Dominic Cummings and the Case for Leave

Is the EU “a Crap 1950s Idea?”

Dominic Cummings, Disaster-Avoidance, and the Case for Leave

[Draft of an essay for Uta Staiger eds., Brexit and Beyond,  UCL, forthcoming]

The Brexit campaigns of 2016—both Leave and Remain--were fought largely through the medium of simplicities, delusions, and lies.[1] Neither campaign generated much deep political thinking. The Leave campaign floated to victory on a fantastical promise of ending immigration and returning Britain’s EU funds to the NHS. The Remain campaign relied on no less fantastical projections of the ruinous short-term economic costs of Brexit (the so-called “Project Fear”). Dominic Cummings, Leader of the Vote Leave Campaign, did more than anyone to focus the Campaign debate on bogus issues like the NHS and the impending enlargement of the EU to include Turkey. Nonetheless, in a series of writings authored after the referendum, Cummings has produced an argument for Brexit that has drawn considerable attention and praise.  

Cummings’s position is worth considering for two reasons. First, it is useful to know what actual arguments propelled some of the leading figures in the Campaign, especially since they chose not to reveal those arguments at the time.  Second, Cummings insists on moving beyond vague ruminations on whether Brexit will succeed or fail.  He thinks political argument must be based on “precise quantitative predictions about well-formed questions.”[2] (Cummings is a big fan of Philip Tetlock’s work on forecasting [Tetlock and Gardner 2015.)  While Cummings’s own predictions are not, I think, at all plausible; those who advocate Britain’s Re-entry into Europe—which is now in all likelihood a generational project--would do well to follow the form and spirit if not the actual content of his argument.

I

The Science of Disaster-Avoidance

At the most general level, Cummings’ case for Brexit rests on the probabilistic assessment that leaving would improve the chances of “1) Britain contributing positively to the world and 2) minimizing dangers…[including] Britain’s exposure to the problems caused by the EU.” Viewed more specifically, Cummings’ argument proceeds along three tracks.  Track one takes the Eurosceptics’ conventional ride through Brussels--that familiar wasteland, as they see it, of failure, false promise, and dysfunction. The only distinctive feature of this part of Cummings’s journey is the Hayekian-inspired claim that the EU lacks the self-correcting mechanisms of the market and the experimental sciences. For Cummings, the EU—“a crap 1950s idea,” as he calls it—is excessively hierarchical and centralized, and as such lacks even the error-correcting mechanisms of a national parliamentary government (Shipman 2016, 38). Quoting the physicist David Deutsch, Cummings insists that “preserving the institutions of error correction is more important than any policy.”

This part of Cummings’s argument need not detain us. The idea that the EU is slow-moving and lacks rapid error-correcting mechanisms is a plausible criticism to make. Scholars of the EU often make the same point. No fundamental transformation in the EU can take place without a Treaty change, which requires a unanimous decision of all member states. It’s also fair to say that the EU is hierarchical, at least in the sense that its decisions are top-down and taken without much direct democratic input. But it’s ludicrous to attribute this problem to excessive centralization. Indeed, the principal reason why the EU is so slow-moving is due to its highly decentralized and consensual decision-making practices. The EU is such a feeble force in global affairs, partly because it lacks the centralized political system of the other Great Powers. Likewise, the EU has struggled with the Eurozone Crisis, because it lacks the centralized tax and budgetary powers necessary to manage successfully a Monetary Union. More generally, the concept of “error-correction” in politics is more problematic than Cummings seems to recognize. Where there is a clearly agreed aim, it is relatively straightforward to identify an error—this is the case, for example, in computer coding.  But in politics, errors are often only identifiable after the event, and even then, the attribution of “error” remains controversial. Was the Iraq War an error? Was the creation of the EMU an error? Will the UK’s exit from the EU prove to be an error? None of these questions can be answered independently of a justification of our political projects, a justification that will inevitably require an appeal to contestable moral values (Morgan 2005).       

The second track of Cummings’s argument focuses on the idea that “leaving would improve the probability of… making Britain the best place in the world for science and education.” Here it is important to recall that Cummings worked in Whitehall as an advisor to the Minister of Education and is the author of an ambitious project for educational renewal (Cummings 2015). For Cummings, science and education are key evaluative criteria. He predicts that a post-Brexit UK will achieve more, make a greater scientific contribution to the world, once free of the EU’s legal and regulatory regime.

One merit of this argument is that it is sufficiently precise to generate a testable prediction. Post-Brexit Britain will, if this prediction pans out, score higher on objective criteria of scientific success at some specified date in the future (2026?) than the Britain of 2016. Presumably the criteria will include such factors as educational scores on the PISA surveys; citation-weighted research publication rates; scientific prizes; global university rankings; and technological patents.     

