Headlines 25/06/2016

Headlines

• Brexit

• Weakening of the Western establishment

• Future of the EU

Details

Brexit

The unexpected vote in the UK in favour of exiting the European Union has caused a severe crisis in the financial markets. The UK currency, the pound sterling, plunged to its lowest level against the US dollar in 31 years. Further economic effects are expected as multinational companies present in Britain consider relocating to continental Europe in order to remain within the EU.

However, the real blow to the British establishment is not the economic aspect, which Britain will solve by careful renegotiation of its relationship with Europe. Britain's actual purpose in remaining within Europe is to have greater influence in European decision-making, which will be much more difficult now with Britain outside of Europe, and France and Germany left free to drive Europe as they wish. Britain has always tried to maintain a position where it has one foot outside Europe and one foot inside, in order to maintain its own separate interests while interfering in European affairs for its own advantage.

In fact, the reason for the success of the Brexit vote is that the British political medium has continued to actively cultivate an anti-European political base and to balance it with a pro-European political base, so that Britain can continue to follow its two-faced policy.

Britain fears that if its anti-European base were to disappear, it would be in danger of fully integrating into Europe and losing its national identity and sovereignty. Hence it has always considered it essential to nurture the anti-European tendency, which is represented in a nationalistic wing of the ruling Conservative Party.

However, the British establishment still holds many cards. They have ensured that the leader of the 'Leave' campaign is their own man, Boris Johnson. And they will see that either he, or someone else loyal to them, negotiates the future relationship with Europe in such a manner as to satisfy Britain's goals and secure its interests.

Weakening of the Western establishment

The ability of the West to manage their own populations has weakened. The masses are disaffected with current policies and even their systems. But they see no alternative. In America, strongly anti-establishment figures Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have been very popular in the present elections. While in Britain, the Leave campaign succeeded against the wishes and careful planning of the British establishment. This divisive vote has serious implications not only for Europe but also for the unity of the Britain and the United Kingdom.

Commenting on the weakening of the political establishment in the West, Tony Blair wrote in the New York Times, "Insurgent movements of left and right, posing as standard-bearers of a popular revolt against the political establishment, can spread and grow at scale and speed. Today’s polarized and fragmented news coverage only encourages such insurgencies — an effect magnified many times by the social media revolution."

He further says, "The political center has lost its power to persuade and its essential means of connection to the people it seeks to represent. Instead, we are seeing a convergence of the far left and far right. The right attacks immigrants while the left rails at bankers, but the spirit of insurgency, the venting of anger at those in power and the addiction to simple, demagogic answers to complex problems are the same for both extremes. Underlying it all is a shared hostility to globalization."
Tony Blair's open naming of the political establishment and their difficulties in the face of populist movements is quite striking and should be a lesson in the realities of democratic rule in the West. It is, in reality, rule of the people by the elite and for the elite.

Future of the EU

Britain's vote to exit from the European Union has put the whole idea of the EU in jeopardy. Other countries, now disaffected with EU leadership after decades of political wrangling and bureaucratic obstruction, may also now consider having referenda on leaving the Europe Union.

The problem in the European Union is the Nation-State model which had its start in the peace of Westphalia of the 17th Century after several decades of war had torn Europe apart. The West is not willing to abandon this model, which never existed in history before this. According to this idea, the 'nation' owns the state and has sovereignty over it. This idea of a nation lacks independent definition. Once a state is created, it is natural for its people to develop thoughts and feelings that are distinct from people living in other states. So the definition of nations follows from the definition of states, not the other way round as they theoretically suppose.

Furthermore, it is easy for nations to further subdivide if different geographical tendencies emerge in the same country. But it is extremely difficult for two nations to coallesce to form one.

Europe will remain divided as long as they adhere to the Nation-State model. The interests of people can never become aligned in a supra-national organisation. Real unity comes only from unifying the nation, which means that the nation must be independently defined intellectually, and not by state structures that currently exist.

Muslims should take note from the European experience. Muslim countries will never be unified by supranational organisations. The Muslim nation, the Ummah, is defined by Islam and not by current political structures. The Islamic Khilafah "Caliphate" is the unitary state of the entire Muslim Ummah which can only be formed by the successive collapse of existing political structures and the coallescing of all Muslim peoples into a single mighty state as existed in the past.