Britain’s disruptive vote…

THE United Kingdom has, by a narrow margin of 1,219,501, decided to leave the European Union. This is a deeply unsettling and disruptive vote and its consequences are already being felt across the world. It will be weeks of uncertainty and confusion before the British political establishment itself would be able to figure out how to proceed on the divorce. Details of the vote revealed a nation fractured and divided down the middle. The kind of anchored equilibrium that characterised the English society, politics and economics for a century appears to have dissolved within a fortnight. 

Prime Minister David Cameron, who led the ‘stay’ campaign, had taken a gamble in calling for the referendum — and, has, now, lost it. This man was voted back to power only a year ago and handed a sturdy mandate. He now stands rejected.  He has been left with no choice but to step down. Till the Conservative Party finds a new leader, Cameron would remain a wounded and crippled Prime Minister. The formal leadership of the Labour Party, too, stands diminished. The Labour Party also favoured a continuation in the European Union but it never demonstrated sufficient energy or verve in its advocacy. Its internal divisions and factionalism would get further aggravated. The two established parties should feel soundly rebuked by the voter. 

Thursday’s ‘out’ vote is deeply troubling because it represents a symbolically potent victory for politics of anger, hate and xenophobia. The ‘out’ campaign was openly nasty and ugly; it was directed at the average British voter’s fear of the immigrant. The ‘out’ success will give a decided fillip to all the right-wing political leaders and outfits in Europe and beyond. It would be noted that the British voter also spurned President Obama’s advice to ‘stay’, whereas the Republican presumptive nominee, Donald Trump, had championed an ‘out’ vote. The British voter had unwittingly bestowed some kind of respectability on all kinds of demagogues around the world, who would now feel emboldened enough to invoke narrow nationalism and isolationism to crank up a sectarian agenda in their respective domestic politics. The voices of openness, pluralism and tolerance have suffered a definite setback. It is a defining moment — and, not just in England.