Brexit and the Future of the UK

Brexit is a Conservative Party policy-idea that got out of hand. The collapse of the centrist and liberal Tory leadership created a vacuum for hardliners within the party, in the right-wing media, and in other smaller parties to occupy that space, and call for the reinvigoration of British exceptionalism through Brexit. Unfortunately, a political and constitutional crisis besets the United Kingdom, reducing the reality of British exceptionalism to Little England isolationism.

After a nine month pause, since the United Kingdom (UK) voted to leave the European Union (EU), the Brexit talks are finally set to begin. The decision to leave the EU has been characterised as the biggest shift in UK domestic and foreign policy since World War II. It is also a political and economic blow to the EU at a time when it is beset by a range of challenges from populism and economic inequality to Putin’s Russia, migration flows, and now the unpredictable impact of Donald Trump as the United States (US) President.

But the biggest impacts of Brexit are on the UK. The UK is in a simmering political and constitutional crisis mainly, though not only, driven by the Brexit decision. With the public split on Brexit in England and Wales (which voted by a narrow majority to leave the EU), and with a majority in both Scotland and Northern Ireland voting to remain in the EU, there are growing tensions and uncertainties about how the constitutional challenges of Brexit will be resolved. With Theresa May’s decision to call a snap election, the constitutional and political tensions across theUK are only likely to worsen.