They’re crazy, or at least that’s how it seems to anyone who isn’t English. What would they want to go and do that for? The government and the opposition are united against it. The World Bank and the trade unions are united against it. The US and the EU are united against it. The pro-Brexit politicians are a grab bag of political opportunists (IDS, Boris, the Labour Brexiteers), chronically counter-suggestible ideologues (Gove), crypto-fascists, or in some cases, all three (Farage). But somehow 40% of Britons are convinced.
Most of us outside observers feel at a loss, unable to rationally assimilate what’s going on. This piece attempts to respond to that in the spirit of the anthropological tradition of Verstehen - to make rational a foreign practice, such as witchcraft, or Catholicism, by relating it to similar and rational processes familiar to the author. That is not to say I’m defending Brexit; I’m just doing my best to understand how someone could support it without being barking mad.
The analogy I’d like to draw is with New Zealand’s anti-nuclear policy, which came in as a manifesto promise of the Labour government in 1984. There are some dissimilarities: the anti-nuclear policy was never subjected to a referendum (if it had, it probably would have lost); it originated in left-wing rather than right-wing politics. But the latter difference is really a structural similarity: the NZ Labour party was divided over the policy in much the same way that the UK Tories are over Brexit; the policy was a compensation given to the left wing of the Labour party in return for putting up a programme of radical economic liberalisation proposed by the right.
The deep similarity is the way that NZ seemed to outsiders to be bonkers. There were never any nuclear weapons in NZ for us to ban (but the US refused to officially confirm this) so the only effect of the policy was to force the NZ government to tear up all its defence treaties in the space of a year, and to suffer diplomatic retaliation from our allies. All our allies were of course against it; international institutions were against it; the trade unions thought it was a dangerous distraction from the government’s economic programme of marketisation and deregulation. Anti-nuclear politicians waxed dew-eyed about a neutral New Zealand on the model of Sweden (completely ridiculous, because NZ, unlike Sweden, has never had the military muscle to defend itself independently). Pro-nuclear politicians concocted equally ridiculous disaster scenarios of invasion by the USSR or Indonesia. The Russians were quietly pleased. Sound familiar?
The difference, for me, is that I supported the anti-nuclear policy at the time (at the tender age of 11) and so did practically everyone I knew. The practical and economic arguments against it were beside the point. It was a matter of principle, and of national sovereignty. I hope that it’s easier to understand why someone might think that way.
What was going on in both cases, I think, is that what is motivating people is primarily political and ideological concerns, rather than practical outcomes. Or to put it in philosophical terminology, the proposed policy is intended to express, rather than to promote, certain values. This explains the alarming disconnect between popular opinion and the views of politicians. The main parties in the UK have spent the last two decades abandoning ideological politics; naturally, they find themselves out of step with voters, who have continued to have their political beliefs.
The example of the anti-nuclear policy also hints at what the UK can expect if it chooses to leave the EU. I predict a return to the social unrest of the 1980s, as the government sets about destroying and remaking its institutions on a massive scale, and at a high economic cost. It’ll be worse than NZ in the 80s, because they will suffer economic, and not just diplomatic, retaliation from their former allies. On the other hand, NZ’s anti-nuclear policy now enjoys bipartisan support - it has become a part of our national identity. Something analogous to that is surely what Brexiteers want, and, I think, have good reason to expect, 20 years down the track.
To put the point I’m making another way, there are really two issues that divide people over Britain’s role in the EU. There’s the first order issue of whether they should be in or out; and there’s a much hotter issue of process: should decisions like this be taken on ideological grounds, or on the basis of sober and unbiased economic calculation. Most pro-EU people seem to think that this issue of process is a no-brainer: of course it should be economic grounds. But why so? Surely some decisions should be made ideologically - otherwise, why bother having a democracy at all? If you want to make all policy decisions by consulting unbiased experts, then you want a Platonic polis, not a democracy. And the decision over which decisions to take on a ideological basis must itself always be taken on a ideological basis.
I certainly hope that the UK opts to remain in the EU, for the sake of my friends living there. But I also hope that whatever the outcome, it will lead to a re-engagement of the political elites with their supporters’ values.
Until September 2016 I am a Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy at Corpus Christi College and an Associate Professor in the Oxford Philosophy Faculty. From then on, I'll be a Senior Adviser at the New Zealand Ministry of Transport.
My intellectual interests are mainly in metaphysics, philosophy of language, and ethics, and of course transport policy.
