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http://interaffairs.ru
Author : E. Ananieva
Head, Center for British Studies, Institute of Europe, Russian Academy of Sciences, Candidate of
Science (Philosophy)
A "POLITICAL TSUNAMI," an "existential crisis"
and "the not so United Kingdom" are several of the
many assessments the British media used to comment
on the results of the June 23, 2016 EU referendum.
EVEN BEFORE the official talks with the EU,
Britain became a scene of an uncompromising polit-
ical struggle in which nothing was banned. For exam-
ple, the fact that the president of the Confederation
of British Industry (CBI) had asked the government not to go too far in the talks with Brussels
and refrain from being too ambitious so that to avoid disagreements became known and caused
a scandal: the CBI had been expected to voice its opinion after, not before the negotiations.
The polemics flooded the foreign policy space: the dissatisfaction inside the country with its po-
sition in the EU was superimposed on the contradictions inside the European Union between
the "old" and "new" (pro-American) Europe, between the national leaders of the member-states
and the European bureaucracy in Brussels, between the rich North and the poor South. They
were additionally exacerbated by the Greek debt and the migrant crisis against the background
of the firmer positions of Eurosceptics across the EU.
According to public opinion polls, the Brits were more concerned with immigration from the
EU countries. It should be said that the avalanche of information supplied by both sides did
not correct the previously distorted ideas about the scope of immigration even at the height of
agitation in May 2016. According to the Ipsos MORI Agency, the British citizens stuck to their
distorted ideas about the key problems of the future referendum.
THE EUROPEAN ELITE have recognized that the reforms are overripe and that time has
come to deal with the "democratic deficit" in the EU. At the EU summit, in the wake of the
Brexit, the prime minister of The Netherlands presented the results of the April referendum in
his country on Ukraine's association with the EU.
In fact, the uncertainty and the shifted balance of power inside the EU might negatively affect
Russia. Will Germany acquire unlimited domination in the EU? Will Brexit be followed by the
"domino effect" and an inevitable exacerbation of contradictions in Europe dangerously close
to Russia's borders? The questions and possible answers are not of theoretical importance. This
means that those who said that Russia was "interested" in Brexit bluffed: they had no choice but
to go at all lengths to justify the aim for the sake of which they were struggling and created the
problem in the first place.
Brexit: Voting With the Heart