The third track of Cummings argument is the most interesting. Brexit, he argues, minimizes dangers, especially the biggest danger of all: the danger that the free movement of labour will spark a populist backlash that will threaten free trade.  As he puts this point:

[A] return to 1930s protectionism would be disastrous, 2) the fastest route to this is continuing with no democratic control over immigration or human rights policies for terrorists and other serious criminals, therefore 3) the best practical policy is to reduce (for a while) unskilled immigration and increase high skills immigration particularly those with very hard skills in maths, physics and computer science, 4) this requires getting out of the EU, 5) hopefully it will prod the rest of Europe to limit immigration and therefore limit the extremist forces that otherwise will try to rip down free trade.

This argument conjectures a chain of events leading from “no [national] democratic control over immigration,” a requirement of the EU’s Single Market, to the rise of extremist forces demanding 1930s style protectionism, which Cummings rightly considers a disaster. He wants to avoid this disaster by way of another conjecture: a chain of events leading from “democratic control of unskilled labour”— high skill labour would be unaffected—to a broader public tolerance of free trade. Ideally, Cummings would like to see post-Brexit UK prompt the formation of “new institutions for international cooperation to minimize the probability of disasters.” He seems to think that post-Brexit UK is in better position to do this than as a member of the EU.

While it is difficult to argue against probabilistic wagers and counterfactual claims, there are significant problems with both the second and third tracks of Cummings’s argument. The claim that post-Brexit UK will be well-placed to experience a scientific renaissance runs into a number of obvious difficulties. First, the UK already does relatively well on national comparative measures of scientific progress (Scientific American, 2012). Second, scholars have never been able to identify with any great confidence the conditions likely to produce scientific progress (Taylor 2016). And third, the UK government will have to ensure that the country remains (and is perceived to remain) an attractive place for foreign STEM workers to come to study, live, and work. It is very difficult to see how Brexit helps here, especially since it diminishes the status of all workers coming from EU countries. Where once these workers had a status grounded in the EU Constitution; now they will be in the UK merely at the pleasure of Her Majesty’s Government (Morgan 2016).

Cummings wager that Brexit would diminish the chances of an extreme form of protectionism emerging in Britain has some initial plausibility. Certainly, UKIP has pretty much collapsed; in the June 2017 election, the voters it had gained in earlier elections largely fled back to the two major parties. But viewed more closely, Cummings argument about Brexit as a means to avoiding protectionism and increasing UK’s share of global trade is deeply problematic. Here we have to weigh a probabilistic claim together with a preventative claim. How likely is it that absent a reduction in unskilled immigration, the UK would face an anti-trade backlash leading to 1930s protectionism? On the face of it, the UK is an unlikely site for protectionism. No current political party—not even UKIP—favours trade protection.  Indeed, a central argument of leading Tory thinkers is that post-Brexit the UK will enter a “‘post geography trading world’ where we are much less restricted in having to find partners who are physically close to us” (Fox 2016). Furthermore, opinion surveys suggest that UK public opinion is among the most pro free-trade in the advanced industrial world (Pew Survey, 2014). In short, 1930s-style protectionism seems like a rather low probability threat. But even if we were to accept that it represents even a low-level threat, there is little reason to think that ending low-skill immigration offers an effective and efficient solution, especially since this type of immigration is so essential in the hospitality, retail, health care, and agricultural sectors of the UK economy (Consterdine, 2017). Cummings’s remedy is not only unduly costly; it promises to be even more injurious than the underlying ailment.

More generally, Cummings’ belief that post-Brexit UK will be more open to foreign trade is as unfounded as his hope that post-Brexit will inspire new forms of international organization. Certainly in the short to medium term, the UK will face huge problems resulting from the impact of quitting the Customs Union on the UK’s supply-chains, most of which involve other EU countries. If the UK were to trade under WTO rules and couldn’t negotiate new frictionless customs arrangements, it is difficult to see how—given the way supply-chains work--the UK could retain its domestic car industry, which is one of the largest sources of UK manufacturing exports. The other big trade problem facing post-Brexit UK is that the UK has very little power to force the EU to offer favorable trading conditions.  If the EU wishes to make life difficult for the UK—say, by demanding close inspections of all UK exports—the EU can and probably will. Partly for these reasons, most macro-economic estimates of the effects of leaving the EU predict that Brexit will have a significant trade-lowering and welfare-diminishing impact on the UK economy. In sum, if the goal is to increase trade, Brexit seems like the wrong way to do it.   

III

What Disasters Should We Worry About?

While there’s not much to be said in favour of the actual content of Cummings’s argument, the general form of his argument is quite sensible. Cummings is right to warn against the vacuity of general claims that Brexit has succeeded or failed.  He is right to recommend that political argument take place in terms of probabilistic wagers and predictions.  Cummings is also right to emphasize the importance of identifying threats and thinking about institutions capable of error correction and disaster-avoidance. Yet even with these admonitions in mind, I think it is possible to reach a very different assessment about the merits of Leaving the EU.

