OPINION:
I was fortunate to spend Brexit night last Friday with perhaps Britain’s greatest historian, David Starkey. Author, broadcaster and public intellectual, Mr. Starkey is best known for writing and presenting the hugely popular series “Elizabeth” and “The Six Wives of Henry VIII.” I am pleased to have been his friend for a quarter-century.
It is difficult to conceive of a better companion with whom to celebrate the momentous occasion of Britain ending its relationship with the European Union to gain independence. Mr. Starkey provided for this interview, uniquely informed context, background and understanding of this event that should cause us to reflect on our own national identity and place in the world.
I first asked Mr. Starkey why, as Americans, we should care about Brexit. “America is a continuation of Britain at its greatest. You were the bulk of the 18th-century British Empire. America was rooted in English law, polity, language, and culture. Central to those moorings was the idea of self-government, just as it is the motivation of Brexit.
“Brexit is a reaffirmation of the same set of ideals that underpin the American Revolution including the ideas of Hamilton, Franklin, Madison and others. There are striking lessons of the American Revolution including the importance of preserving an existing structure of law. America succeeded in producing a rationalized version of the 18th-entury English Constitution, making it fit within a federal structure.
“Brexit was about values. It was a deeply irrational vote, not about what will make us better off, but rather, ‘we’ll be poorer, but we’ll be free.’ Nationhood. Patriotism. It’s the same culture war you are experiencing here in the USA. Are you a globalist multiculturalist, or do you have local values and national patriotism? Notwithstanding our different history and location, Britain and the U.K. have the same political culture.”
I had to ask about the Trump factor. Mr. Starkey responded, “If you ignore Trump’s style, its all part of the same phenomenon in the U.K. Trump used social media, normally a vehicle of the woke, and turned it against them. We’ve gone off in a different direction, but in Britain, we have also defeated the radical left. Also, Trump and Boris were both amazingly effective at achieving similar electoral coalitions of old school conservatives and working class.”
I asked Mr. Starkey to outline why a great power that once “ruled the waves” ever got itself entangled with the EU in the first place. He responded, “The second world war was ruinous for Britain, not least due to policies of the Roosevelt regime to strip Britain of its foreign assets. This was followed by a socialist government that was even more ruinous. The country’s economy was nearly destroyed by social welfare, especially the introduction of the national health system, practically overnight, with trade union activity thrown in the mix.
“One critical thing to understand,” Mr. Starkey continues, “is that the EU happened because of failure, everywhere except Britain: the wickedness of Nazi Germany, the defeat of France, Belgium, Italy, etc. The only reason Germany was stopped was because the British nation said ‘no.’ The paradox is that while Britain triumphed, the exhaustion of war and then the catastrophic error of social welfare caused economic collapse.
“So we join Europe out of economic, but not political defeat, which means we were prepared for a larger measure of economic union, not political union. By contrast, countries like Germany are passionately in favor of political union because their entire existence now depends on the denial of German nationalism. For these nations, EU has been a necessary replacement of nationalism and identity.”
Next, I asked Mr. Starkey about the referendum and events leading up to Brexit. “Europe and our own political elites could not grasp that the people voted to leave. It was childlike denial. And then we had this extraordinary performance of a House of Commons that for two-and-a-half years did its best to avoid it until it was forced to confront the electorate again, and it was Armageddon.”
A Tudor scholar, famous for comparing Brexit to Henry VIII, I asked Mr. Starkey to discuss the similarities. He responded, “The break with Rome under Henry is fought over the same jurisdiction. Religion was an important issue, but mainly, it was about a declaration of national autonomy.”
He continued, “Henry has to go to Rome to get his divorce because England is subordinate to a European court. At the beginning, Henry VIII, like Theresa May, gets it wrong. He negotiates with Rome on Rome’s terms. Like Theresa May, Henry’s minister, Cardinal Wolsey really wanted to keep England attached to Rome. At that point, Henry reinvents England.”
I closed by asking Mr. Starkey how history would view Brexit. He responded, “Self-government is what defines us as British. It’s why the American colonies rebelled. To put it in American terms, Brexit is like the South seceding without a fight. The European Union, like the American Union, was supposed to be irreversible. You’ve now got its second most important economy and military power walking away.”
He concluded, “I just hope we spend time having a bit of hard thinking. We’re very good flying by the seat of our pants and unfortunately, Boris especially is very good at flying by the seat of his pants.”
• Lee Cohen, a fellow of the Danube Institute, was adviser on Europe to the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and founded the Congressional United Kingdom Caucus.
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