Last Friday, 31 January 2020, at exactly 11pm, the United Kingdom left the European Union. This followed the result of a referendum in June 2016 when Britain voted to leave the EU and end a relationship that started 47 years ago, in 1973, when it joined what was then the European Economic Community, EEC. That referendum decision led to three-and-a-half years of tortuous exit negotiations. But, at last, on Friday, the UK finally left the EU.
It was a deeply emotional and yet momentous event. The front of No 10 Downing Street was turned into a Brexit countdown clock, which started ticking down from 10pm. Union flags lined Parliament Square. What’s more, the UK Treasury introduced 50p “Brexit coins” to mark the departure. One side of the coin bears the words “peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations”, the other side carries the map of the UK. Sajid Javid, Chancellor of the Exchequer, said: “Leaving the EU is a turning point in our history and this coin marks the beginning of this new chapter”. Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, described it as “the dawn of a new era”.
But why was leaving the EU such an epochal event that called for national celebrations and commemorative coins? After all, this is a political divorce, the dissolution of a political marriage. Well, the answer is simple: one party in the marriage, the UK, was not happy and, thus, leaving the union was for it a “free-at-last” moment. The truth is that the UK-EU political marriage was not consummated out of genuine love for each other but out of necessity. Britain was a reluctant party to the relationship in the first place.
In 1951, after the 2nd World War, when six European nations (Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany) signed the Treaty of Paris that established the European Coal and Steel, “to make war unthinkable and materially impossible”, Britain refused to join them. The UK also didn’t join them to sign the 1957 Treaty of Rome that created the European Economic Community or “Common Market”, the precursor of the European Union. Thus, Britain was not a founding member of the EU.
But six years after the creation of the EEC, Britain applied in 1963 to join, but its admission was vetoed by the French president Charles de Gaulle. Britain applied again in 1967, and de Gaulle again vetoed its application, accusing the UK of a “deep-seated hostility” towards the European project. It wasn’t until de Gaulle left office in 1969 that Britain was allowed to join the EEC in 1973. Yet, Britain’s decision to join the EEC was very divisive in the country, so much so that a referendum was held in 1975 on whether it should stay in the EEC. The fact that such a referendum had to be held just two years after the UK joined the EEC shows how attitude to the EU in Britain has long been deeply polarised. Although 67 percent voted for the UK to stay in the EEC or Common Market, the issue caused a split in the Labour Party, with one faction that was pro-Europe leaving to form the Social Democratic Party.
Given that wobbly start, it’s not surprising that Britain was not wholeheartedly committed to the European project. But what really made matters worse was that while Britain joined the EEC purely for economic reasons, the other European countries wanted a lot more than economic integration; they wanted deeper political union and a distinct European identity. This later manifested in the creation of the European Union in 1992, with many symbols of statehood: common citizenship rights, single currency, European parliament and commission, court of justice, national anthem and flag, free movement and abolition of internal border checks. The drive was towards an “ever closer union”.
But Britain did not want to be part of a European Super State. It was viscerally opposed to merging its national identity in a wider European one. Although Britain opted out of the single currency and the Schengen Agreement, which abolished internal border checks, it remained unhappy with the centralisation of powers in Brussels, the supremacy EU law over UK law and the free movement of people, which allowed citizens of other EU countries to come and live in the UK: there are currently 3m EU citizens in the UK, compared with 1.3 million British living in other EU countries. This caused resentment, and many British citizens felt they were losing their sovereignty and national identity to the supranational EU. Thus, the Leave camp’s slogan during the 2016 EU referendum campaign was “Take back control”.
If economics was the determining factor in the referendum, most British would probably not have voted to leave the EU. It is estimated that since joining the EEC in 1973, Britain’s per capita GDP has grown by 103 percent. The EU is Britain’s largest export market, with about 50 percent of UK exports going to other EU countries. But as Tim Sullivan and Ray Fisman said in an article in the Harvard Business Review, “Appeals to rational economic principles fall flat in the face of intense emotion”. And concerns about loss of sovereign, erosion of national and uncontrolled immigration always triggered intense emotions when most British, more appropriately most English, people thought about the EU.
The logic of Brexit is about taking back control to assert sovereignty and identity. That emotion is becoming increasingly powerful globally
To be sure, this is not about Europe itself. As Prime Minister Boris Johnson always says, “the UK is leaving the EU but not Europe”. In a recent article in the Financial Times entitled “No rowing back”, the author Louis de Bernieres, who voted to leave the EU, said he was “in love with Europe, but disillusioned with the EU” Citing loss of sovereignty as his reason, he said “our lives were increasingly being shaped by officials whom we had not elected”. It’s worth saying that that’s not exactly true, given that the real decision makers in the EU are elected politicians and elected parliamentarians. However, it’s undeniable that concerns about decisions affecting the lives of people at national level being taken in far-away Brussels were real and played a significant role in shaping most people’s views about the EU.
But all that is now history, Britain has left the EU. So, what next? Well, nothing much will change immediately. From Saturday, 1st February, Britain entered into an 11-month “transition period” that will end on 31 December. During this period, it will remain a member of the single market and customs union, and continue to follow EU laws, but will not be part of EU political institutions. The transition period will also be used to negotiate Britain’s future relationship with the EU. If a deal is reached, that would take effect from 1st January 2021; but if there is no deal, Britain would have to trade with the EU on onerous WTO terms. Under the Withdrawal Agreement, Britain can ask for up to two years extension of the transition period, but the UK has legislated that it would not ask for an extension; yet the European Commission has warned that 11 months is not long enough to negotiate a comprehensive deal. So, there are potential challenges ahead in the negotiations!
But here is the key takeaway. The logic of Brexit is about taking back control to assert sovereignty and identity. That emotion is becoming increasingly powerful globally. The Brexit lesson for Nigeria is that any political union that did not emerge naturally can fracture if not nurtured; its unity cannot be taken for granted. As the Bible says in Amos 3:3: “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” The UK and the EU could not agree and hence could not remain in a political marriage. Nigeria must learn the lessons of Brexit!
