As Britons prepare to vote on whether to leave the European Union or not, opinion polls in the past couple of weeks have shown a swing towards Brexit.
In the Abu Dhabi-based Aletihad, sister newspaper of The National, Abdel Wahab Badrakhan explained that “prime minister David Cameron held tough negotiations with the EU and was able to obtain several benefits and privileges; however, his opponents within his own party decided that these benefits and privileges were insufficient and launched a fierce campaign that caused an unprecedented rift within the UK”.
Even though the calls to leave the EU have been heard over the last two decades, many factors have recently contributed to their amplification and turned them into constants in electoral programmes.
The EU’s perceived association with the increased flow of immigrants, and the exacerbating security fears and obsession with terrorism amid the waves of refugees, intensified the Brexit campaign in the writer’s view.
Examining the extreme consequences of an exit from the EU, the writer remarked that “in the best-case scenario, financial and economic turmoil would continue for at least five years in case of Brexit, and stability would not be restored before 2030”.
Badrakhan added: “In the worst-case scenario, the British economy will fail to maintain what it achieved in the EU, from the strength of the pound to London’s position as an international financial hub.
“One can see that even the matter of security is being exploited in a campaign that has turned into a war against the Conservative Party and a competition between interest groups wishing to bring back economic policies that reigned in previous decades, but no longer fit our time.
“The ideas and motives of Brexit proponents abound in extreme tendencies, but they have nonetheless succeeded in inflaming a vital debate within Britain while building their future projects on experimental hypotheses with no guaranteed success, and are presenting no alternatives should they do fail.”
Writing in the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat, columnist Jameel Matar noted that the European system failed to convince many Britons of the European ideal. It was not expected to succeed in removing the British identity and replacing it with a European one, though some of Europe’s leaders were hoping that Britain would benefit from certain economic interests which would give the UK renewed confidence in the EU to shed their deeply-rooted doubts in the continent, its problems and fluctuations, Matar wrote.
“Some accuse Germany of failing to make serious attempts at involving Britain in steering the regional European system, while others feel that Britain did not exert real effort in playing a leading role within the European system,” he observed.
“The European system failed, though its failure is not similar to that of the Arab system, as the reasons for failure differ in nature and size between the two. In both cases, national sovereignty stood as an obstacle against the success of the system, though in the Arab case that same national sovereignty did not succeed in protecting the state from the forces of oppression and tyranny and collapse.
“That same national sovereignty may be the reason behind the failure of the United Kingdom to protect its unity should Scotland exit, and such is most likely to happen should Britain exit from the European system,” concluded Matar.
translation@thenational.ae
