Brexit dilemmas: New opportunities and tough choices in unsettled times
| Date | 01 November 2017 |
| Author | Daniel Wincott |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148117725316 |
| Published date | 01 November 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Conclusion |
research-article2017
Special Issue Article
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
Brexit dilemmas: New
2017, Vol. 19(4) 680 –695
© The Author(s) 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148117725316
DOI: 10.1177/1369148117725316
choices in unsettled times
journals.sagepub.com/home/bpi
Daniel Wincott
Abstract
Concluding the British Journal of Politics and International Relations’ (BJPIR) Brexit Special Issue, this
article seeks to set the unsettled times and unexpected events associated with the Brexit in historic
context and tease out the prospects for a ‘bespoke’ UK exit agreement. Drawing on classics of
social science history—by Barrington Moore, Gourevitch and Davis—it reflects on ‘suppressed
historic choices’ and historical periodisations. Three key dilemmas are interrogated: the Brexit
dilemma (control of immigration/regaining of sovereignty vs European Union (EU) market access),
the Brexiteers’ dilemma (sustaining economic prosperity while restricting immigration) and the
Remainers/soft Brexit dilemma (of weakening Parliamentary democracy by staying in the Single
Market).
Keywords
Brexit, dilemmas, historic change, periodisation, UK
Introduction
The years 2016–2017 were particularly unsettled in the United Kingdom. Political
events were difficult to read and firm conclusions hard to draw. Risky at the best of
times, prediction was a perilous business for media commentators and social scientists.
There was, though, a wide consensus on one point: the implications of Brexit were trans-
formative, at least for the United Kingdom and probably for Europe and the wider world.
Many commentators and politicians—supporters as well as opponents—turned to super-
latives to evoke these transformations. Indefatigable BBC political editor Laura
Kuenssberg (2017) called it ‘the biggest challenge we have faced since the Second
World War’.1 David Davis (2016), Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union
(EU) and long-standing Conservative Eurosceptic, has described it as the ‘biggest
change for a generation’. While evaluating the implications of Brexit differently, promi-
nent pro-EU politicians share Davis’ sense of Brexit’s significance. For Ken Clarke—
who has held a hatful of Cabinet posts, including Chancellor of the Exchequer (UK
School of Law and Politics, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
Corresponding author:
Daniel Wincott, School of Law and Politics, Law Building, Museum Avenue, Cardiff University, Cardiff,
Wales CF10 3AX UK.
Email: wincottd@cardiff.ac.uk
Wincott
681
Finance Minister) and Home Secretary—it could prove to be a ‘historic disaster’.
Europhiles’ superlatives describe what they see as the mismanagement of Brexit. Clarke
has said that he has ‘never seen anything as mad or chaotic’ as the Government’s
approach to leaving the EU (Addley, 2017), a striking claim from the United Kingdom’s
longest serving member of parliament (MP). Former Deputy Prime Minister (PM) Nick
Clegg (2017) has described Brexit as ‘the biggest con trick in politics’ with a ‘very nar-
row victory’ taken ‘in the most uncompromising and damaging way possible’.
In the introduction to this British Journal of Politics and International Relations
(BJPIR) Special Issue, Wincott et al. (2017) considered how far the United Kingdom’s
choice reflected general trends in Europe and around the world towards populism and
system-challenging politics (see also Hopkin, 2017; Wilson, 2017) and the ways in which
it might trigger or reinforce political tendencies of this kind. While (at the time of writing)
the prospects for an immediate contagion from Brexit to populist Eurosceptics elsewhere
in Europe had faded, important underlying sources of instability arguably remained.
Emmanuel Macron’s electoral successes in France in 2017 were critical to renewed opti-
mism in Brussels about the EU. Yet, Macron’s success also illustrates the weakness of
conventional and established party politics. Unsettled times are not limited to the United
Kingdom. They do not always benefit Eurosceptics.
