Brexit Beyond Britain

Back in 1941, in criticizing the Eton and Oxford-educated elite, George Orwell lamented that “one of the dominant facts of British life . . . . has been the decay of ability in the ruling class.” Today, poor leadership on all sides has dug the country into a cul-de-sac, unable to stay and unable to leave the EU without crashing out to the disadvantage of all.

Britain’s ambiguous relationship with the rest of Europe has deep roots, tied to a broad spectrum of cultural, ideological, geographical and political issues in the United Kingdom. At this moment, however, something else has been revealed: Brexit has shown the weakness of democracy in Britain, or at least the diminished faith a growing number of Britons have in representative democracy. Alarmingly, this story pertains to the rest of Europe, too.