8/11/19
Growing nationalism is pulling the United Kingdom apart, driving it towards an unprecedented economic calamity and unleashing the most serious constitutional crisis since the 17th century, Gordon Brown warns on Sunday. In his most dire warning about the impact of a no-deal Brexit on the union, the former prime minister states that England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are “devoid of a unifying purpose” capable of holding together amid the threat of crashing out of the EU. Writing in the Observer, he says unionism is “sleepwalking into oblivion”, fueled by a “destructive, populist, nationalist ideology” deployed by Boris Johnson. He joins other senior Labour figures in pleading for urgent action against a no-deal Brexit. “If we are to understand why we are facing not only our most serious constitutional crisis since the 17th century but at the same time an unprecedented economic calamity precipitated by a no-deal exit from the European Union, we must recognize that nationalism is now driving British politics,” he writes.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, warned this weekend that Britain would be the “big losers” from a no-deal outcome. “If it comes to a hard Brexit, this is in no one’s interest, but the British would be the big losers,” he told the Austrian paper Tiroler Tageszeitung. “They pretend it’s not like that, but it will be … We have made it clear that we are unwilling to renegotiate the exit agreement.” Brown accuses Johnson of turning the Conservative and Unionist party into the “Conservative and Brexit party”. He adds: “Unionism appears to be sleepwalking into oblivion and the United Kingdom – once admired around the world for an understated but comfortably unifying Britishness that was inclusive, outward-looking, tolerant and ultimately pragmatic – now presents an ugly picture: of bitter division, intolerance and introversion so extreme that it has sacrificed common sense in favour of a dogmatic abandonment of its own best interests.”