This article is focused on the United Kingdom. After the introduction, it develops three
major sections. The next reflects on issues of contingency, inevitability and the poten-
tially historic consequences of Brexit. The second substantive section considers unsettled
times in 2016 and 2017. The final section touches on external and internal challenges
posed to the UK state by Brexit. They are linked by a core question about the capacity of
the state. Brexit needs to be set in the context of a reduction in the size of Whitehall. The
Institute for Government has tracked Civil Service capacity for Brexit, finding that num-
bers fell during early 2016. By September 2016, Whitehall was smaller than it had been
since 1939 (Boon, 2016). The section addresses external (trade and security) Brexit chal-
lenges and then three internal issues: devolution, the internal structure of the UK state and
the possibilities of secession; the relationship of Brexit of electoral and party dynamics
across the United Kingdom; and the prospects for UK political economy.
The remainder of this introduction considers the overarching dilemmas raised by
Brexit for the United Kingdom. First, a difficult choice may need to be made between
retaining access to EU markets, on one hand, and gaining control of (or reducing) immi-
gration while eliminating the authority of EU institutions over the United Kingdom (par-
ticularly the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU), but also the Commission), on the other.
This ‘Brexit dilemma’ is clearly reflected in UK public attitudes: clear majorities exist for
reducing/controlling immigration and expansive access to EU markets. Both the Labour
and Conservative party leaders have sought to evade the terms of the Brexit dilemma.
Jeremy Corbyn, for Labour, has insisted that the United Kingdom end free movement of
people and leave the Single Market while aiming for extensive access to that Market in
the name of a ‘Jobs First’ Brexit. As PM, Theresa May has targeted a ‘deep and special’
and ‘bespoke’ Brexit while robustly insisting on full exit from the Single Market and
Customs Union and allowing no post-exit role for the CJEU. But, from the EU side, the
choice appears stark: accept current arrangements (such as the Single Market) on existing
terms or relinquish any privileged access to them.
Other dilemmas nest below this general choice. Robust advocates of Brexit and those
who prefer Remain or the softest possible form of Brexit each face difficult choices. A
‘Brexiteers’ dilemma’ concerns sustaining economic growth while restricting immigra-
tion (the obverse of Parker’s (2017) ‘progressive’s dilemma’). The United Kingdom faces
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The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 19(4)
deep political economy challenges, including low productivity exacerbated by a territori-
ally unbalanced economy. Low and weakly improving productivity makes expanding the
labour force a key driver of economic growth. The UK economy may have become struc-
turally reliant on immigration (see Thompson, 2017), which is a ready source of new
workers who may also be particularly skilled and/or productive. Perhaps that is why some
libertarian free traders endorse a permissive approach to migration, although influential
free trade Brexiteers have made a sharp distinction between skilled and unskilled immi-
grants (Ashton et al., 2016). In principle, global free adjustment of all factors of produc-
tion would include labour. Of course, this approach does not address political demands
for Brexit based on anxiety about immigration (see Goodwin and Milazzo, 2017;
Thompson, 2017). Equally, while a freewheeling capitalist approach to the UK economy
might trigger a positive transformation of its prospects, that transformation—perhaps
through a Schumpeterian (1942) ‘gale of creative destruction’—could prove socially and
politically unsettling (see Hopkin, 2017). May’s approach to the Brexiteers’ dilemma has
been much more interventionist. Grounded in an Industrial Strategy, its aim was to use
government power to build up domestic sources of prosperity and enhance the skills and
productivity of UK workers. To succeed, it would have to ‘solve’ the United Kingdom’s
productivity problem—a difficult challenge that would take time to overcome.
‘Remainers’ also face a deep challenge in addressing widespread public concern
about immigration. Political disillusion seems to have motivated many Brexiteers,
particularly a hostility towards the socially detached ‘Westminster elite’. It would
surely deepen should the basic decision to ‘leave’ be reversed. But Remainers’ ‘soft-
ness dilemma’ has a different, and more political, focus. Chalmers (2017) shows that
the United Kingdom’s EU membership weakened representative democracy in the
UK—and unless clear steps are taken to address the role of legislatures, the process of
Brexit is likely to weaken it further. The dilemma is that the soft form of Brexit—to
allow the UK economy as much as possible to keep running on its current rails—
entails a deeper challenge to the United Kingdom’s democratic institutions. When the
UK leaves the EU, its political institutions lose their capacity to help shape its rules
and processes. Chalmers suggests that the United...
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