Great essay. What escaped brexit voters... if not proposers... was that our sovereignty is predicated upon our ability to project power and the lenses through which it is magnified. Our influence in Washington or Beijing or bloody anywhere was directly connected to our place at particular tables. But our soft power was trampled beneath the yearning for alpha male belligerence... our diplomatic clout strangled by nationalism... the shared empire of previous colonials and its global vestiges were abandoned for dumb entitlement... and Putin laughed and MAGA populism got the royal assent... as Commonwealth graves were abandoned by global Brits.
One thing not discussed that I'd like to see added if you ever redo it - why didn't Cameron attempt to get Parliament to pull his "emergency brake" unilaterally? My assumption is that he didn't because he believed that the risk of the EU excluding us from parts of the benefits of membership was higher than the risk of not pulling the emergency brake, and thus that "leaving the EU to recover this sovereignty" was the wrong thing for people to take away from Cameron's failure to pull the emergency brake.
Yes, pretty much that. It would have drawn huge attention to the fact he can't legally stop EU migration and that his sovereign government would just be overruled. A gift to Leavers.
If I can phrase it slightly differently; had Cameron known up-front that his failure to "pull the emergency brake" would have resulted in us leaving the EU, he might have gambled on pulling the emergency brake, and later being penalised by the EU for breaking the rules, because he'd have achieved his short term goal.
The fact that the EU would then penalise the UK for breaking the rules would be a later problem, true, but he'd at least have a chance of riding out the opposition of his Eurosceptics, having done what he set out to do.
Great essay. What escaped brexit voters... if not proposers... was that our sovereignty is predicated upon our ability to project power and the lenses through which it is magnified. Our influence in Washington or Beijing or bloody anywhere was directly connected to our place at particular tables. But our soft power was trampled beneath the yearning for alpha male belligerence... our diplomatic clout strangled by nationalism... the shared empire of previous colonials and its global vestiges were abandoned for dumb entitlement... and Putin laughed and MAGA populism got the royal assent... as Commonwealth graves were abandoned by global Brits.
This was an interesting essay - thanks!
One thing not discussed that I'd like to see added if you ever redo it - why didn't Cameron attempt to get Parliament to pull his "emergency brake" unilaterally? My assumption is that he didn't because he believed that the risk of the EU excluding us from parts of the benefits of membership was higher than the risk of not pulling the emergency brake, and thus that "leaving the EU to recover this sovereignty" was the wrong thing for people to take away from Cameron's failure to pull the emergency brake.
Yes, pretty much that. It would have drawn huge attention to the fact he can't legally stop EU migration and that his sovereign government would just be overruled. A gift to Leavers.
If I can phrase it slightly differently; had Cameron known up-front that his failure to "pull the emergency brake" would have resulted in us leaving the EU, he might have gambled on pulling the emergency brake, and later being penalised by the EU for breaking the rules, because he'd have achieved his short term goal.
The fact that the EU would then penalise the UK for breaking the rules would be a later problem, true, but he'd at least have a chance of riding out the opposition of his Eurosceptics, having done what he set out to do.
An interesting counterfactual, for sure.
Even and especially “enabling” laws…