Churchill slated to REMAIN in Parliament Square. openDemocracy. Some rights reserved.As the UK government hands across its letter to the EU triggering Article 50, a poll was published showing that the judgment British voters made on 23 June last year has remained steady. There has been a very slight movement of opinion in support of leaving. Within the generations, the differences remain as striking as they were in the vote itself: there is no majority for leaving the EU amongst those under 55. Those between 55 and 64 favour Brexit by a mere 52%. It is the over 65’s who swing the outcome as they break 59% for Leave. In contrast, the under 25s are 55% for staying in the EU and only 32% for Leave. Brexit is government of the old, by the old, for the old - and it will perish with the old. Maturity could still mean that it is the right thing to do; only in Theresa May's hands Brexit has become an attempt to restore a 17th century version of sovereignty that is bound to fail.
How long will this take, how long? The slow, drawn out process of modern aging can be interminable. Or fast. Incrementalism and sudden death exist side by side in the over 65s, so no clear prediction of when and how the nations of the United Kingdom will renew their engagement with the European Union is possible yet. Nor whether they will do so separately, jointly or in sequence. Nor how significant a change in the EU itself will be required, as it learns from its own crisis. Last week, the arch federalist Wolfgang Schäuble conceded in an interview with the Financial Times, “The federal idea has not gone away but at the moment it has no chance of being realised… there are no broad majorities to give additional shares of national sovereignty to Brussels… we have to improve… our intergovernmental methods”.
If that’s Schäuble’s view, what was the point of Britain leaving? The monster of neoliberalism and (as German finance minister) nemesis of Yanis Varoufakis is on his way out, while Varoufakis’s DiEM25 movement to reform Europe deepens its critique, proposing a European New Deal. There are therefore three ways of seeing the exchange of the British letter and the EU’s immediate response.
