BERLIN—Britain’s hard-fought referendum on whether to remain a member of the European Union is emblematic of a wider shift in Europe’s geopolitics. As much as the British want to believe their islands have a destiny separate from that of the continent, they have in fact been pacesetters for Europe writ large, from the consolidation of parliamentary democracy to the industrial revolution to the market reforms of the 1980s.
This year’s “Brexit” debate, although in many ways peculiarly British, has amplified broader trends in European politics—including questioning the fundamentals behind the unity of the continent—that are likely to intensify rather than subside. The future of Europe, the transatlantic alliance, and the international liberal order are all in play, and the June 23 referendum has done little to settle them.
First, globalization has produced a backlash in which national and local identities are ascendant. The British referendum campaign has underlined how a country whose cosmopolitan capital is a hub of global finance nonetheless prizes a more narrow English nationalism—even as pro-E.U. Scotland threatened to secede from the U.K. in the event of Brexit.
Residents of London, a bastion of “Remain” voters, see a hugely successful city whose multiracial, multilingual population resembles the world in miniature with even more richness. By contrast, many Brexit voters apparently viewed such diversity as a threat, succumbing to nativist appeals to clamp down on immigration—even though it has made Britain more prosperous and dynamic.
“Leave” voters were willing to risk economic calamity, including forecasts of a collapsing stock market and currency as well as a serious hit to household incomes, to assert their “independence” from Europe—attesting to the reality that people can be motivated by other considerations than just prosperity.
