There are two words missing from Brexit campaigners’ lexicon: Donald Trump. The Leave campaign has pulled a major Donald in recent days, masking the weakness of their economic case by repeatedly playing the immigration card. Michael Gove may have ‘shuddered’ at Nigel Farage’s anti-refugee poster, but he seems content to accept the racist votes that the United Kingdom Independence party leader attracts.
Just as Trump has revived old-fashioned nativism, so Leave has repeated the same arguments used since the 1950s against immigrants: they take jobs and homes, overwhelm services, soft liberals don’t know what is like to live with them, and they have lots of children. No wonder Trump has endorsed Brexit.
This is not a simple repeat of the Tory use of immigration as a scare tactic, what we have here is nationalism. Leave’s English nationalism resembles its Scottish counterpart with its invented grievances, paranoia, wishful thinking, and unwillingness to accept a result they don’t like.
Listening to the Leave campaign you might think that the European commission is an occupying, colonial army. Ukip’s Douglas Carswell believes that ‘We’re voting for reclaiming the principles of democratic self-determination on which the United States was founded.’ So is Farage the kippers’ George Washington?
Gove wrote that ‘Laws which govern citizens in this country are decided by politicians from other nations who we never elected and can’t throw out.’ This resembles the Scottish nationalist claim that never voted for the governments they didn’t like. Actually, they did by dint of participating in free elections. The European parliament is democratically elected. The European council and commission are composed of the representatives of democratically elected governments. These are the rules we have agreed to and abide by.
So although the Leavers fancy themselves as freedom fighters against a Europe that Boris Johnson claims subverts democracy, the EU has actually supported democracy. Without the help of the EU (and its predecessors), countries like Spain, Portugal, and Greece could easily have slid back into authoritarianism. The prospect of EU membership obliged the former Communist countries to adopt political and human rights reforms that they might otherwise have avoided. In 2000 the EU quarantined Austria after neo-Nazis entered the government and is now monitoring Hungary and Poland.
Still, just like the Donald, the Leavers enjoy their conspiracy theories. The obvious explanation for the European commission’s opposition to Brexit is that it will disrupt the European Union, for which the commission happens to have some responsibility. Gove knows better: ‘the reason the EU’s bureaucrats oppose us leaving is they fear that our success outside will only underline the scale of their failure.’ That’s right, the ugly sisters of Brussels are keeping us in the scullery because our English beauty will embarrass them.
Once we have left, however, the Leave campaign reckons we can agree a new trade deal with those envious EU colonialists by May 2020. This is no different to Alex Salmond declaring that he would take Scotland out of the United Kingdom, but keep the pound (and the BBC, and the much-cherished DVLA). Such wishful thinking is, however, of a smaller scale than expecting Mexicans to pay for Trump’s wall.
Similarly, few Leavers, like very few Scottish nationalists, want to face the economic pain of nationalism. Andrew Lilico, a pro-Brexit economist, expects 2-3 per cent of lost GDP growth, which could mean a recession. Iain Duncan Smith is willing to take the risk of more austerity. Gove, however, does not think there will be a recession if we walk out of the EU. Instead, forgetting the old saying that hope is not a plan, he has declared that ‘Britain should vote for hope.’
What if Britons, as they tend to, back the status quo? The Scottish nationalists said that the independence referendum was once in a generation, before going back on their word after they lost. The Leavers, by contrast, are threatening a new referendum even before we vote in this one. Dominic Raab will only give us a few years respite if we vote Remain. John Redwood says that if the referendum does not go his way ‘it will have solved little.’ So for all their talk about democracy, when it comes to the most basic democratic act of accepting the result of a free election, the Leavers don’t even pretend.
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Andrew Apostolou is a British historian who has managed human rights campaigns in the Middle East. He previously wrote for Progress on the Scottish independence referendum
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