In 2013, David Cameron proposed a national referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership in the European Union, better known as Brexit. Three years later, despite believing that the majority would vote towards staying in the EU, the final outcome showed that 52% of the UK wanted to leave, and so the ever long fuster cluck known as Brexit began. The UK was given three years to create a deal between the United Kingdom and the European Union that would satisfy both parties. If a deal is accepted by March 29th of this year, the UK will officially leave the EU, and go through a short transitional period. In this time, it is predicted that the GDP will drop by 3.9%, which equates to “100 billion pounds a year by 2030,” (BBC). However, all three of Theresa May’s proposals have been denied by Commerce, and as the date comes ever closer, many are concerned about what the future looks like for the UK.
As it stands, if no deal is put forward, the UK will enter a no-deal scenario. In this case, the UK will start off its independence with a few major changes. First will be the establishment of a border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Second, border checks will be reintroduced, which would severely threaten the United Kingdom’s freeflow trade system. Lastly, the GDP would drop to 9.3%, which would not only be catastrophic for the UK, but has a predicted potential to hurt the entire planet. Because of these factors, we see a large amount of media coverage pointing towards the United Kingdom and the European Union, with some news allocated to other countries preparing for these changes.
Members of the EU are allowed to make imports and exports with other members without any tariffs applied. This made trading with other countries far more profitable, and many companies wanted to establish a foothold in the UK. The United Kingdom relied on the Unions tariff-free trade system, with over 50% of its exports going to other countries in the EU. Since the decision to leave the EU passed, income from exporting goods with the EU has dropped to 44% in 2017. If the UK does not reach a deal, it will have to start running under the WTO’s rules for trading, which will apply a 10% tax on cars and will raise all of the UK's agricultural tariffs. Parliament has already agreed upon a temporary system that would protect many of its major exports including agricultural products and cars from tariffs, but until the UK can negotiate its own trade deals with the EU and other world leaders, it would continue to suffer under these regulations. Meanwhile, many of the UK’s top manufacturing companies have begun cutting ties with the country. Such companies include Sony, Honda, Nissan, and P&O.
Worst of all, many banks have begun moving to other countries. As a result of Brexit, “$911 billion in financial assets will be moved to Europe’s largest economy by the time Britain leaves the European Union on March 29th,” (Business Insider). This loss is extremely significant, as the expected economic drop of 3% has more than doubled to 6.5%. Additionally, the United Kingdom is looking at over 14,000 job losses from the companies listed above. In the wake of the UK’s economic destruction, the rest of the world has begun to remodel itself to fit the upcoming shift. As the euro drops in value, the US dollar has begun to increase. With the US manufacturing sector reviving under the Trump presidency, this increase could mean a rise in jobs in the United States and might put us on the track of becoming less reliant on imports from China and other nations. If Brexit hits with no deal, the agility of the world economy will immediately slow down, resulting in a decrease in economic efficiency around the globe. Tax changes between states are likely to become far more common, and it’s likely that we will see a huge change in economic policymaking. How these changes will affect our current policies as well as geopolitical concerns is something we have yet to figure out.
As a direct result of the UK’s inability to formulate a deal with the EU, companies have begun leaving the UK, taking thousands of jobs away from the public. Of those that remain, with no trade deal in place, they will have to suffer from mandatory inspections slowing down trade routes, large taxation being placed on their products, and a significant wage decrease across the board. Not only will the value of the pound drop, but more products will have to be exported at a cheaper rate to meet the monetary demands of higher imports. To make matters worse, the number of products being imported will be significantly less than what the UK needs to sustain its population, resulting in a loss of everything from food to medicine to technology. As for parliament, the best scenario in the long term would be to formulate or accept the current deal before March 29th. This way, the UK would have the trade policies it needs to kick start its new economy and would be less likely to suffer from huge economic loss. Additionally, with a deal in place, mandatory inspections of all trade goods wouldn’t be put in place, keeping the status of the UK’s free flow trade system in full operation. The second-best scenario would be to take a handout provided by the European Court of Justice, which would allow the UK to revoke its withdrawal from EU succession. While this wouldn’t necessarily bring back many of the companies who have already left or invested in leaving the UK, it would give reason to stay for those who have yet to transfer their assets to another country. It also wouldn’t immediately bring the value of the pound back but would likely restore its value over time.
Unfortunately, while this option does provide many benefits, it would come with a great amount of political backlash, as parliament would be overruling the majority vote and breaking their promise of a Brexit. It is due to this backlash, as well as the indecisiveness/stubbornness of the politicians in parliament that we are on the verge of a no deal Brexit.
The theory of Constructivism revolves around the formation of a common belief that molds a state's way of thinking. Around the time that Brexit was being proposed, an influx of migrants from other EU countries began swarming into the UK. The pro-Brexit party believed that migrants were a threat to their economy and seeing as the migrants all came from EU countries, they firmly believed that by leaving the EU, the country wouldn’t be as accepting of migrant workers as it was and would work less towards providing migrants with similar rights, seeing as they weren’t UK born. This way of thinking has been common in the UK for generations and is referred to as “Sectarianism”. Many UK residents believe that they are better than people from lower classes or from other countries, simply because they weren’t born in the UK. This form of discrimination peeked when hard borders were established between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. During those times, the Northern Ireland “Troubles” bombed locations around the country over 10,000 times. Additionally, there were many cases of mass shootings by British soldiers against unarmed Irish folk, including the infamous “Bloody Sunday”, when 28 peaceful protestors were gunned down in Northern Ireland.
