Nationalism and Identity: Will Brexit best Brussels?

Previously I wrote on nationalism, introducing Aristotle’s arguments in the Nicomachean Ethics. I now want to unpack the argument of Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, who spoke on March 6th 2016 at Dartford in the United Kingdom and then later on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.

Aristotle argued:

Things that are exchanged need to be somehow comparable.  This is why coins were invented.  All good[s], which are exchanged, should be measured by some sort of standard coin, which represents a measure of human needs.  [From] the name coin (nomisma) comes the word law, regulation or convention (“nomos”), since the value of a coin is by regulation.

 Boris Johnson now argues that Great Britain should leave the EU in order to: Take back control of British arrangements. To take back control of the nation’s money, borders and democracy. To reassert its right to make its own laws. To ensure that UK courts can overturn judgements of the ECJ.  To reassert the sovereignty of the British Parliament that has been usurped by the European Communities Act 1972.  To right the wrongs of democratic deficiency created through the European legislative burden.

Nigel Farage, who also supports a British Brexit, argues further that once Great Britain can take back control of its own exchange, the advantages of competitive trade will far outweigh the burdens of European oversight.

In essence, both Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage are trying to relocate the notion of exchange between citizens in an Aristotelian conception of the state.  For Aristotle, law holds the polis together in that it tends to preserve the community.

Last week, I wrote that the core problem underlying the single currency in the European Union is the lack of political embeddedness that should support Europe’s overall economic and political architecture.  As long as the European Union lacks the institutions to successfully manage and regulate trade, cross-border financial flows, and a single capital market, the concern for traditional sovereignty at the national level and the call for legitimate political support at the national level will continue to rise.  Without a new conception of supranational sovereignty at the European level that satisfies the call for democracy at the national level, the European Union, as a purely economic construction without the concomitant legal structure, can only lead to dissolution and failure. The number of regions seeking to go it alone is increasing. Both resurgence in nationalist pride and disappointment at Brussels’ centralized economic management have led to an increase in calls for national political autonomy and a reintroduction of the sovereignty of the state.