How Britain Lost Its Cool

project-syndicate.org /commentary/cool-britannia-and-merkels-germany-by-mark-leonard-2017-10

Mark Leonard 10/4/2017

BERLIN The recent meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa
May in the Estonian capital of Tallinn was a portrait in contrasts. Merkel has pursued openness and
internationalism, and leads a country with a world-beating industrial base and strong trade ties. May talks more
about the past than the future, and has disparaged citizens of the world while claiming to defend her countrys
confused national identity.

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Nov 10, 2017 Barry Eichengreen explains why monetary authorities' hard-won independence is facing powerful
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Among other things, the Merkel-May dynamic shows how cyclical history can be. Twenty years ago, Germany
was the sick man of Europe, struggling to dispel its demons so that it could look out and to the future. The
United Kingdom, on the other hand, had become Cool Britannia. In 1997, much of the world was tuning in to
Brit-pop; and top British artists, fashion designers, and architects were the hottest names in their fields. Even
British chefs were seen as global arbiters of taste, to the chagrin of their French counterparts.

I had a walk-on part in that moment of British national revival. In the report BritainTM: Renewing Our Identity, I
proposed a strategy of national rebranding that was picked up by the new Labour government under Prime
Minister Tony Blair. The idea was to rethink the idea of Britishness, and then reintroduce Britain to the world.

Rebranding was clearly necessary. By the mid-1990s, a fog of malaise had settled over British politics. Prime
Minister John Major had lost control of the Conservative Party, and declining public trust in British institutions
was fueling anxiety among voters. Britain, once known as the workshop of the world, had become a service
economy. The British retail chain Dixons decided to name one of its consumer-electronics brands Matsui,
because it sounded Japanese. The soap operas coming outof Buckingham Palace had turned adulation of the
royal family into voyeurism. And according to opinion polls, around half of the countrys population wanted to
emigrate, and a similar percentage (particularly Scots, Welsh, ethnic minorities, Londoners, and the young) no
longer felt British.

Rather than mourning the ethnic-based, exclusionary Englishness that former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
had done so much to promote in the 1980s, I argued that Britons should embrace a new civic identity, based on
deeper stories about their country. Britain, after all, was a global hub, but also an island with a long history of
creativity, quirkiness, and innovation. It was a hybrid country that gloried in its diversity. It had pioneered social
and technological change not with revolutionary fanfare, but through sound governance. And it was a country
that valued fair play, a value embodied in the National Health Service.

Of course, I should not overstate the influence of my pamphlet. BritainTM was just one part of a larger
phenomenon. The British national story was moving toward openness, and that change would have a profound
impact on both Labour and a Conservative Party that needed to detoxify its own brand. Conservative leaders
such as former Prime Minister David Cameron and even Boris Johnson, when he was the mayor of London,
came to represent a modern, multiracial, and multiethnic Britain. This is the Britain that the director Danny Boyle
depicted in the opening ceremony to the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

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How, then, did the country move from cosmopolitanism back to nationalism and nativism? The short answer is
that Britains rebranding became a victim of its own success. By accommodating previously excluded citizens,
the new national story made those at the center of the older, narrower version feel like a threatened minority. And
when the Brexit referendum rolled around, they fought back.

Mays main goal since succeeding Cameron has been to appeal to the emotions of the old tribes at the heart of
Thatchers version of Britishness all who felt disenfranchised in Cool Britannia. Still, demography dictates that
the new, open Britain will inevitably replace the old one. Most polls show that the country is becoming more
liberal and tolerant every year. But one lesson from the Brexit vote is that identity politics manifested in the
fears of older, white, less-educated voters can wreak havoc in the interregnum.

What remains to be seen is how far the nativist turn will go, and whether its leaders will overreach. Will the
populist wave recede once a critical mass of voters starts to feel the economic effects of Brexit on the British
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economy? And could it have been prevented with a slower, more gradual change in the national story?

Similar questions have surely been on Merkels mind since Germanys federal election last month. The fact that
the far-right Alternative for Germany made unprecedented gains while Merkels own party lost support owes
something to her bold open-door policy during the refugee crisis. She may now be wondering if the
Willkommenskultur (welcoming culture) that she has promoted will share the same fate as Blairs Cool Britannia.

Ensuring that it does not will be Merkels big challenge in her fourth term. Unfortunately, May, having ridden the
wave of nativism, rather than trying to redirect it, will have little to teach her German counterpart.

If anything, May could fall victim to her own opportunism. If history does indeed move in cycles, it stands to
reason that Britain will turn back toward openness sooner or later. And when that happens, Mays brand of
backward-looking politics, like Thatchers, will be swept aside.

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