Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Global cities
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

Brexit Exemplifies The Anti-Elite Era

Manuel Muñiz 27th June 2016

Manuel Muniz

Manuel Muniz

On 23 June, the British people voted to leave the European Union. Against all odds and, above all, against all reason, one of Europe’s most moderate and pragmatic of peoples has decided to disregard overwhelming evidence that such a decision would have negative consequences for the country.

Almost the entirety of the country’s intellectual, economic and political establishment had explicitly opposed Brexit. There had been letters by Nobel laureates detailing the cost to UK research of a ‘Leave’ vote, a public statement by over 250 academics to the same effect, the official opposition of most British businesses as well as an avalanche of expert reports indicating the significant economic cost of leaving the world’s largest single market. In political terms, the ‘Remain’ campaign had the formal support of the country’s four largest political parties, of the Tory-led national government and of a plethora of international leaders, including the President of the United States.

But, as Michael Gove, a Brexit supporter, recently said: “People in this country have had enough of experts”. He was, of course, right. The fact that Gove is an Oxford-educated politician who recently led the UK’s Department of Education, an institution dedicated precisely to producing experts, seems to have been inconsequential.

The British are not alone in their rejection of their elites. Over the past few months, there have been numerous indications that many other Western societies are following a similar path. The presumptive nomination of Donald Trump as Republican candidate for the US Presidency is perhaps the most significant case. Trump’s nomination was not only something very few had predicted but also a significant blow to the Republican Party’s establishment, which opposed it en masse. Bernie Sanders’ almost successful run for the Democratic nomination, and in particular his results in caucuses (i.e. primaries in which party elites had less control over the outcome), points in the same direction. Spain voted in an historic general election overnight that saw a significant share of the vote go to Unidos-Podemos, a far-left coalition composed of former communists and a newly-born anti-establishment party. In Austria, it was the Far Right that almost won the presidency only a few weeks ago. And in Italy, a party founded only in 2009 by a comedian in protest against the political class recently won the mayoralty of Rome – and Turin.

Opposing elites is not necessarily a negative development in itself. However, it so happens that the elites being opposed are precisely the ones that support the fundamental values and institutions of the Western liberal-cosmopolitan order. Therefore, this convulsion will see the reconfiguration of the classical left-right political axis into one composed of liberal cosmopolitanism versus anti-liberal populism. If this illiberal populism takes hold, anti-trade, anti-immigration and anti-capitalist policies will proliferate. The European Union will be a particularly easy victim of this new mood, in large part because it is an elite-driven project. The benefits of being a member of the EU are mostly understood by intellectual, business and political elites. If those elites are unable to carry the support of the broader European population, the project will be in dire straits.


Become part of our Community of Thought Leaders


Get fresh perspectives delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for our newsletter to receive thought-provoking opinion articles and expert analysis on the most pressing political, economic and social issues of our time. Join our community of engaged readers and be a part of the conversation.

Sign up here

More pressure will be placed on politicians to detach themselves from European integration or to call for a referendum on membership – results in such elections and plebiscites will be very difficult to predict. Uncertainty will be the name of the game. Marine Le Pen has now called for an EU membership referendum in France, and the latest Ipsos Mori poll in Italy shows that 60% of Italians want the same, with 48% saying they would vote to leave the Union.

Free trade and globalisation more broadly will be other casualties of the upcoming illiberal era. Trade is a technical matter that requires experts to arrive at deals that are not understood by those of us who do not dedicate our lives to such matters. Again, if trust in elites is not there, we are bound to see simplistic messages take hold and suspicion of free trade grow. The prospects of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) being signed and ratified look slimmer by the day. Ultimately, anti-capitalist and, perhaps, anti-democratic movements will emerge. We know, for example, that many of Europe’s Far Left parties have in the past questioned capitalism as a system, or that Far Right parties bring with them strong anti-democratic tendencies. Immigration and multiculturalism in general will also be increasingly questioned; they already are in Europe and America. Minorities and others are normally victims of populist movements because they are seen as bearers of problems, as stealing people’s jobs or as security threats.