A threat might be conceptualized as a harm multiplied by the probability of its occurrence.  A disaster is a harm with very high costs, whether material costs or value costs.  The notion of value costs is important.  Political communities stand for certain values—whether liberty, democracy, justice, or whatever—and when those core moral values are lost, it might be counted a disaster. Organized political communities guard against threats by way of various preventative mechanisms. These mechanisms must be both effective (i.e. they must work) and efficient (i.e. they must have low ancillary costs).  It is no good putting in place preventative mechanisms that impose higher costs—whether material or moral—than those posed by the underlying threat.  A surveillance society with unlimited police powers might be effective against terrorism but it is inefficient, since it requires a sacrifice of some of our core moral values.

With these distinctions in mind, I want to suggest the following seven threats worth considering in the context of Brexit.

(i)             The exclusion of the UK from the favorable trade, security, and research opportunities enjoyed by other EU member-states; 

(ii)           The Break-Up of the UK as a Political Community and the return of terrorism in Northern Ireland;

(iii)         Russian aggression in Eastern Europe;

(iv)          US isolationism and trade protectionism leading to a collapse of the postwar international order;

(v)           Large-scale migration—tens of millions per year--into Southern Europe;

(vi)          A major banking and debt crisis in Italy;

(vii)        Large scale domestic terrorism as a consequence of the implosion of Middle Eastern and North African states and the failure to integrate existing Islamic minority populations.

In contrast to the threat of immigration-induced protectionism—the threat that led Cummings to embrace Brexit—these threats are all costly and sufficiently probable to require preventative measures.  The first of these threats is the most pressing, because it begs the question how the UK will negotiate a favorable set of ties with the EU member states, once it is no longer an EU member. The principal difficulty here is that the EU is likely to impose additional costs on the UK to make it clear that membership has advantages, and that the UK will find life worse outside rather than in.  Depending on the nature of these costs, the UK could see a sharp downturn in its economy. 

Without defending the claim here, I will merely assert that the EU—either in roughly its current institutional form or in a more politically-integrated federal union—offers better prevention against these threats than does either a post-Brexit UK or a Europe of sovereign nation-states (Morgan 2016). That claim, however, immediately invites the following nationalist rejoinder: You speak of core moral values, but surely one of our most important core moral values is “the nation”-- whether understood as a distinctive historical-cultural identity or as a self-governing people –which is endangered in the EU in its current form and would be obliterated in a more centralized Federal Europe. This nationalist rejoinder draws some of its force from a willingness to concede that Brexit might have significant material costs. Nigel Farage voices a version of this nationalist rejoinder, when he claims that ending low-skill immigration is worth paying an economic cost (Farage 2014). But there are more sensible social democratic and radical democratic versions of this nationalist argument too (Kymlicka 2016; Tuck 2016). These arguments raise then the question: Does it make sense to invoke the seven disasters above, when for the nationalist the greatest disaster of all is the loss or disappearance of the nation? Cummings’ own position on nationalism remains ambiguous.  On the one hand, he seems to think that the most likely “branching history” will yield positive outcomes for both the UK and Europe. But he also recognizes—as we shall see—that Brexit leaves the UK in a worse-off position and the Europe in a better position.  Cummings is certainly no Farage-style xenophobe, nor even much of a nationalist at all.  If greater openness to foreign scientists were to change British national identity, one suspects that Cummings would view this as a positive.

In some ways, any talk of nationhood poses an even greater problem for Remainers/Re-Entryists than it does for Leavers, which is one reason why the Remain campaign didn’t have much to say on the topic. Going forward, Re-Entryists will not be able to maintain this reticence. Broadly stated, there are three possible positions that Remainers/Re-Entryists might take on nationhood:

(i)             British nationalism involves a commitment to Britain as a multi-national composite kingdom, which has historically been open to immigrants from the former Empire and now from the EU. The Remainers/Re-Entryists who favour this conception of nationhood see no contradiction between the UK and the European Union, although they favour an intergovernmental Europe—i.e. a Europe where the nation-states remain firmly in control—rather than a Federal Europe or European Superstate (Bellamy 2017). This preference is grounded, at least in part, on the realization that a more Federal Europe would pose a genuine threat to their conception of British nationhood which typically involves attributing high value to parliamentary sovereignty.  

   

(ii)           Post-nationalism involves a repudiation of the very idea of nationhood.  For the post-nationalist, nationhood has no value.  Only individuals and groups—understood as collections of individuals—have value.  Post-nationalists typically fear that the nation forces unity and uniformity, where neither is necessary for a stable social order.  Individuals can pay taxes, support a welfare state, and even enlist in the army without the need of the emotional appeal of nationalism.  The dream of post-nationalists is a Europe without either nations or nationalism (Morgan 2005, Ch. 5).

(iii)         European nationalism repudiates both the nation-state and post-nationalism. Against the former, European nationalism seeks a unifying myth or way of life that transcends any of Europe’s particular nation-states; against the latter, European nationalism seeks something more than an agglomeration of individuals living in a Zollverein. For Europe to transcend the nationalism of the nation-state, a powerful myth would be necessary. The most plausible option would be for Europe to present itself as the embodiment and defender of the Enlightenment ideals of liberty, truth, and reason. In doing so, Europe would be defining itself in terms of a specific ethical ideal— the equal rights of all individuals to lead a life free of despotism and superstition. Unlike post-nationalism, however, European nationalism would present this agenda as the official way of life of Europe, the basis of its unity (Morgan 2011).

