Schrodinger’s Brexit

The physicist’s joke goes as follows:

Heisenberg and Schrödinger are pulled over for speeding. ‘Do you know how fast you were going?’ the traffic officer asks Heisenberg.

‘No, but we know exactly where we are!’

‘You were going 90 miles per hour.’

‘Great,’ says Heisenberg. ‘Now we’re lost!’

Confused, the officer asks them if they have anything in the boot of the car.

‘Just a cat,’ says Schrödinger.

The traffic officer opens the boot. ‘This cat is dead.’

‘Well he is now!’ retorts Schrödinger.

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle states that it is impossible to know both the position and velocity of a subatomic particle. The more precisely you measure one variable, the less accurately you can measure the other – because the act of measuring impacts the particle itself. The principle implies there is fundamental uncertainty built into the world. Schrödinger famously illustrated this with a thought experiment involving an unlucky cat in a sealed box. By linking its fate to the decay of a radioactive atom, Schrödinger implies that the cat remains both alive and dead until the box is opened and its state observed. You can’t find out what’s going on without impacting what’s going on – and by that point, it’s too late to do anything about it.

What is true of subatomic particles also appears to be true of the EU.

Prior to Brexit, we were warned in apocalyptic terms about the fate that would befall us outside the EU. The latest economic figures suggest we haven’t – yet – fallen off the cliff. But the Remainians’ warnings missed a point that is turning out to be of pivotal importance: the act of the UK leaving the EU fundamentally changed the nature of the EU. It has raised questions about the form in which it will continue to exist, or perhaps even whether it can survive over the long term.

The UK’s ‘Brexit moment’ was marshalled (with help from UKIP’s former leader) as a precedent for Americans to vote for change in the recent presidential election, which they duly did. In Europe, the Italian referendum on constitutional reform, held on 4 December, was labelled as the country’s ‘Italeave’ moment – because it was seen as a verdict on the performance and policies of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who said he would resign if the result went against him (which it did, and he did, albeit with a delay).

Then there is the potential Frexit, should the far-right Marine Le Pen be elected in France in April 2017. And the Dutch Nexit, if the Eurosceptic Freedom Party consolidates its appeal. (There are plenty more of these, including ‘Oustria’ and ‘Finish’. My favourite is ‘Czechout’.)

Brexit established the proportion of the population who feel disenfranchised, and the act of observing this fundamentally changed our political realities. The conditions for this did not arise overnight; they have, as Mark Blyth observes, been 30 years in the making. Essentially, we have just reached a tipping point at which those who have more to lose from maintaining the current order outnumber those who have more to gain. Brexit wasn’t an isolated political event, then. It was a symptom of the populism sweeping Europe and further afield, the evidence that a majority of the electorate now feels that the political and economic system does not adequately represent them. The marginalised are, shockingly, in the majority. And their vindication in the US election and the UK’s EU referendum empowers others in Europe to make the same statement at the polling booths. Whether or not Italy or France will have their own Brexit moment is neither here nor there: there are (at present) 28 member states of the EU, and as soon as one expresses its intention to leave, the odds move further in favour of others doing the same, with cumulative impact and influence on what remains of the EU.

Britain has a series of challenges and opportunities facing it as a result of our decision to leave – and another set of challenges that have been there for decades and were the backdrop to that decision. The language of Fairness has increasingly entered politics in recent years, but the solutions offered have not resonated with voters. This should always have been a source of concern, but it is only now, when the dissatisfaction of one half of the population threatens the lifestyle of the other half, that something might be done about it. Britain has a chance to show the rest of Europe how to navigate this difficult transition. ‘A light to the nations’ is probably putting it a bit strongly, but some kind of blueprint for how to create the kind of society in which half of the population is not left behind wouldn’t hurt. Not least, it would reduce the fundamental Uncertainty that is built into what appears to be about to happen next.

About the author

Guy Brandon is the Research Director at the Jubilee Centre in Cambridge. He joined the Jubilee Centre in 2006 as a part-time researcher and author and is now its Research Director and resident author. He is a trained counsellor and freelance writer, and has a degree, MPhil and PhD in Old Testament theology from Cambridge University. He is married with two children.