Why is this happening? And why now? Some have said it is a consequence of globalization, free trade and immigration. These factors surely play a role but I would like to suggest that the lion in the grass, or the hidden threat, is rapid technological development and its impact on labor markets and wealth distribution. Middle-class workers are today competing not just with cheap labor in the developing world but also with machines and algorithms that are ever cheaper and ever better. This structural process is producing large amounts of material prosperity, but it is undermining the middle class in the process through the destruction of jobs. We have never been wealthier in terms of total output of goods and services, but the US and Europe have both seen a steady rise in inequality over the past two decades. We know that from the 1970s to today, productivity and labor income have decoupled; we have gained productivity without increasing wages, which means that our most important redistribution tool, labor income, has ceased to function. Wealth concentration in the US has now reached dramatic levels. And people are losing faith in a system that produces aggregate wealth but fails to distribute it.

Now, the barbarians are at the gates. Populists come to break the system and in the process destroy a great deal of wealth. Hopefully it is only wealth that is lost in this convulsion. The liberal cosmopolitan elites of the world need to diagnose this problem quickly and effectively, and start thinking about the new equilibrium after the upheaval. How do we build an inclusive economic system in which entrepreneurship, innovation and private enterprise are still driving growth but do not produce politically unstable levels of inequality? What is to be the future role of governments and corporations in an environment of high productivity but lower employment? These questions will need to be answered in the next decades if we want to arrive at a politically sustainable arrangement. The current model built by our elites is not. And we shall all pay the price for it.

This piece first appeared at Europe’s World

Manuel Muñiz

Manuel Muñiz is the Dean of the IE School of International Relations and Senior Associate of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University.

You are here: Home / Politics / Brexit Exemplifies The Anti-Elite Era

Most Popular Posts

Russia,information war Russia is winning the information warAiste Merfeldaite
Nanterre,police Nanterre and the suburbs: the lid comes offJoseph Downing
Russia,nuclear Russia’s dangerous nuclear consensusAna Palacio
Belarus,Lithuania A tale of two countries: Belarus and LithuaniaThorvaldur Gylfason and Eduard Hochreiter
retirement,Finland,ageing,pension,reform Late retirement: possible for many, not for allKati Kuitto

Most Recent Posts

Ukraine,fatigue Ukraine’s cause: momentum is diminishingStefan Wolff and Tetyana Malyarenko
Vienna,social housing Vienna social-housing model: celebrated but misusedGabu Heindl
social democracy,nation-state Social democracy versus the nativist rightJan Zielonka
chemical,European Union Which comes first—Big Toxics’ profits or health?Vicky Cann
Russia,journalists,Ukraine,target Ukraine: journalists in Russia’s sightsKelly Bjorkland and Simon Smith

Other Social Europe Publications

strategic autonomy Strategic autonomy
Bildschirmfoto 2023 05 08 um 21.36.25 scaled 1 RE No. 13: Failed Market Approaches to Long-Term Care
front cover Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI European Collective Bargaining Report 2022 / 2023

With real wages falling by 4 per cent in 2022, workers in the European Union suffered an unprecedented loss in purchasing power. The reason for this was the rapid increase in consumer prices, behind which nominal wage growth fell significantly. Meanwhile, inflation is no longer driven by energy import prices, but by domestic factors. The increased profit margins of companies are a major reason for persistent inflation. In this difficult environment, trade unions are faced with the challenge of securing real wages—and companies have the responsibility of making their contribution to returning to the path of political stability by reducing excess profits.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The future of remote work

The 12 chapters collected in this volume provide a multidisciplinary perspective on the impact and the future trajectories of remote work, from the nexus between the location from where work is performed and how it is performed to how remote locations may affect the way work is managed and organised, as well as the applicability of existing legislation. Additional questions concern remote work’s environmental and social impact and the rapidly changing nature of the relationship between work and life.


AVAILABLE HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound Talks: does Europe have the skills it needs for a changing economy?

In this episode of the Eurofound Talks podcast, Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound’s research manager, Tina Weber, its senior research manager, Gijs van Houten, and Giovanni Russo, senior expert at CEDEFOP (The European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training), about Europe’s skills challenges and what can be done to help workers and businesses adapt to future skills demands.

Listen where you get your podcasts, or for free, by clicking on the link below


LISTEN HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The summer issue of the Progressive Post magazine by FEPS is out!

The Special Coverage of this new edition is dedicated to the importance of biodiversity, not only as a good in itself but also for the very existence of humankind. We need a paradigm change in the mostly utilitarian relation humans have with nature.

In this issue, we also look at the hazards of unregulated artificial intelligence, explore the shortcomings of the EU's approach to migration and asylum management, and analyse the social downside of the EU's current ethnically-focused Roma policy.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube