We might be confused by Brexit, but the rest of the world is utterly baffled

Many people outside the UK are asking: “what the hell are the British people doing to themselves?” When it comes to Brexit, are the Brits really going to scupper an already shaky world order just to placate some populist fanatics?

For decades, centuries even, the world order was shaped by the UK. The British empire was seen by others around the globe as the cornerstone of its stability (imperial injustices aside). This view arose from the former British colonies’ familiarity with British troops, British industry and trade, as well as British soft power (the royal family and BBC) and what it used to mean for them, for their past and future.

However, the increasing dominance of the US moonlight’s beam in the 20th century meant, naturally, the sunset of the British hegemony. Since the Americans grabbed the world’s remote control, there has been a reset – with the world order drastically changed in the American direction. And the world has received the new American cultural reality with few apparent conflictions, except one, the British legacy. British officials, institutions and soldiers may have left their ex-colonies, but their imprint has remained.

Due to its intertwining impact on the future and welfare of people in the UK, Brexit has tended to be seen, from abroad, as a local mess with no immediate implication anywhere else. Is it true though? Are citizens in other parts of the world immune to the effects of Brexit’s shrapnel? In any event, do people elsewhere care about us? Certainly it might be reasonable to think that it’s important to know what they make of us and of our country.

Many people in Britain see their country in mayhem, but they don’t necessarily know what to do to get themselves out of Brexit's snare (not even the government appears to have an answer, nor most of those who voted for EU withdrawal). The confusion over the outcome of the referendum in 2016 – which is psychological at its core – has been so powerful that it has split society in two. Some are doomed to see Brexit as a Noah’s Ark; others are ready to put a big hole in it below the water line.

But if you think we in the UK are confused, it should be said that people around the world follow events without having any clue about what on earth is happening here. Wherever you go now, the question on everyone’s lips is along the lines of: why are the British muddling themselves into this most abhorrent and unjustified self-harm?

Do not get me wrong, people from all over the globe watch the BBC too. Many are still able to form some sort of opinion on the subject. Indeed, given the complexities involved, this has created a paradoxical reality where someone in Nicaragua can be as educated on Brexit as a Brexiteer from the midlands of England. It’s not the information that people lack, it’s their ability to absorb (and perhaps contextualise) it.

For many beyond our shores, the right acronym for this dogged quandary which the UK has been juggling with for two and a half years is political “civil war”. This might be a bit over-amplified, but it is, indeed, some kind of a war waging, but in a civil manner.

Yet the outcome of the British conflict over Brexit still might, as the UK did in the past, play a role in forming the world’s reality. Exiting the EU has set a different course for the post-Second World War order; a course which could end up setting Europe ablaze.

People on the other side of the English Channel have certainly grown very sceptical about British integrity when it comes to doing business of any kind. There is no point signing a deal with a nation that appears unable or unwilling to honour its word on previous European deals it has been part of. This is what Britain’s image abroad has become in some quarters.

Take the Norwegians as another example. Once a “Norway-style” option became a possible alternative to Ms May’s Brexit agreement, Norwegian politicians panicked; mainly because, after turning our back on the EU, they duly thought that Britain could get Norway’s ship scuttled too. Many in Europe just don’t trust Britain anymore. They increasingly think that the British gamble over leaving the EU could wreak havoc on their own present and future.

But Europeans are not alone. Americans watch Brexit with horror too. Well, not all Americans, but especially those who did not vote for Donald Trump. Trump supporters see Brexit as a victory on the same historical scale as their waggish president’s inauguration. But on the other side of the US political scene, life is gloomier.

In fact, Brexit didn’t promote division and fear only in Britain; it also helped to create two Americas. One understands that Britain had no need whatsoever to depart the EU in order to deepen its ties with the US, as those disingenuous leavers are still trying to argue. This America represents the liberal institutions, most branches of officialdom and those who see the benefits of globalisation.

Nevertheless, Trump is still pushing Britain to crash out with no deal, claiming that an endorsement of Ms May’s Brexit deal would mean the UK losing out on a favourable bilateral trade agreement with the US. This is not an off-the-cuff claim: it is a real bid from the most powerful man on the planet to sabotage the UK’s “special” relationship with America by feeding his own nationalist agenda.

An opinion poll by Emerson College, published at the end of last year, showed that 91 per cent of Americans support the “special relationship”.

However, it seems that Americans have lost their faith in Britain as a trade partner. While a majority still support a bilateral free trade agreement with the UK after Brexit, the poll showed that many in the US don’t think that Britain is a trustworthy partner to do business with. Of the respondents, 48 per cent rated China as the most important trading partner for the US (76 per cent had China in their top two), and 20 per cent went for Canada first. Only 6 per cent of respondents saw Britain as the top trade partner (behind Israel and Australia too).

Does the relationship, under Trump, still sound “special”?

The other America – Donald Trump’s America – does not spare any thought to what’s happening abroad: it simply wants to take back control, supports building a wall on its border to stop immigration, chants “America first” and wants to ditch multilateral institutions, such as Nato and the EU. It rings a bell, right?

However, the association of Brexit’s bad boys with Trump’s presidential campaign was not the ultimate eye-catcher in terms of foreign involvement in the UK’s decision to split from the EU. What was most notable was capturing Nigel Farage and Arron Banks, and other leavers, in the same bed with Russia.

Indeed, the alleged efforts of Banks and Farage to foster contact with both Russian officials and Trump’s campaign have raised concerns among investigators in the UK and the US.

Brexit has so far proved to be a zero-sum game, and the only nation still in love with zero-sum games is Russia. There should be no doubt by now that Brexit will only play into Russia’s hands. The very notion of “apocalyptic Europe” has informed the national belief system of the poker-faced Russian president Vladimir Putin for years. Stumbling out of a humiliating defeat at the end of the Cold War, the ex-KGB officer always saw a united Europe as another Soviet Union, but on the other side of the game.

Elena Sobonina

Ostensibly, it looks like this assumption has a Russian government monopoly, but, as time passes, skies are becoming cloudier. Putin managed to manipulate the Russian people into his antagonised theory through fuelling acrimony towards the west. This has been always a key tactic, which has proved efficient in turning ordinary citizens – more or less compelled as they are to consume constant, malicious propaganda – to believe that Brexit can turn the wheel in Russia’s favour. It’s so obvious from every angle in the globe – except where Brexiteers sit, of course – that Russia can’t wait but to see us out (for its own ends).

No wonder Moscow has been meddling in Brexit from day one. The US Senate published a report in January last year noting that UK campaign finance laws do not require disclosure of political donations if they are from “the beneficial owners of non-British companies that are incorporated in the EU and carry out business in the UK”. This opacity, the report suggested, “may have enabled Russian-related money to be directed with insufficient scrutiny to various UK political actors”.

This came as experts from the University of California at Berkeley and Swansea University identified 150,000 Twitter accounts with Russian ties that had been spreading messages on Brexit, which is not even to mention the Russian-owned media outlets RT and Sputnik’s extensive and “systematically one-sided coverage” of the Brexit debate, as the Senate report put it.

But Russians don’t really like these “accusations”, and robustly defend their government’s theory no matter what (and its denial of involvement). “We all agree that the Russian government has nothing to do with Brexit, and didn’t intervene one bit. We are stunned by these accusations,” Elena Sobonina, a Moscow-based expert on Russia’s foreign policy, told me.

“We are Europe’s closest neighbours, therefore stability of the continent is crucial for us. We can’t afford playing this game, but if you want to know who is really working on weakening the EU and Nato you have to look west, to the US”, she said. “Everyone in Russia believes so.”

Russians can point to Trump as Europe’s biggest rival, they can also claim that they are the champions of the EU’s stability; but in Putin’s eyes, Britain will always be a special enemy.

The poisoning of the ex-double agent Sergei Skripal in March last year in Salisbury helped Putin’s close circle to make the case to ordinary Russians. While wacky politicians, like Boris Johnson, were turning the show into an outcry for their own self-indulgent political tactics, Putin was mobilising Russia’s citizens – through their natural sense of grievance since the collapse of the Soviet Union – against Britain and what it represents.

Britain’s hard stance on Russia – that it was to blame for the attempted assassination and ought to be punished – sent a message to Balkan and former Soviet nations that they would not be on their own, that Britain would not abdicate its responsibilities towards this part of the world, where people still perceive Russia as a threat. A young Lithuanian told me: “Old people, who lived under the Soviet occupation, do not invest in a home or land because they still think the Russians will, eventually, come over and take everything away.”

However, the way in which Britain’s position was perceived in ex-Soviet spheres of influence also uncovered a huge sympathy towards Russia and Putin’s cause in countries seen as crucial for Britain after Brexit, like China.

British politicians have rarely been able to understand China due to a major misconception about its intentions. Ironically, Britain – the liberal empire which used to dominate the world – is plagued by isolationism and xenophobia, while the ex-communist acropolis, China, is becoming ever more free market orientated, undertaking a systematic process to liberalise trade.

During his visit to Beijing last summer, the chancellor Philip Hammond seemed to be presenting Britain’s letter of credence to the Chinese, as they become the champion of free trade.

And sure enough, despite seeing Brexit as an imminent threat to the world’s economic stability, Chinese leaders still see it as a potentially big opportunity. Chinese businessmen, especially, believe it is a good idea to take advantage of the British “national desperation” to sign free trade deals. This promise, which has always been at the core of Brexiteer’s arguments for leaving the EU campaign, created Britain’s vulnerability in the eyes of pushy China. Chinese president Xi Jinping will trade with Britain, but this time on his own terms.

In truth though, while China and the US are locked in a trade war, Britain’s dreams in the east seem diminished for now. Post-Brexit Britain will increasingly become dependent on the US (probably on Trump’s terms), and as long as Trump is in the Oval Office, the likelihood of any trade deal with China is minimal.

