In a recent article for the Telegraph, economist Steve Davies makes a fascinating prediction: over the next decade, re-joining the EU will become a right-wing or even far-right cause, while maintaining close links with the US will become a left-wing cause.
What on earth? We all know that people on the right much more likely to vote Leave in the EU referendum, while their counterparts on the left were much more likely to vote Remain. In fact, 94% of the MPs who backed Leave were from the Tories or the DUP, while 61% of those who backed Remain were from Labour, the SNP or other left-liberal parties.
Hear the man out! Davies’ argument is quite interesting. He notes that “across Europe, the trend is towards nationalist populism and ever harsher policies on immigration”. Meanwhile, the British right is increasingly defined by “opposition to a kind of cultural politics that originates in the US”, by which he means wokeness.
So as Europe becomes associated with immigration restrictionism, and the US becomes associated with things like Black Lives Matter and drag queen story hour, the British right will gradually shift their allegiance from the latter to the former.
As Davies points out, this wouldn’t be the first time there has been a switch of this kind. Back in 1983, it was Margaret Thatcher and the Conservatives who championed European integration, while Labour campaigned on leaving the European Economic Community (as it was then known). “Anti-EEC Conservatives were a small and scattered remnant,” writes Davies, “rather like today’s Lexiteers.”
Will he be proven right? As with any political forecast, it depends on many things, like who wins the next US election. But I think there’s a decent chance he will.
It’s widely agreed that the Government has made a hash of Brexit, failing to deliver on most of the potential upsides. This is particular true when it comes to immigration. Of course, reducing immigration wasn’t the only reason people voted Leave, but it was an important reason. And yet since the referendum, net migration to the UK has more than doubled! It’s hardly surprising, then, that a solid majority now says Britain was “wrong” to leave the EU.
If thanks to shoddy implementation and obscuration by the civil service, Brexit fails to live up to expectations – as seems likely – future conservative politicians may not want to be associated with it. And there could be an opening for a national populist pushing a “Britain as part of European civilisation” message.
One might object that Eurocrats – the senior politicians and bureaucrats who wield power in Brussels – would never let their beloved project get hijacked by a basket of deplorable national populists.
Yet Davies has an answer to this. He argues that if the EU wants to survive, it will have to create a real demos, “and the easiest way to do that is to emphasise a common European identity that is Christian (not Muslim or Jewish), ‘white’ (not African or Middle Eastern) and not American or Russian”. I’m not saying this is definitely going to happen, but I wouldn’t rule it out.
The main flaw in Davies’ prediction is probably the timescale. He talks about a shift happening “over the next decade” – which sounds a bit too soon to me. But it’s possible that in fifteen or twenty years, the right-wing of British politics will favour European integration.
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