Beyond The Binaries Of Brexit: Why It Is Neither A Disaster Nor A Panacea

The media hysteria, and market panic over Brexit – Britain’s vote on 23 June to leave the European Union – is overblown. It is the result of the usual western binary thinking, where if something is either good or bad, never mind that they may be two sides of the same coin, or there may be shades of grey in-between. There is a tendency to blame Brexit as some kind of return to atavistic nationalism, bigotry and anti-rational thinking.

Consider this opening paragraph of Swaminathan Aiyar’s column after the Brexit vote came in:

“Brexit heralds not just Britain’s exit from the European Union but the decline and maybe fall of the 20th century ideal of a liberal, globalised world. It heralds a 21st century ethos based on ultra-nationalism and racist xenophobia, blaming foreigners and minorities for all ills, and claiming against all logic and humanism that turning your back on the world will somehow bring back a golden past.”

There is no doubt that xenophobia has grown over the last decade-and-a-half, especially in the wake of the rise of Islamist terrorism post 9/11 and the global slowdown after 2008. There is also no doubt that globalisation now has many discontents, especially among the non-elite, and largely because economists never told us that there will be losers in the game. But to conclude that all this means a return to “ultra-nationalism” and “racist xenophobia” or that we are turning our backs to the world is hyperbole, not reality.

The journey from point A to point B in human progress is seldom a straight line.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that those who voted Brexit were harking back to a “golden past”, but isn’t this also true for alleged broadminded people driven by the milk of human kindness to presume that we live in some kind of “golden present”? There was never a golden past nor was the post-World War 20th century a flawless era of progress, progress, progress. A lot of the growth was credit-fuelled, something which had to come to an end sometime. We are paying the price for it now.

To also present Brexit as some kind of battle between young and old – since the young apparently voted 75 percent to stay – is also nonsense. In a democracy, each vote is equal. The age of the voter is useful for analysis and action, nothing more.

Looking back at the 20th century even after the world wars, we had nearly half a century of cold war, where there was mutual xenophobia between communists and capitalists. The Berlin Wall fell only in 1989. But after that it was nationalism and anti-Russian xenophobia that allowed several countries to break away from the former Soviet Union. The west encouraged this xenophobia in order to camouflage its own version of anti-Russian hysteria even after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

It was nationalism that allowed the Asian Tigers, and later China to, first, build their economies on the basis of mercantilist policies, and later join the globalisation tide when it suited them. It is also worth recalling that almost every single growth economy of Asia was an autocracy in its growth stages.

Xenophobia may have risen in the West now, but the big Asian success stories of the last 50 years were all xenophobic in character: Between Japan, China and many south-east Asian tigers, show me one country that encourages even limited immigration, an essential component of globalisation. As for the West Asians, their prosperity was driven not by competition but cartelisation in oil, not globalisation.

So liberal values were hardly the foundation on which post-war capitalism and globalisation were built.

The European Union was itself a response to the ultra-nationalisms that led to two world wars, but, once again, nationalism was just below the surface. Did the existence of the EU prevent the Scots from demanding a referendum even before Brexit? Can we call this Scotland’s xenophobia vis-à-vis England? Why do Catholics in Norther Ireland want to merge with Ireland, when Protestants don’t? Is this mutual xenophobia?

As for racism, is it something new today, or has it always existed subliminally? America abolished slavery a century-and-a-half ago, but is racism dead in America? Does it need a Donald Trump to restart it again, or is he merely articulating what the politically correct elite cannot? Has Christianity not been in conflict with Islam at the subterranean level all the time? Did the term Islamophobia not exist before Trump came into the picture? Does the mere articulation of a word to describe a bias make the bias non-existent before the invention?

Even when it comes to the EU, ask yourself: why is it that it quickly provided membership to all former Russian states, but Muslim Turkey and Kosovo are still outside it? Christian states are fast-tracked, but Muslim ones?

However, there is another side to this argument. To label all fears as xenophobia is wrong. Xenophobia and inclusiveness are also two sides of the same coin. The human instinct, developed over thousands of years of evolution, is to divide people into ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. The modern impulse to use your head over your reptilian brain is relatively new. We are by birth and cultural upbringing xenophobes; we learn to become less xenophobic by consistent training of the mind and with the help of lived experience. So regression to some forms of xenophobia cannot ever be ruled out in any society, assuming it sees an existential threat to itself or its identity.

The tendency to see one form of globalisation as rational and another as irrational is another kind of binary we can do without. Those “irrationals” who voted for Brexit are essentially asking a simple question: if globalisation and free trade and immigration are all that they are touted to be, why is it that the elite seem to be doing much better than us, and still feel the need to not pay their taxes properly? Popular history writer and former banker Sanjeev Sanyal wrote in The Economic Times  today (27 June):

“The vote for Brexit is part of a revolt against a globalised elite that is concentrated in New York, London and Silicon Valley, but also sprinkled across Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, Paris, south Mumbai and central Delhi. It includes members of the political class, business, media, NGOs and elite academia. United by Ivy League and Oxbridge education, conferences in Switzerland and webs of influence, this elite justifies itself as working ‘to make the world a better place’. The non-elite have now begun to ask why those who claim to be giving away their money to improve the world need to protect their wealth in overseas tax havens or in charitable foundations.”

The simple point is nationalism and globalisation, xenophobia and diversity are two sides of the same coin: it is concern for national advantage that allowed people to sell the idea of globalisation. Now that globalisation has created a large band of losers, some reversal to nationalism is unavoidable. But the tide will surely turn once again, when nationalism itself begins to constrict trade and growth.

It is best to see the debate beyond the binaries. Brexit is neither the beginning of a dark new age of xenophobia and narrow-mindedness, nor the panacea of all current problems. It is the beginning of an understanding on how to fix globalisation without people having to opt out.