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In 2016, a victorious Brexiter told me that other countries would soon fall “like dominoes” out of the EU. This was the era of such twee portmanteaus as Frexit and Grexit.
Aside from the wishful thinking — Britain’s political class always overrates the extent of Euroscepticism on the continent — what stood out was the awful pedigree of the metaphor. The most famous “domino effect” in political lore was the one that was supposed to turn south-east Asia communist if Vietnam went that way. To prevent such an outcome, the US fought a debacle of a war from which it has, in some ways, never recovered. Using the language of that bungled mission suggested that top Leavers were either superb ironists or ignoramuses.
Sure enough, a decade on, the EU’s 27 dominoes stand. In an era of ardent nationalism, this supranational club should be fighting for its life. It isn’t really. Few things are stranger about modern politics.
If anything, nationalists are fighting to reassure pro-EU voters. Marine Le Pen has softened her line on Brussels over the years to remain electorally competitive in France. Giorgia Meloni has mostly co-operated with the EU during her three-and-a-half surprising years as a hard-right Italian prime minister. Both will have watched events in Hungary over the weekend and felt themselves vindicated. Of all the varied reasons for Viktor Orbán’s landslide defeat, the public’s desire to mend relations with the EU was prominent. The election winner Péter Magyar, no kind of liberal, and in fact a former Orbán man, favours a “return to Europe”.
Deeper trends in public opinion point the same way. Europeans still trust the EU over their national political systems, and the margin is wider than it has been since the noughties. (More on this later.) Support for the euro, which was as low as 51 per cent in 2013, has grown to a record high of 74 per cent in the EU, and 82 per cent in the Eurozone. To repeat, that is a near-consensus in favour of the single currency at a time of economic malaise in much of the continent. As for the country-by-country findings, 21 per cent of Austrians think membership is a bad thing. That makes them the most Euro-sceptical people in the union.
Given the jingoism of the times, the EU’s political resilience is striking, even weird. It is hard to ascribe it to great feats of leadership and administration from Brussels. Rather, the outside world keeps doing the EU unsolicited favours.
Britain was first. The divisiveness of the Brexit referendum, and the buyer’s remorse that has set in, is a first-class education in what not to do. Tellingly, Europeans started to become more optimistic about the EU in 2016. For services to the European project, there should be a statue of Nigel Farage in Brussels, at least the equal of Manneken Pis in dignity and craftsmanship.
Another donor to the European cause has been Donald Trump’s America. Though its tariffs are painful and its electoral interference close to unprecedented, the net effect is to make the case for a stronger Europe. As in the Gulf, the Trump administration keeps tripping up on one point: other places can do nativism too.
But the most generous and inadvertent benefactor of the EU is Russia. There is nothing like mortal danger to bring a club together. And so three nationalist shocks — Brexit, America First, Russia’s war — have given a multilateral, technocratic and liberal institution a sense of existential purpose that it was starting to lack. A man of Orbán’s almost Wildean liking for paradox (he used the term “illiberal democracy” to describe his governing vision) should smile at this, however ruefully.
Also, while we are on the theme of contradiction, there is such a thing as an anti-elite pro-European. It is possible to support Brussels on the basis that one’s own national governing class is more inept, self-dealing and high-handed. Britain, being or at least thinking itself well-run, had for decades a blind spot for this vein of opinion on the continent.
No longer. The debasement of its own political elite post-2016 has brought the UK closer to the European experience. Every so often, the Labour government announces that it is making a step towards the EU. Conservatives scream betrayal. Voters shrug. Through their comportment in office, Brexiters have forfeited the benefit of the doubt.
The EU cannot live on external favours forever, of course. Lots of things could still undo the project. The Alternative for Germany has not softened on Europe in the Le Pen or Meloni style. If it were to enter the federal government in the EU’s most important capital, the union would struggle. Also, Eurosceptic governments often counted on Orbán to veto proposals from Brussels without having to pipe up themselves. His absence might now draw out their own awkward views: on Ukraine, for instance.
It is just that a decade is quite a while. One or two dominoes should have at least wobbled by now, if not fallen. None have, not really, and that is because voters keep the hard right on a short leash when it comes to Europe. In the most nationalist period of politics since the 1930s, outright opposition to EU membership is still remarkably taboo. It is much likelier that a new member state will join before one leaves.
In David Szalay’s Booker Prize-winning novel Flesh, the Hungarian protagonist has a recurring and therefore maddening phrase. It could be the verdict of Europeans on the EU as the alternatives bear down on them from west and east. “It’s okay.”
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Source:
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