If one accepts that nations and nationalism are in large measure social constructs—albeit social constructs that are powerful forces for both good and evil—then British nationalism, post-nationalism and European nationalism represent options rather than givens. Ideally, the option chosen must be tailored to the tasks that Europeans currently face.  If I’m right both in my account of the seven threats above and in my claim that these threats are best handled by a more politically-integrated Europe, then Europe needs to embrace either a form of post-nationalism or European nationalism.  There is little to be gained, I think, in hiding the implications of the need for more integration on the nation and nationalism.  If you value a closed ethnocultural conception of nationhood, fear foreigners as a pollutant of the national spirit, and are willing to endure each and everyone of the seven disasters outlined above, then you would be right to think that the EU is “a crap 1950s idea.” I suspect, however, that most people will be able and willing to rationally assess the costs of these disasters and modify their value commitments—including commitments to an outmoded conception of nationhood.  To those people, the EU will be seen as an excellent idea.
In his latest thoughts of the topic, Cummings himself acknowledges that “in some possible branches of the future, Leaving will be an error” (Green 2017).  A number of newspapers misinterpreted these remarks as an admission by Cummings that he had been wrong to support "Vote Leave."  It would be more accurate to recognize that “branching histories” are part and parcel of Cummings’ probabilistic approach to major policy decisions (Armstrong 2017).  There are always multiple possible branches that history can take. It has always been his probabilistic wager that Brexit would initiate a branch of history that would yield positive outcomes for both the UK and Europe. He still thinks that on the balance of probabilities, the most likely branching history is one with positive rather than negative outcomes. In reaching this conclusion, Cummings seems to place a lot of weight on the claim that the UK political-administrative state is dysfunctional: neither the politicians nor the bureaucrats are fit for purpose. Brexit is an external shock that provides an opportunity to shift the UK on to a path which yields gains to science, education, productivity, and international cooperation. It is not clear here, however, why Cummings thinks that this opportunity is any more likely to yield a successful rather than a disastrous outcome.  Indeed, if his bleak assessments of the UK political-administrative state are accurate, it seems more probable that the state will bungle Brexit and—cut free from the constraints of EU laws and practices, not to mention the benefits of the Single Market and the Customs Union—ruin the national economy.  British nationalists will certainly find cold comfort in Cummings’ tweet that “leaving increases EUR's overall ability to adapt more effectively to an uncertain world & increases probability of good branches happening (Green 2017).” One paradoxical feature of these latest remarks is that they point to a possible branch of the future where the UK comes out of Brexit very much worse off, while the EU comes out—partly because of Brexit—more adaptable, more unified, and altogether better off.  This opens up a rather alarming prospect (at least for British nationalists) where the UK is mired in domestic wrangles over how best to manage its future outside of the EU, while the EU, now freed of the dead weight of the UK, becomes a dynamic and successful global power. Perhaps it is no great surprise that Cummings didn’t say much about this particular “branching history” while running “Vote Leave.”

NOTES

Armstrong, Kenneth A. (2017), “Branching Histories and the Error of Brexit,” https://brexittime.com/2017/07/04/branching-histories-and-the-error-of-brexit/

Armstrong, Kenneth A. (2017), Brexit Time Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bellamy, Richard (2017), “A European Republic of Sovereign States: Sovereignty, republicanism and the European Union,” European Journal of Political Theory, 16 (2): 188-209

Consterdine, Erica (2017), “What Britain’s Post-Brexit Immigration Policy Could Look Like,”

http://theconversation.com/what-britains-post-brexit-immigration-policy-could-look-like-74488  

 

Cummings, Dominic (2016), “On the referendum #21: branching histories of the 2016 Referendum and the frogs before the storm,”

https://dominiccummings.com/2017/01/09/on-the-referendum-21-branching-histories-of-the-2016-referendum-and-the-frogs-before-the-storm-2/

 

Cummings, Dominic (2017), “On the referendum #23, a year after victory,”

 https://dominiccummings.com/2017/06/23/on-the-referendum-23-a-year-after-victory-a-change-of-perspective-is-worth-80-iq-points-how-to-capture-the-heavens/

 

Farage, Nigel (2014)  “I’d rather be poorer with fewer migrants,” Daily Telegraph, January 7, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/10555158/Id-rather-be-poorer-with-fewer-migrants-Farage-says.html

Fox, Liam (2016), “Free Trade Speech,” September 29
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/liam-foxs-free-trade-speech

Green, David Allen (2017) Jack of Kent Blog: http://jackofkent.com/2017/07/in-some-possible-branches-of-the-future-leaving-will-be-an-error-an-exchange-about-brexit-with-dominic-cummings/

