It is everyone’s failure if a country leaves the European Union. In spite of some undeniably, specifically British features, we must not underestimate nor analyse it lightly, because Brexit reveals some errors of conduct and foretells of serious complications.
Firstly for Great Britain. By wanting to unify his party David Cameron has disunited the Kingdom. Britons are now divided, long term. Gibraltar, Northern Ireland, Scotland and the City are all equally burning issues to be solved, and that’s without reckoning with the economic and social consequences of this purely political divorce.
Then for the European Union itself. Indifference on the part of national leaders has meant that its management has swum with the tide for the last twenty years, its policies challenged, its functioning criticised, its goals brought into question. As soon as the results of the British referendum were made public a thousand and one voices could be heard calling for the Union’s re-design, its transformation or its reform. We should now be happy that national political actors are finally paying attention to this structure is at the core of national issues.