As for ordinary Chinese craftsmen and small business owners, who look to foreign markets to sell their goods, many wonder why their British equivalents would countenance running away from the EU, the biggest market in the world. Asked about Brexit and how people back home see it, a Chinese restaurateur in London’s Chinatown told me: “People don’t get it! They just sit there mocking the British and having a laugh at them.”

The real laugh is that Brexiteers are trying to sell a globalised “new” Britain, while leaving the very European organisation that still holds the global liberal system together and that is at the heart of global trade.

“What a bizarre tweak,” as an Arab diplomat in London put it. “In her last visit to attend the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries’ summit, just after the 2016 referendum, May’s bid to sell the global Britain cause made her look embarrassingly bad. Nobody could actually grasp what case she came all the way to make.”

According to the same diplomat, “Arab leaders want Britain to stay in the EU because they know that Brexit will hit its role on the international stage really hard, and subsequently we, in the Arab world, would have a lot at stake”.

For Gulf countries particularly, trade with Britain is indisputably important. But in a region where stability (such as it is) still relies heavily on the US and the UK, any radical change in these two countries’ roles on the global stage would reflect heavily on the area.

“In the GCC, those who are traditionally bigger proponents of regional organisations see Brexit as a threat to regionalism tout-court, and see … the potential weakening of the EU as mirroring or anticipating the weakening of the GCC,” says Cinzia Bianco, a researcher on Gulf-European relations at the University of Exeter.

“This is especially because the GCC, for a period during the early 2000s, looked at the EU as a potential model in certain aspects,” she adds.

Mohamed Kawas

Many in the Gulf believe the UK was never meant to be part of the EU, and saw the UK as something different. According to Ms Bianco: “This is mostly due to the historical background of the UK being a semi-colonial power in the Gulf: GCC countries, therefore, have traditionally dealt with London on a bilateral level, with strong defence, political and economic relations, and very rarely through the EU.”

This might explain why the Arab media is pretty much obsessed with Brexit. All the big ones – Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, Sky News Arabia, Al Ghad – and even local news channels now follow Brexit more than Syria or Libya’s bloody civil wars.

But when you participate in a Brexit debate on one of these channels, the pressing question they all ask is: “Do you think another referendum will take place?” It sounds like Arabs, for some reason, want Britain to stay in the EU more than British people themselves. This interest is reflected in the number of Independent readers from the Middle East who are keen to read about the subject. Brexit is our best-read topic in Egypt.

Why might this be? Maybe it is a subconscious sympathy hammered out of an historical feeling of association (for good or ill) with Britain’s affairs. Maybe it is a genuine fear that if Great Britain exits the EU, it will not be great again and its role in the Middle East will be diminished.

An Arab diplomat reflected ironically on the question when I put it to him: “Maybe our people are afraid of European immigration if Brexit would, at some point in the future, result in the collapse of the EU.”

Still, we must distinguish between the media and the political elite on one hand, and ordinary people in the Middle East on the other. Most seem to be aware, despite the extensive coverage, of nothing more than the bare fact that Brexit means Britain would be walking away from the EU. But their favourite question remains: “But, why?” And that is a good question indeed.

“The reason why Brexit hasn’t been on the ordinary Arabs’ top of the agenda is that it happened in conjunction with what is called ‘the Arab Spring’, including the Syrian, Yemeni, and Libyan civil conflicts,” says Mohamed Kawas, a prominent French-Lebanese journalist.

“On governments’ level, those who represent the traditional regional order, just as the mullahs’ regime in Iran, Putin in Russia and Trump in the White House, don’t really like the idea of an international multilateral dynamic. In fact, in their perception of the EU, they enjoy more listening to the extreme right wing’s toxic ideas”, he adds.

It should be clear by now that Brexit is not just a local British dilemma. It will not only change people’s lives here, but in some other parts of the world too – directly or indirectly. This is due to its strategic and economic impact on Europe’s stability, Britain’s position on the world’s stage, and how Brexit will help Russia to rise again as a superpower in a new bipolar order.

It is notable too that whereas the English language has always been a big help in making local issues, especially in the UK and the US, explicable internationally, the complexities of Brexit (and its inane explanations) did the opposite. For many outsiders, debate about Brexit remains something their eyes can see but their minds can’t process.

Still, it has been the UK’s global standing as a nation of good repute that has been hit most. Those who always looked up to this country and its democratic and liberal values are united with those who loathe its imperial history and disastrous foreign policy decisions, such as the invasion of Iraq. Both sides – allies and foes – are now sceptical about Britain’s integrity and honesty, and doubtful about the extent to which other nations can any longer follow Britain’s leadership.

Of course, the British people themselves still have to get their heads around Brexit before anyone else. But whatever the outcome, it will not change the new reality: the damage is done, and Britain is not great anymore.