So while France’s world role appears to be defending the frontiers of Christendom, Britain’s post-Brexit leaders see their mission as reviving the 19th-century gospel of free trade. That was always a core part of the Vote Leave ideal, and it is certainly not a populist or nationalistic idea — although it is to some extent a nostalgic one.
Indeed, while the “Anglosphere” is a term with strong centre-Right Atlanticist undertones, by any real measurement the English-speaking nations are the most liberal on earth.
In continental Europe, only the small Scandinavian countries are comparable and Germany — and even more so France — are further to the Right on core progressive issues like race relations, gender equality and gay rights. (They may be more socially democratic, but that is another matter). Compare Macron’s firm opposition to the BLM iconoclasm with the British Government’s response.
If Joe Biden wins in November, the continual liberal direction of the US will accelerate, bringing the Anglosphere with it, since we have almost no immunity to American cultural trends. It is true that almost all western countries are becoming more liberal — even in Poland, where conservatives just sneaked the recent election, time may be against them — but the English-speaking world is moving at a more rapid rate. In the US, the youngest generation are way, way to the Left of their elders, while their peers in France are among the biggest supporters of the radical Right.
In Britain, despite the anguish that followed the referendum and dire warnings that foreign-born residents would flee, immigration has remained at record highs, with no signs of decline. Meanwhile attitudes to immigration and race have continued to become far more liberal since 2016. It’s strange to think that while this was happening the BBC broadcast an Agatha Christie adaptation un-subtly comparing Brexit Britain to the 1930s, a reflection of how utterly deluded a large section of the commentariat and cultural elite have become since 2016, engaged in collective political hypochondria in which every flag is a swastika just as every lump is cancer.
While Brexit and Boris Johnson have taken the wind out of national populism in Britain, it remains a much stronger force on the continent; it’s not improbable that a member of the Le Pen family will become France’s first female head of state in the coming years, while in Italy, Germany and the Netherlands populism has far from gone away.
One-third of ethnic minority Britons supported Brexit, and while people voted in that referendum for a number of reasons, some were certainly attracted to a global Britain in which Indians, Nigerians and other Commonwealth citizens might have as much of a place here as continental Europeans. The Brexit coalition played up this historical link in order to deflect accusations of racism (but then they could do so, knowing that people with strongly racist views were unlikely to vote for their opponents). The edgiest the official Vote Leave campaign ever got were the notorious adverts warning about Turks coming here, ironically, as it turns out, since the new trade deal will almost certainly mean more Turkish immigration than would have been allowed if we were in the EU. It seems unlikely that any deal with India or other substantial world economies won’t contain similar clauses.
Yet Leave voters, like Remainers, are more favourable to EU compared with non-EU immigration, and Ukip’s rise in the polls began before the post-2004 influx of eastern Europeans, during when most migration was from outside the continent. The increase in Polish immigration just made the subject more respectable to discuss.
The typical English conservative sympathetic to national populism has more in common with the values of the European Union than with the Anglosphere — both socially and, increasingly, economically. Similarly, British progressives are far more interested in the United States and its ongoing political drama than they are with what happens 22 miles across the Channel; many could name numerous black American victims of police brutality, but wouldn’t be able to pick out the Dutch prime minister in a line-up of other random tall people riding a bicycle. The US is not just more progressive than Europe, but its progressivism is more aggressive and far more proselytising. Many voters are, indeed, in the wrong camp.
From the vantage point of 2020, this thought experiment in which Leave and Remain switch sides might all seem improbable, since Brexit and Remain identities are extremely pronounced — far more so than Labour or Tory self-identification before the referendum. Indeed, Remainerism is probably the most passionate tribal identity that has emerged in England since the days when people fought over Holy Communion and transubstantiation.
Yet group identity can transform swiftly, as can tribal policy positions. Republican voters went from being pro-free trade to anti in rapid time, following the leadership of Donald Trump, and reflecting the fact that political views often follow social cues and party identity, not any particularly logical reasoning.
Back in 1997 it would have seemed ridiculous that the Conservatives would become the party of the working class, especially in the north, so it’s not inconceivable that there might be a “great realignment” on Europe, with internationalist Remainers embracing Global Britain and nationalists finding common cause with allies on the continent. Stranger things have happened, and in the 2020s, stranger things will.
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