Kymlicka Will (2015), “Solidarity in Diverse Societies: beyond neoliberal multiculturalism and welfare chauvinism,” Comparative Migration Studies 3:17, https://comparativemigrationstudies.springeropen.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s40878-015-0017-4?site=comparativemigrationstudies.springeropen.com

Morgan, Glyn (2005), The Idea of a European Superstate, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Morgan, Glyn (2011), “Europe, Europeanism, and European Nationalism,” European Political Science 10: 4, pp. 501-507

Morgan, Glyn (2016), Liberals, Socialists, and Brexit: The Challenge for British Labour,” ABC Religion and Ethics, June 22, http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2016/06/22/4486618.htm

Pew Survey (2014), “Faith and Skepticism about Trade,” http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/09/16/faith-and-skepticism-about-trade-foreign-investment/trade-08/

 Scientific America (2012), “Best Countries in Science,” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/global-science-best-countries-science-scorecard/

Shipman, Tim (2016) All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain’s Political Class, London: William Collins.

Taylor, Zachary (2016), The Politics of Innovation: Why some Countries are better than others at Science and Technology, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Tetlock, Philip and Dan Gardner (2015), Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, New York: Crown.

Tuck, Richard (2016), “The Left Case for Brexit,” Dissent Magazine, June 6, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/left-case-brexit

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[1].  For the best account of the internal operations of the campaigns, see Shipman (2016). 

[2].  All quotes in the text are to Cummings (2016). 

A European Superstate After Brexit and Trump--Rough Draft of a Talk

The Idea of a European Superstate after Brexit and Trump

Notes for a Talk Delivered  for Tocqueville Association June 29 2017, American University Paris

My question is this: 

“What form should Europe take in the wake of Brexit and Trump?”

Setting Brexit and Trump aside for the moment, there are—crudely stated—three different ways of thinking about the postwar political shape of Europe:

1.       A Europe of nation-states that fiercely guard their sovereignty (this is the Europe favoured by Nigel Farage and Madame Le Pen);

2.       An intergovernmental Europe that recognizes the centrality of nation-states, but which also establishes shared sovereignty over key economic functions (including trade and monetary policy)—the EU in its current form resembles this; and

3.       A Federal Europe that deprives current nations of their sovereignty over a wide range of functions, including taxation and spending, defense and foreign policy.  This Federal Europe—called by its enemies A European Superstate or A United States of Europe—is an aspiration of federalists but is widely dismissed as an impractical or utopian project.

I want to structure my answer around three Tocquevillean themes:

1.       New Types of Political Organization call for new ways of thinking, a new Political Science.

Tocqueville had in mind the new political form assumed by the new states, which managed to combine a democratic society and a decentralized republican form of self-government. 

From the perspective of historical sociology, we can identify a range of different political forms to have emerged in Europe over the last 1000, including the Medieval Regnum; the City State; the Absolute Monarchy; the Multinational Empire; the Constitutional Democracy; and—although it is difficult to situate it as a type—the European Union (EU).   

The EU has been described as the first fundamentally new macro-political form to emerge in over 500 years.  The EU poses an intellectual challenge for a number of reasons:

(i)                  it is in a constant state of flux (adding and subtracting members; adding but rarely subtracting powers or competences),

(ii)                it is not clear whether or how long it will survive; and

(iii)               it co-exists in perhaps a predatorial relationship with Europe’s nation-states.

Perhaps more intellectually challenging still, we do not have a clear idea what is required to maintain this new type of political organization. Does it need a shared language? Does it need common educational programs?

2.       Geography Matters.

Tocqueville was very conscious of the role that America’s geographical position played in making possible its decentralized republican form of government.  But he also saw the limitations of this form of government were it transplanted to Europe, which had a very different geographical position. As he noted:

A people which in the presence of the great military monarchies of Europe should divide its sovereignty into fractional parts would, in my opinion, by that very act abdicate its power and perhaps its existence and its name.

             

It remains a contested question whether the EU needs its own more potent military force. It is uncontestable, however, that Europe finds itself in a precarious geographical position. It is bounded on its Eastern border by Putin’s Russia; and is bounded on its Southern border by the Mediterranean and further South by the failed and failing states of Northern Africa. 

Geographical positions, in short, pose opportunities and challenges.  Tocqueville’s insight was to recognize that a form of government that worked for America might not work, at least in precisely the same form, in Europe.  For better or worse, Europe confronts a much more challenging geographical position than the USA, a position that poses major security and immigration problems.

3.        Centralization is sometimes advantageous and sometimes disadvantageous.          

One of Tocqueville’s great themes in Democracy in America and the The Old Regime is the impact of centralization on liberty, patriotism, and the quality of government. 

Tocqueville drew a useful distinction between political and administrative centralization.

II

The Challenge of Brexit and Trump

In different ways B and T challenge core elements of the post-war Western global order.  That order rested on the following three elements:

(i)                  Rule-based multilateral trade regime—aim to lower tariffs and promote regulated trade;

(ii)                NATO—an asymmetrical military alliance run by the Americans partly on behalf of the Europeans—held together by the glue of fear of the Soviet Union;

(iii)               EU—an American backed project to increase European unity and bind Europe around the core values of democracy and market capitalism.

