Dont tie Brexit, Italy and Donald Trump together
If anything, the Italian election result, which rejected the change proposed by the government, preserved the status quo rather than upending it
Rashmee Roshan Lall
Just the other day, I happened to be speaking to one of the chief campaigners for Brexit, United Kingdom Conservative Party MP, former minister and most recently, failed candidate for prime minister, Michael Gove. When I suggested to Gove that it was grossly inaccurate to compare the results of Sundays Italian referendum on constitutional reform to Brexit, he agreed wholeheartedly. The same goes for the Austrian rerun of the presidential election, I said. Absolutely, he responded, going on to lament the tendency among journalists (of which he is one) to seek out simple, straight and clear strands that link everything to everything else. Political developments in different countries are sui generis, he declared.
Unlike the UK Independence Partys former leader Nigel Farage, whose buddy US president-elect Donald Trump categorised his own November 8 election victory as Brexit plus plus, it was evident that Gove did not want to ostentatiously trademark Brexit.
What he said makes a lot of sense. The result of the June 23 British referendum on membership of the European Union was not a prototype for anti-establishment revolt across the western world.
If anything, it was the culmination of a long relationship between the UK and Europe that can only be described as complicated. For all that the UK formally joined the then European Economic Community 43 years ago, the union was always turbulent.
In 1975, just two years after it pledged its troth, Britain was already thinking of getting a divorce. Prime minister Harold Wilsons Labour government was forced to fight a bruising campaign to nudge the public to vote yes in a referendum on continued membership. Several members of the Wilson cabinet spoke out against staying within the European club. Though that referendum was decisively won 67 per cent voted in favour the ructions over Europe continued over the decades, affecting successive British governments, not least that of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. In all sorts of ways then, British Euro-scepticism has always been more establishment than not. Unverified reports say that even the British Queen, surely the very pinnacle of the Establishment, is not particularly inclined to EU membership. In a sense then, the Brexit vote was a result that went as it should for the anti-EU establishment.
How does any of that link in to the Italian and Austrian elections, both held on the same day, December 4, and both feared to continue, as The New York Times wrote, a populist movement [of which] Brexit was the first brick that was knocked out of the `establishment wall.
The Italian and Austrian elections were not like Brexit. First, the facts. The Italian vote was a referendum on sweeping constitutional changes proposed by prime minister Matteo Renzi. It was not about Europe at all but dealt with a fundamental big-ticket change in domestic political arrangements. The reform was meant to remove Italys perfect bicameralism or the system that gives equal power to both houses. It would have reduced gridlock, shrunk the senate, the legislative upper house, and given the largest party in the lower house more seats and a more assured hold on power for a full five years. Theoretically, the change could have enabled a strongman to stay securely in office, a worrying possibility for a country once led by Mussolini. The only populist element in Italys election was the no campaign led by a party headed by a former comedian, and which calls itself the Five Star Movement.
That said, mainstream politicians, including former prime minister Mario Monti, were supporting no as well.
The writer specializes on global affairs
