the Brexiteers was only ever, in reality, a marginal cause held by an insignificant minority. It was only a specific set of events that allowed them to come to prominence, and dominate the narrative. It was the weakness of the Russian state a hundred years ago, and the British state today, that allowed this to happen.
A "cock up" by the Tsar led to his downfall by the Bolsheviks; a "cock up" by Westminster has led to the path of its potential downfall by Brexit.
No comments:
Post a Comment