Trump—at least in his Bannon/Breitbart clothes—is a major threat to this post-war global order.

The Five Elements of Trumpism

1.       America First—whether in trade relations or in security-matters;

2.       Nationalist Internationalism—allies with other nationalists—Putin, Modi;

3.       Anti-Immigrant Ethnocentrism—friendly with Nigel Farage; supports both Brexit and the break-up of the EU;

4.       Anti-NATO--Seeks new alliance structures—alliances with Russia and closer ties with Saudia Arabia 

5.       Anti-European values—human rights, climate change, multiculturalism, --see Pew Study.

Brexit presents less of a set of challenges than a set of opportunities.

Brexit—the harder the better—is the best thing that has happened to the EU in years.

Brexit provides other European states to recover many of the jobs lost to the UK’s low-wage, regulation-light economic model.

Brexit provides the EU with a chance to centralize in areas that the UK blocked.

III

How Should European Union Respond to Brexit and Trump

1.        Need to bargain hard against the UK, which is seeking “to have its cake and eat it”—the benefits of Switzerland and the burdens of Canada.

2.       Need to “soft balance” against Trump’s USA—need to throw sand in America’s wheels—seek domestic allies within the US—eg pro climate control Mayors and Governers.

3.       Need to rethink the shape of global alliances, especially if the US allies with Russia and India and Japan against China;

4.       Most importantly, the EU needs to rethink NATO and be prepared to assume control of its own destiny;

5.       None of these things are possible without the EU becoming more powerful, which, I think, requires more Tocquevillean centralization. 

Is the EU "a Crap 1950s Idea?" Dominic Cummings, Brexit, and the Dangers of Remain

Much the most interesting thing I've read recently on Brexit and the EU is this piece by Dominic Cummings, Head of the Vote Leave Campaign. The whole piece, which is very long, is well-worth reading closely. For my money, this is the most powerful defense of Brexit currently in print. More sophisticated and interesting than Boris Johnson's and Dan Hannan's stuff.

I

Among the many gems, the article contains an interesting approach to thinking about the EU.  Too often, the case for or against European Integration (EI) is treated as if it were the same as the case for and against the EU. As I've written before, it is possible to be generally pro-EI but vehemently anti-EU. In other words, one can be in favour of the project of EI but against the current product of EI (i.e. the EU).

I have always been intensely irritated by the Habermasians, who like to bang on about the superior "problem-solving capacities" of transnational government compared to the nation-state. In theory, transnational government may indeed have these capacities. But that is not to say that the EU currently possesses them.  Indeed, the EU is in many ways an unlovely and  deeply dysfunctional system of government. (For a good discussion of the manifold failures of the EU and its inability to "error-correct," see the work of Giandomenico Majone.) I wouldn't go so far as Cummings, who calls the EU "a crap 1950s idea (Shipman, p. 38)." But he is right to recognize its lack of "error-correcting mechanisms."

Of course, supporters of the EU will be very reluctant to accept any suggestion that the EU is dysfunctional. "Compared to what?" they will ask. And that question does raise an important difficulty concerning the appropriate criteria of evaluation.

For an older generation of EU proponents, the criteria of evaluation didn't require much thought. We need only compare postwar Europe with prewar (especially Interwar) Europe. Now we have peace and prosperity, when before we had poverty and war. (Cummings, as we shall see, relies on a version of this argument himself.) The problem with this position is that it is not obvious that the EU remains crucial to the maintenance of postwar peace and prosperity. What worked in the 1950s and 60s might not work now.

Since we can't, I think, get anywhere by relying on this crude historical comparison to justify European Integration, we need:

(a) to come up with our own criteria of evaluation;

(b) figure out whether the EU in its current form meets them; and finally

(c) identify any alternative forms of government that might do a better job.

What is the point or purpose of any organized form of government?

At the most general level, the following seem important:

(i) Security--safeguards against internal and external threats

(ii) Wealth--a precondition of welfare

(iii) Maintenance of a particular way of life or set of ideas and principles.  Examples include:

--(a) Nationalism. The nationalist idea in its refined form is that Britain constitutes an organic community, a unit of solidarity, a repository of inspiring values, and the possessor of an irreplaceable form of sovereign parliamentary democracy. (See here Ambrose Evans Pritchard, Frank Field, and Richard Tuck.) The nationalist idea, in its more vulgar form, is that Britain constitutes an ethnonational community whose purity and inherited way of life have been polluted by Johnny Foreigner, whether Muslim or Pole;

--(b) Liberal Cosmopolitanism.

--(c) Socialism.

One way of thinking about the campaign Brexit is that it involved a pitched ideological battle between Nationalists and Liberal Cosmopolitans about the ideal form of government in an era of globalization. (Socialists remained rather off-stage in the Brexit camplign--for the reasons why, see my piece, Liberals, Socialists and Brexit: The Challenge for British Labour).

