The result of the Brexit election is certain to have a far-reaching fallout – for Britain, Europe and the world. First, it has reaffirmed the strength of British democracy. To have withstood the blandishments of the domestic and EU establishments the scaremongering might of the captains of industry, the big banks, the mostly failed politicians with their rancid shibboleths and clichés and spurious cajolery, is no mean feat. The people have risen, the people will not be bullied into subservience.
Britain witnessed its truly great eras in a non-EU world. Initially, it was the European Community, then the European Market – a trading bloc of sovereign nations Britain joined. The European Union mutated into a political orgaization in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, with the Maastricht Treaty and much else. Today, it a cartel of German banks and big business, and a stalking horse for the American Empire.
Membership of EU meant signing up to a broader package of Nato’s eastward expansion to the border of Russia and the very real possibility of another devastating war. This is what George Kennan, the foremost American diplomat-scholar of the twentieth century warned against before his death in 1998. Now, Henry Kissinger has added his experienced voice to Kennan’s.
Euro sceptic opinion is spreading across Europe – a simmering fire now threatening to explode into an uncontrollable blaze later. Greece, Italy, Hungary, Spain and France, not speak of Holland, and even Germany itself, are in varying states of disillusionment with European Union.
Many in the Remain party, driven by Cold War appetites perceived the EU as an instrument to bait the Russian bear. David Cameron drew a parallel between the jihadi ISIS leader Baghdadi and President Putin, when the latter had made no public comment on the British referendum or its likely outcome. What need was there to make such provocative remarks and cause needless antagonism?
Mikhail Gorbachev, who did most to end the Cold War, lamented recently that American triumphalism had initiated the breakdown in Russia’s relations with the West. Messrs Cameron and Hammond played the Russophobic card with tireless zeal, but Russia is not to be confused with a banana republic of a Gulf sheikhdom to kick around. Russia is a Great Power with great military might at its disposal.
Sir Henry Tizzard, the Scientific Adviser to the British Government prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, who had presided over the invention of radar, to which his country owed most for the victory in the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940, wrote a memo for Prime Minister Attlee in the aftermath of the war with Germany. He wrote: ‘We are not a Great Power and never will be again. We are a great nation, but if we continue to behave like a Great Power again we shall cease to be a great nation.’ For this wise counsel Tizzard was sacked and cast outside the pale.
The Brexit vote has given Britain an opportunity to be reunited with world and be great once more.
(The author is an academic, currently based in India; previously associated with Oxford University in the UK, as a professor of History)
