Why Britain is deeply divided

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say, ‘‘This was their finest hour.”

When former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill uttered these words in 1940, he didn’t anticipate that Great Britain’s finest hour would end so soon. As it turned out, the British Empire dissipated soon after and its successor, the Commonwealth, has no common wealth anymore.

The disintegration doesn’t appear to be sparing the British Isles either. As I write this, the Britons are trying to do what the politicians have failed and hopefully hold the United Kingdom together. It is Saturday night in London and we are being driven through this iconic city to find food. There is deafening noise coming our direction. Our Romanian driver tells us there is no problem. It is just football fans celebrating wins by their teams.

As we get closer, there are cans of beer strewn all over the place. At a distance there is a contingent of police officers. Clearly, something is amiss. These weren’t just football fans. Some were waving the English flag while others tightly held the Union Jack and even more were clasping the European Union (EU) flag. It is a nation deeply divided, being torn asunder by both centrifugal and centripetal forces. As we slow down to watch this spectacle, a young man gives us a Nazi salute telling us to go back to our countries.

At a reception hosted by a leading think tank, I got a chance to chat with a British scholar. “The Brits are known the world over for being methodical and perfectionists, having managed to rule over more than half the world without a computer. What went wrong?” I asked.

“Well, you can’t put a finger on the one issue that caused all these mess. What you are seeing today in Britain is a culmination of many mistakes by both the Conservatives and Liberals. In theory, the Brits wanted to control their destiny and feared most that Brussels will undermine their parliamentary sovereignty.”

He explained that the problem may have started with the Conservatives in 1972 when the then Prime Minister Edward Heath proceeded to use Parliament as a representative of the people to sign the EU accession documents and inadvertently limited the political sovereignty of the British electorate. This indeed was in complete contravention of both British law and the Constitution. And although EU debate was not a priority issue prior to Brexit, squabbles in the Conservative party led Prime Minister David Cameron to undo the mistakes of his predecessors and take hold of his party. He failed.

The public anger today isn’t directed at policy missteps but more on the increasing immigration that is pushing services to their limits. At the dawn of the European Union, there was a provision of two years to control immigrants within EU in an orderly manner but the Labour government then did not do what other countries like Germany did.

They simply opened the doors to immigrants from other poorer European countries and in addition to immigrants from other countries and the country took in more people than it can sustain. It takes longer today to see a physician than it took a couple of years ago.

He explained that although there are other political issues that are normal to other countries like the rising European Nationalism, they did not warrant the troubles that the UK is going through today. France and Germany are experiencing the same but they are still firmly in the EU.

According to the scholar, the truth of the matter is that Britain’s heart has never been in the EU and for most of the time they have been there, they have always had one foot at home and the other in the EU for fear of losing their sovereignty.

Now the British are at a cross road. They must decide the country’s destiny. That requires extraordinary leadership that will transcend the weak side of democracy and decide what is good for the people. Perhaps the answer lies in what Sir Edward Heath did at his time to get Britain into the EU. Leaving the EU at the moment threatens the unity and peace of not just Britain, but the entire Europe.