But this is too simplistic, because even if one were a Liberal Cosmopolitan, it is not obvious that the EU is fit for purpose to deliver this or any other Way of Life. Indeed, the EU might conceivably be so flawed that it is less able to secure a LC way of life than a Europe of Nation-States. That's precisely where Cummings' argument (or at least this presentation of the argument) is interesting.  

II

Read charitably, Cummings wants to argue that if you are on the side of free trade, scientific progress, and international cooperation--if you fear anti-liberal extremists, enemies of the Open Society--then you ought to be in favour of Brexit--even so-called "Hard Brexit."  (I leave aside the question of whether Cummings, the Machiavellian political operative, can now honestly present himself as a proponent of an Open Society.)

As I understand Cummings chain of reasoning, at least as it bears on his case for Brexit, it goes like this:

(i) 1930s style protectionism is the greatest threat to our security and wealth; therefore

(ii) We need to maintain the conditions that sustain free trade;

(iii) Uncontrolled immigration is the greatest threat to these conditions, because it provokes a nationalist response from extremist forces;

(iv) Human Rights Laws that protect terrorists and serious criminals also undermine these conditions;

(v) In light of (iii) and (iv), we need to limit immigration. In short, unlimited migration erodes the conditions that sustain free trade;

(vi) Limiting Unskilled Immigration (and Increasing STEM migrants) requires Brexit--"Hard Brexit," to be precise;

(vii) A Post-Brexit UK will be better placed to convince Europe of the need to limit migration and, in doing so, save European free trade.

(viii) A Post-Brexit UK will be better placed to build (with other states) new institutions of international cooperation.

What should we make of this argument?

III

My principal objection--although one I will not expand on here--concerns Cumming's unstated premise that Immigration is not a basic right, but merely a policy goal that can and ought to be constrained by other policy goals.  While I won't argue the point here, I think freedom of movement is a basic right--a human right, if you will--that flows out of our core interest in personal freedom. Upping sticks and moving--whether to escape persecution and poverty or just for the hell of it-- is one of the most valuable dimensions of our freedom.  No liberal worthy of the name can be against freedom of movement. Now this isn't to say that migrants must immediately be granted the same welfare rights as the long-standing population. Nor does it entail any endorsement of the current EU laws and practices concerning welfare eligibility. There are a whole host of tricky moral, legal, and political questions to be addressed here. (See the recent contrasting works by Joseph Carens and David Miller.)

Cummings would doubtless dismiss my commitment to FOM as itself a form of extremism--a value commitment not shared by the ordinary voter he encounters in his focus groups.  I will leave hanging here this disagreement. Suffice it to say: the fact that my value commitments are not widely shared--that they wouldn't convince anyone in a focus-group--doesn't mean I am wrong to defend them. I doubt anti-slavery arguments focus-grouped that well in Alabama in the C19.

My secondary objection concerns the likely consequences of the UK imposing immigration controls and pursuing (or being forced into) "Hard Brexit" (i.e. outside both the Single Market and the Customs Union). Cummings makes a bold probabilistic wager that immigration controls will diminish the electoral appeal of anti-trade ethnonational extremists (vulgar nationalist Kippers and the like); and that a post-Brexit UK can renegotiate new institutions of international cooperation. He also believes that Brexit positions Britain well (or at least better than now) for scientific and educational progress. In short, Cummings identifies four expected gains from Brexit--(i) scientific progress (Britain becomes "the best place in the world for science"); (ii) education; (iii) free trade; and (iv) new forms of international cooperation.

If this probabilistic wager proves right, then his case for Brexit will have been vindicated. 

Given Cummings emphasis in his various blog-posts about the need for rigorous testing of social and political predictions (like me, Cummings is a fan of Tetlock's work on counterfactuals and forecasting), it is surprising how little he does in explaining how to measure (and in what time frame?) the expected pay-offs of this probabilistic wager.

Presumably the measure is to be gauged in terms of:

(i) Britain's greater scientific achievements--measured by patents, journal citations, awards, university rankings;

(ii) Educational gains (measured by, say, the Pisa study) both pre and post Brexit;

(iii) Free trade (measured by an increase in trade as a percentage of GDP); and

(iv) New (and presumably better) forms of international cooperation.  (This is the hardest to define, but presumably these new forms of cooperation will enhance the security and wealth of the relevant parties--parties that will include not merely Britain and European states but also the wider international community.)

If that's the how, what about "the when"? 

The changes set in motion by Brexit will take a very long time to have any effect.  Cummings sometimes speaks of Brexit as if it is likely to shock the British political system into more effective action. But given institutional inertia, it is unrealistic to expect rapid changes. Any positive effects will appear over decades rather than the next year or so. In the meantime, it seems we are likely to be doomed to rancorous debates about whether things are getting better or worse.

