Brendan Simms: ‘Brexit: Forward to the past?’

Brendan Simms is a professor of international relations at the University of Cambridge. In his lecture he presented an analysis of the causes and phenomena that in his opinion led to Brexit. Thinking back to the beginnings of British statehood, Professor Simms pointed to the rather special role played by the United Kingdom in the European arena. Because of its location, or rather its distance from the continent, the United Kingdom has always maintained a sense of separateness, distance, and even a sense of superiority to wars, social and economic movements. Another factor strengthening this condition was the fact that from the sixteenth century Protestantism became the official religion.

With time, supporting movements or Protestant minorities in the predominantly Catholic Europe has become one of the priorities of British politics, and thus contributed to the deepening of a sense of difference. The nineteenth century brought new challenges in the form of the rise of Germany, which all European countries struggled with. The involvement of Great Britain in two world wars, in the fight against fascism and then communism was a clear signal that Germany and Russia are the most important problems for Europe.

According to Professor Simms, the idea of ​​joining European states was to have a clear political goal – to gain control over Germany and to stop communism, and economic issues were decidedly secondary. With time, however, the British began to bother with a disturbing question – whether the Germans were so strong or so weak that we had to become part of the external structure deciding about our lives. Although Brexit has become a fact and shows what are the social moods, what problems the nation is experiencing, its implementation may lead to further dilemmas at the level of legal regulations and external policy. Finding a role on the European scene will undoubtedly be a huge challenge for Great Britain.

Rozana Szmigiel