Undoing Global Convergence: Brexit & The Weaponized Past
“A gasp of rancor which seems to have brought to the surface much resentment, hatred, and ill-informed debate.” (Dorling, 2019)
If mapping the precise beginnings of globalized convergence rarely motivates consensus, the identification of moments whereby divergence begins may prove clearer. The United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum of 23rd June 2016 is one such example where we might mark a definitive endpoint of empire, and stark divergence of globalized union. But it’s also the convergence, hardening and validation of nostalgic populist rhetoric based on the outcome of the vote, and increasingly our observation of what has happened since. It is a highly specific event which marks with acute self-inflicted finality the end of a century of decline in imperial power and global influence.
Transcending political affiliation and creating often violent division across age, ethnicity, education, gender, geography and economic background, Brexit stands on the nostalgic shoulders of empire in seeking to ‘take back control’ of decisions increasingly perceived to be happening without nation state consensus in Brussels. Opposed to the rise of centralized Euro-centric initiatives including common currency, military expansion, the free flow of goods and people (McKeown, 2007) and the severe economic consequences of failure to hold to the terms of membership, the United Kingdom began to actively resist the very thing it had imposed upon a third of the world’s population during the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. It wasn’t history repeating itself, but it was an example of a belief that history often rhymes (Twain, in Guillén, 2020). It asserted that the European Union had, ‘through stealth and deception’, imposed upon its nation states ‘a political union’ (Farage, in CNBC, 2016).
The Leave campaign’s political rhetoric centered around promises of more money for public resources, scaling back immigration, and accelerating freedom of trade. As the referendum approached, these sentiments began to harden and turn violent, converging into an ugly xenophobic political alignment with other nations seeking similar outcomes in 2016, notably The United States. In diverging from union, it converged with populist nostalgia where it could find it. But such isolationist and fragmentative tactics (Friedman, 1994), compounded by a global pandemic in same year as the formal withdrawal, are already showing signs of economic, societal, and political hardship. Attempts at further Scottish, Welsh and Irish devolution are accelerating, there is a rising cost of living crisis, governmental instability, frequent strike action by public services, and increases in pricing as the flow of trade subsides (McKeown, 2007). There is exponentially increased bureaucracy leading to slower, more expensive, and ultimately fewer deals. It signals a self-inflicted movement away from a globalist core and towards the periphery (Wallerstein, 2004), but exists in stark opposition to its populist rhetoric asserting the opposite.
The outcome of the referendum also gave voice and validation to those disenfranchised from the processes of globalization. It ‘gave back control’ to those left behind economically, but for whom patriotism, and a deep belief in the UK’s power in the world remained central to a sense of identity. These communities, primarily in rural areas, were identified and weaponized through the new digital tools of predictive analytics (Amer & Noukaim, 2019).
Brexit is an example of how populist rhetoric of nostalgia, and a re-arguing of the globalist disagreements of the past in service of false opportunities for the future, has led to increasing global isolation, a distancing from the economic and cultural benefits of globalized convergence, and a backwards rebalancing of the laws and migration controls of empire (McKeown, 2007). Investment is suppressed, shortages are everywhere, and very little in the Brexit prospectus offered by the Leave campaign remains, except an even deeper convergence of xenophobia, national decline, and defiant unwillingness to reverse course. It’s an undoing of globalization through a weaponized use of the past.
Latest Articles