While Cummings comes across as a revolutionary who wants to "spark big changes in the fundamental wiring" of government, this line of argument coexists with the fear that the EU is dangerous in its current form. On this view, Brexit is animated by prudence, a worry that the present institutional system is set up to fail--presumably because its half-arsed globalism leads to uncontrolled flows of migrants that will eventually excite xenophobes into 1930s-style movements of anti-liberal protectionism. Cummings' proposals are designed to ward off these looming threats.  

In the gulf that looms between Cummings the revolutionary and Cummings the prescient conservative* (more on this below), there exists the current institutional set-up: the EU, warts and all.

And at this point, one has to ask:

Assuming we accept Cumming's policy goals (scientific progress; educational improvements; free trade; and international cooperation); is he right to think that we need Brexit to attain them? Should we follow him in thinking that we need to junk the postwar European international order ("a crap 1950's idea") before it destroys everything we value about our open society? Can Britain, standing alone, outside of the EU, reform itself and rescue Europe with a new international order?

In order to answer any of these question in the affirmative I fear we would have to believe a number--certainly more than Alice's six--of impossible things. For all his hard-headed realism, Cumming's case for Brexit is less a probabilistic wager than a crazy bet-the-house gamble on a long-shot nag no one's heard of.

Let me list a few of the things that could go wrong:

1. The best foreign researchers flee from Britain's universities, because Britain is no longer in international research networks;

2.  The best foreign students go elsewhere--Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands--which are more accommodating to their foreigner status;

3. Unskilled foreign labour is driven out; while the domestic labour force is unwilling or unable to fill the gap: the agriculture, hospitality and health care sectors lurch into crisis;

4.  Post-Brexit Britain becomes insular and xenophobic; the best and the brightest decamp for more progressive and stimulating environments;

5.   Post-Brexit Europe turns nasty and excludes Britain from its markets by making crafty use of non-tariff barriers;

6.  Britain loses enough of its financial service industry to hurt its economy and force public expenditure cuts;

7. The US and the EU cooperate economically and militarily at Britain's expense;

8.  Brexit causes Europe to implode in such a way that the world ends up in a situation resembling the 1930s.

9. The effort to impose a border between Northern Ireland and the Republic coupled with the exit from the ECHR leads to the reawakening of violent Irish Republicanism.

I could go on. But if I had to attach probabilities and place bets on one or more of my negative scenarios over Cumming's positive scenarios--well, I fancy my chances.

IV

*Addendum #1:

My friend Helen Thompson (Cambridge) has suggested to me that there is more to Cumming's "prescient conservative" case for Brexit than my comment above allows. 

As she puts it: "if in Cummings' terms you start from what happens to Britain and believe that constitutionally-guaranteed freedom of movement in the absence of democratic consent to it is damaging to free trade prospects then conservative prudence requires the issue to be addressed in that there is a quite possible far worse outcome down the road by not allowing some restrictions on FoM now."

I didn't really examine above very closely the core causal claim at the heart of Cumming's argument.   I summarized this claim in five distinct steps (see above).

Viewed more closely, some of these claims strike me as odd.

Is 1930s-style protectionism really our greatest threat?  

Cummings seems to share here a fear of those on the Left who worry that modern western societies are teetering on the abyss of populist authoritarianism--even fascism. (For some skepticism on this worry, see Sherry Berman's article in the recent issue of Foreign Affairs.) If the current lot of extremists ever came to power--think FN, Lega Nord/M5S--they would enact protectionist policies and we can kiss the Open Society goodbye. Cummings believes we can defeat these extremists by marshaling our forces behind the banner of "Free Trade," while throwing them off the protectionist scent by giving them "Controlled Immigration."  

Not to be too nit-picky. But the terms "free trade" and "protectionism" are so vague as to be close to meaningless.  If by "free trade," we mean tariff free trade, WTO members already trade with each other in a very low tariff environment; EU member states trade in a no-tariff environment. But that isn't to say that states--even EU member states--do not practice various forms of protectionism--government contracts, for example, are rarely fully open to foreign companies; the professions protect themselves by recognizing only national qualifications etc.  New trade deals (CETA; TTP)  are now exceptionally complex and controversial, because they have to penetrate deeply into the various ways that governments, semi-private institutions (like utilities), and the liberal professions (doctors, lawyers, engineers, academics, accountants, even notary publics) are regulated.  The terms (or even a continuum) free-trade/protectionist can't do much to capture this complexity.

Yet even setting this complexity aside, the suggestion that absent controlled immigration, the British public will embrace protectionism...well, it's hard to see the worry here.  Take a look at the following table (a Pew Survey which records views as of 2014):

 
People in Britain--if not in France, US, Japan and Italy--do not seem to worry much about trade.  They hardly seem very likely to embrace protectionism anytime soon.  And if that's the case, then it is hard to sympathize with Cummings' argument for "Controlled Immigration."  He's offering a controversial solution--one that requires a major rupture in the postwar space-time continuum--for a problem that doesn't exist.

This is not to say that Europe doesn't face grave dangers. But Brits embracing protectionism doesn't register on the dial. And if that's the case Cummings' prescient conservativism is misdirected.