Steve Fuller on Brexit

Interview questions with Steve Fuller on the topic of Brexit

Indeed, almost two years after the referendum, Brexit remains to be seen as one of the most engaging topics in our society. I have had the privilege to talk about this issue with an academic sociologist and philosopher Steve Fuller, who is currently holding the Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology at the Department of sociology at University of Warwick.  

This interview was originally conducted for the Slovak magazine Profit. The Slovak version will be published in the April print issue.

The future of the EU has become questionable after the Brexit referendum, while the recent rise of populism and nationalism in most European countries further supported the idea of isolationism. By contrast, Merkel’s and Macron’s victories in 2017 show that people are still willing to hold on to liberal values and to cooperate. How do you think the situation will continue? Are the European countries on their way to tear apart, or do you hold a more positive view of the European future?

• Generally speaking, my view is that the original Brussels vision of an ever more politically and economically integrated Europe – which Macron champions today – is the only version of the European Union that makes sense. If the EU is not heading to become a kind of superstate unified under a common currency, common military, etc., then I don’t see the point of its existence. And I think both friends and foes of the EU understand this point completely. It helps to explain why European leaders in favour of the EU don’t want to hold a referendum on their own nation’s EU membership. Even if ordinary citizens don’t fully understand the benefits of the EU, they understand the trajectory in which the EU is heading, which involves delegating more money and power to Brussels. As we saw in the case of Brexit, that alone is enough to get people to vote to leave the EU.
• However, what will actually happen to the EU is difficult to determine. So far nations with strong populist parties also benefit from EU membership because of the EU’s redistribution policies. That helps to stabilise the political situation. But several Eurozone nations in southern Europe remain economically uncertain and it is not clear that there is much of an appetite among the richer EU member states to provide more loans if the banks of those countries were to fail. So things could turn for the worse very quickly. My own view here is that the EU – and especially the Eurozone – expanded too quickly over the past 25 years.

Prior to Brexit, the Leave campaign spread misused information that did not reflect the reality, such as the one regarding the funding of the NHS or migration. Why was it so easy to deceive and manipulate the public, especially in the modern age when facts can be double-checked online? Into what extent do you think was this phenomenon related to the age of the voters?

• To be honest, I don’t think the referendum campaign was any less truthful than other political campaigns. Both the Remain and Leave sides of the campaign used statistics strategically. Even the infamous ‘£350 million per week for the NHS’ was based on calculating how much money the UK would save by not paying into the EU budget – and then assuming it would all go to the NHS. Of course, that assumption is completely implausible. On the other hand, the Remain side predicted that the Brexit vote itself would result in instant economic collapse, which turned out to be false because that too was based on false assumptions.
• Much more important than any misuse of statistics was the simple fact that the referendum was poorly worded. There was no specific version of Brexit to vote on. Indeed, David Cameron, who called the referendum, was so confident that people would vote to remain in the EU that he failed to instruct the civil service to prepare any Brexit scenarios. This is why even today the UK doesn’t have a clear position on what it wants from Brexit. However, during the campaign, the Brexiteers took full advantage of the referendum’s poor wording by encouraging voters to imagine a variety of rather contradictory utopias that might result from leaving the EU without having to commit to any of them. From the standpoint of Brussels, the UK appears to be still playing this game.

Do you think that the referendum results would differ if the government provided the public with general knowledge about the EU and the Great Britain’s position in it?

• I’m not sure about that.  In the end, it appears that the Leave campaign won by appealing to issues relating to national sovereignty. This is why even though everyone now knows – if they didn’t already know during the campaign – that the £350 million claim was false, that didn’t matter. People were persuaded by the very idea of repatriating British money as a symbol of regaining national sovereignty. The exact amount of money and how it’s subsequently spent matters less to people.

What about the position of British universities? There are claims that their impact on the Remain campaign was not as strong as expected, even though the majority of academics were against Brexit. Is there anything universities could do better in order to protect their current and future EU students?

• I think any impact that British academics could have had in supporting Remain was effectively neutralised by the ‘anti-expert’ rhetoric of the Brexiteers. In a democracy one must always be careful not to come across as patronising to voters, and the Brexiteers fully exploited the tendency of academic experts to talk down to people.
• On the practical point of protecting EU students, I think the single most important policy would be to not count students as part of the official immigration figures – or at least to treat them as a protected class of immigrants. It seems clear that the sort of immigrants that British voters seem to be worried about relatively low skill labourers who (allegedly) take jobs from British natives.

Many Slovak students who want to study abroad are now uncertain whether to apply for British universities, not to mention that many of them are worried about Brexit’s impact on tuition fees in Scotland. In what ways are the EU students going to be impacted?

• Hard to tell, both at the political and economic levels – since of course the UK is in the middle of a general reassessment of its tuition fee structure, which could bring down the cost of at least some degrees. My guess is that the universities themselves will do everything they can to insure that policies are in place that correspond to current EU policies on the free movement of researchers and students. It’s clear that the UK will strike up a similarly bespoke arrangement for the exchange of police and military intelligence, and the Prime Minister recently suggested something similar for higher education and research.

Despite the result of the referendum, according to the Boar, UCAS has recently confirmed 10% rise in EU applicants to Warwick. How would you explain such paradox?

• The UK remains the most cosmopolitan place to pursue higher education in Europe, especially if one is thinking in terms of a springboard to other parts of the world. Also, it probably helps that the UK is still in the EU and so at the point the main thing potential students need to worry about here is the size of the tuition fees.

As Brexit uncertainty continues, net migration has been falling over past years. Lack of migration is economically dangerous for the EU countries as well as for the UK. However, do you think that some countries, which are facing the problem of brain drain phenomenon – such as Slovakia and other Post-Soviet states – could potentially benefit from their people staying in? 

• This is possible, especially the post-Soviet states conduct at least some of their courses in English. In terms of both attracting foreigners to their own countries and making their own citizens marketable overseas, fluency in English can make a big difference. The UK’s biggest competitors in attracting students are universities in countries like Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia that teach a reasonable percentage of their courses in English.

Are there, in your opinion, any positive aspects of Brexit?

• My view on this matter is a little peculiar. First, everything will turn on the actual settlement, and it’s not clear how much the EU will be willing to compromise with the UK.  And clearly Brexit will look better if the EU finds itself in difficulty over the next few years – which is entirely possible, especially if the Eurozone is radically restructured or another EU member decides to leave. However, if the EU remains stable, then the UK’s best hope for success lies in the far-flung free trade deals that the more ambitious Brexiteers have been promising. Unfortunately it would probably take a while before those deals start to replace whatever trade that the UK might have lost with the EU.

Finally – what are the chances for another referendum? Wouldn’t that be a step against democracy, as a decision has already been made?

• I would be in favour of a second referendum with a more focused question – that is, either to remain in the EU or to leave the EU on specific terms, based on whatever deal is struck between the UK and EU.  What is more likely, however, is that Parliament will cast the final vote, but perhaps that vote will come too shortly before Brexit is due to happen to make the debate meaningful. Of course, the UK-EU negotiations could fall apart before then, and the Prime Minister may be forced to call another election. If that happens, then people may be willing rethink the entire question of Brexit from scratch. In that context, the Labour Party may find it to its advantage to try to stop Brexit, if the UK’s economic prospects are beginning to look bad.