BRUSSELS –Far from settling the question of the United Kingdom’s future, the 2016 Brexit referendum and subsequent negotiations with the European Union have triggered a full-blown identity crisis and culture war in Britain. Two years after the UK electorate voted by 52 per cent to 48 per cent to withdraw from the EU, it is safe to say that former Prime Minister David Cameron’s ploy to settle a long-running niche debate within the Conservative Party has backfired spectacularly.
Brexit has left British political and social life more divided than ever. While the Brexiteers are peddling increasingly divisive – even violent – rhetoric, hundreds of thousands of “Remainers” recently marched through London, calling for a “people’s vote” to approve whatever exit deal the government proposes.
According to a new report from the UK’s National Center for Social Research, support for or opposition to Brexit is increasingly supplanting party affiliation as the defining factor in British political identities. Specifically, the researchers find that, “Nearly nine in ten members of our panel said that they were either a ‘Remainer’ or a ‘Leaver,’ whereas less than two-thirds of them claim to identify with a political party.”
British voters’ growing emotional attachment to Remain or Leave poses a serious challenge to the country’s main political parties, each of which has deep internal divisions over Brexit. And as the recent demonstration in London showed, these disagreements will not be resolved anytime soon. Ironically, the UK is now home to one of the largest grassroots pro-EU movements in Europe. So, even if the UK government can conclude withdrawal negotiations with the EU in the coming weeks, debates within Britain about the future UK-EU relationship will remain intense and protracted.
One way to bridge the divide and heal Britain’s fractured politics is to forge a close but flexible “association agreement” of the kind that the European Parliament has proposed. Association agreements are a proven method of facilitating cross-border cooperation. In…
