UKIP's Nigel Farage (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
‘The deepest characteristic of Europeans is this huge perplexity,” says
French political philosopher Pierre Manent: “They don’t know to what
they belong, and they don’t know whom to obey.” In past ages, Europeans
hailed to the crown. With the creation of the European Union — that
nebulous body in Brussels, part economic alliance, part political
confederation, part agent of eschatological dreams — Europeans
indicated, and crystallized, their uncertainty about what they belong to
and whom they obey.
The United Kingdom has long prided itself on its distinctness — temperamental, political, cultural — from Europe, but Manent’s Continental confusion crept across the Channel in the later decades of the 20th century, prompting even the Brits to sign on to the Treaty of Maastricht. But a vocal portion of the U.K. has always been skeptical of the grand project being undertaken in Belgium. As of May, theirs are no longer voices in the wilderness.
In 2013 the United Kingdom Independence Party, headed by the flamboyant Nigel Farage, earned an astonishing 22 percent of the popular vote in U.K. local elections, finishing just three percentage points behind David Cameron’s Conservatives, seven behind Ed Miliband’s Labour party, and eight points ahead of Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats. Observers speculated about the rise of a fourth major party in U.K. politics. A year later, in the country’s elections for EU Parliament, UKIP won outright. UKIP has 24 of the U.K.’s 73 EU Parliament members. Farage hopes that that success will translate into UKIP’s first parliamentarians next May.Or earlier. Last month, Douglas Carswell, MP for Clacton since May 2010, announced his defection from the Conservatives to UKIP. The decision triggered a special election, in which Carswell has a healthy lead, and the Conservatives are having trouble finding a candidate to run against him. As it happens, the date of Carswell’s likely victory is October 9, Prime Minister David Cameron’s birthday.
“Sovereignty,” with its Old World flavor, is an uncommon word in American politics — but the question of sovereignty is the foundation of UKIP, and the issue on which Farage is making his political career. Who is sovereign over the United Kingdom? Farage insists that it is no longer Buckingham Palace or Westminster; it is Brussels. “The United Kingdom’s sovereignty is gone,” he tells National Review Online. “It’s a fact. It’s gone. It’s been given away.” The U.K. “is being governed from a foreign land.”
Parliament still has much sway, of course, but in a broad sense Farage is not wrong. Because of its membership in the European Union, the United Kingdom’s immigration policy, energy policy, and justice system are all ultimately subject to Brussels. If, for instance, Britons want to close the nation’s borders to potential Islamic jihadists with passports from other EU countries, they will have to withdraw from the European Union. It is, insists Farage, that simple.
Farage knows the EU well: He is a member of the European Parliament, perhaps its best-known member — in large part for his floor speeches denouncing the European Union. In his scorn for the organization, Farage takes his bearings, at least in part, from Manent. Speaking during a session of the European Parliament in April, Farage explained:
The United Kingdom has long prided itself on its distinctness — temperamental, political, cultural — from Europe, but Manent’s Continental confusion crept across the Channel in the later decades of the 20th century, prompting even the Brits to sign on to the Treaty of Maastricht. But a vocal portion of the U.K. has always been skeptical of the grand project being undertaken in Belgium. As of May, theirs are no longer voices in the wilderness.
In 2013 the United Kingdom Independence Party, headed by the flamboyant Nigel Farage, earned an astonishing 22 percent of the popular vote in U.K. local elections, finishing just three percentage points behind David Cameron’s Conservatives, seven behind Ed Miliband’s Labour party, and eight points ahead of Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats. Observers speculated about the rise of a fourth major party in U.K. politics. A year later, in the country’s elections for EU Parliament, UKIP won outright. UKIP has 24 of the U.K.’s 73 EU Parliament members. Farage hopes that that success will translate into UKIP’s first parliamentarians next May.Or earlier. Last month, Douglas Carswell, MP for Clacton since May 2010, announced his defection from the Conservatives to UKIP. The decision triggered a special election, in which Carswell has a healthy lead, and the Conservatives are having trouble finding a candidate to run against him. As it happens, the date of Carswell’s likely victory is October 9, Prime Minister David Cameron’s birthday.
“Sovereignty,” with its Old World flavor, is an uncommon word in American politics — but the question of sovereignty is the foundation of UKIP, and the issue on which Farage is making his political career. Who is sovereign over the United Kingdom? Farage insists that it is no longer Buckingham Palace or Westminster; it is Brussels. “The United Kingdom’s sovereignty is gone,” he tells National Review Online. “It’s a fact. It’s gone. It’s been given away.” The U.K. “is being governed from a foreign land.”
Parliament still has much sway, of course, but in a broad sense Farage is not wrong. Because of its membership in the European Union, the United Kingdom’s immigration policy, energy policy, and justice system are all ultimately subject to Brussels. If, for instance, Britons want to close the nation’s borders to potential Islamic jihadists with passports from other EU countries, they will have to withdraw from the European Union. It is, insists Farage, that simple.
Farage knows the EU well: He is a member of the European Parliament, perhaps its best-known member — in large part for his floor speeches denouncing the European Union. In his scorn for the organization, Farage takes his bearings, at least in part, from Manent. Speaking during a session of the European Parliament in April, Farage explained:
The whole European project comes from the disaster that was sparked by the First World War, and it is entirely understandable that people should have sought ways to prevent such awfulness. The problem is, they chose the wrong target. [They] decided that it was existence of nation-state[s] that led to war, and therefore we have to abolish nation-state[s].This is, said Farage, “a falsehood — and it’s potentially a dangerous falsehood”:
If you try to impose a new flag, a new anthem, a new president, a new army, police force, foreign policy, whatever else — [if] you try to impose that without first seeking the consent of the people, you’re in danger actually of creating the very nationalisms and resentment that you sought to snuff out in the first place.
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