Suffice to say, Britain has clearly always had some troubles with sectarian views, and those came ahead once again in the Brexit vote. The sectarians proceeded to make several thoughtless remarks on how beneficial it would be to vote for pro-Brexit. In one case, they argued that EU-membership would be replaced by “new economic commerce with the whole world,” (CNBC), a fact less claim that was made simply to sway the less astute voters. The pro-Brexit party also ran a smear campaign called “Brexit: The Movie,” which focused on the large number of laws that the EU enforced on trade products. However, the movie largely misinformed the viewer on how the laws worked, associating keywords with laws to overestimate the number of regulations on normal objects. Overall, the film proved to be effective, grossing 1.5 million hits on Youtube. The party focused largely on migrants being able to claim welfare benefits and gathered a following of distressed blue-collar workers into their group. Hitching onto this gold mine of slanderous opportunities, they vilified the EU’s rulings that made it harder to deport foreign born criminals. The pro-Brexit party also had several backers in parliament, including Boris Johnson, a major figure in the Leave campaign, and Theresa May’s previous foreign secretary. To advertise his stance on Brexit, Johnson drove around a large red bus for about a month. The side of the bus had the phrase, “We send the EU 350 million pounds per week … lets fund our NHS instead,” which while technically true, was largely misrepresenting how that part of the EU worked. While the UK did provide 350 million pounds per week, after rebate, 260 million pounds were given back to the UK. In total, they would only lose about 190 million per week, which made perfect sense by GPA standards.
Another notable figure in the pro-Brexit party is Robert Blay, who was in the running for parliament when a video was released of him saying, “I think he could be our first Asian MP. If he is, I will personally put a bullet between his eyes,” in reference to one of his opposing candidates. In the same video, the candidate went on to say, “He’s in my country. He’s a f**king immigrant and I’m not putting up with that sh*t,” continuously bashing the candidate for a whole three minutes. With a drove of other candidates throwing out racist remarks including Rozanne Duncan’s “N-word” comment or Kerry Smith using the word “chinky” to describe a Chinese woman, it becomes more and more clear that this party is working on the basis of not-so-subtle racist undertones as their party platform. None could be worse though than Nigel Farage, politician and current leader of the Brexit party. Not only has Farage blatantly defended his colleagues use of racist slurs, but has unveiled his own racist photo, known as “Breaking Point”. Based off of a Nazi propaganda video from 2005, Farage’s poster features a crowd of immigrants walking in a line towards the camera. This poster was released in the wake of the Syrian crisis. Farage argues that the majority of immigrants coming into the country are not genuine refugees, and therefore, should not be allowed into the UK. His evidence for this was to simply point out that many of the immigrants in the poster were males. Not only is this ridiculously nonsensical, but it is painfully obvious that he was making a strike at Syrian refugees entering the UK in their greatest time of need.
Yet, this sickening behavior seemingly propels all platforms today. From the Trump Presidency to the Venezuela Presidency, to Nigel Farage, there is simply no end to what hate can accomplish in today’s society.
Something you might find yourself asking throughout all of the Brexit experience is, “Where does the realist perspective come into play,” which to be frank, is almost nowhere. The entire scenario of Brexit, from beginning to end, we see ample evidence of the realistic perspective coming into play, before immediately being overshadowed by something far more ridiculous that sweeps media attention out from under it. One of the best examples of this comes Michael Gove, the UK’s current environment secretary, when he went on live TV and said, “I think the people of this country have had enough of experts with organizations saying that they know what is best,” arguing that “a faith in the British people to make the right decision,” was a better choice than listening to people who use scientific research and facts to support their arguments. There were multiple times in this interview that Gove threw out a claim based on zero evidence than his personal beliefs and chastised the interviewer and the Stay party. For instance, later in the interview, the interviewer asked Gove about Boris Johnson’s bus, attempting to expose the incorrect sum given out by the pro-Brexit party. Not only did Gove defend the claim, but he declared that the UK spends “more than 350 million pounds”, an even larger inflation of the already ridiculously inflated number.
One reason to leave the EU, as previously stated, was the belief that after leaving, the “EU membership would be replaced by new economic commerce with the whole world,” (CNBC). This hopeful thinking was a main driving point of the pro-Brexit party, but when it came to backing this claim with research and analysis, the pro-Brexit party came up shorter than a halfling without a leg to stand on. When it came to its statism, despite having the majority of freedom to regulate its own government and laws, the UK was still unhappy altogether. Many people thought they were getting the short end of the stick in trade negotiations, and that the EU had too much power over the UK’s trade regulations. The pro-Brexit party used these ideas to formulate attacks, such as “Brexit: The Movie,” where they indiscriminately selected laws based on keywords to falsify how many regulations were being placed on trade products. Representatives like Gove also took minor cases of small manufacturers or businesses going under in EU membership and inflated those numbers to say the whole country was being treated this way. In terms of survival, it should be clear that for the UK to pull through the Brexit, it must either take a deal or revoke the Brexit. However, the politicians in parliament are far too worried about their own self-interests at this time to come to either of those deals. Perhaps if they hadn’t put the Brexit up as a broad national referendum and made the complicated decision a choice of the people, they wouldn’t need to make this sort of decision, but that’s neither here nor there. In the interest of self-help, the UK was already using cooperation with the EU and the WTO as a beneficial means to gain more power.
The UK was one of the top economies on the planet before Brexit, and it’s abuse of the EU’s tariff-free trade policy, as well as its many pre-established deals with the WTO, made it already very easy for it to stay as one of the top world economies. Now that they have ceased cooperation with both parties, their economy has drastically decreased, becoming one of the lowest in the world. The value of the pound has dropped significantly, and as it stands, no new deals have been made with the WTO. Overall, no instance of realism was seen in the wake of Brexit. Since its beginning, Brexit has been a malfunctioning plane slowly spiraling down into the ocean and depending on how the UK deals with this situation, by March 29th, we will see if they pull up or crash.
MLA Citations
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