Introduction

In a television interview on the morning of 24 June 2016, the morning of the Brexit referendum result, then-leader of UKIP Nigel Farage stated that ‘I hope this is the first step towards a Europe of sovereign nation states, trading together, neighbours together, friends together – but without flags, and anthems, and useless old unelected Presidents’. Proclaiming that ‘the EU is failing, the EU is dying’, Farage predicted that other member states would soon follow Britain in exiting the Union. In the second half of 2016 Farage’s prediction was shared by commentators and analysts across the political spectrum, accelerating in 2017 and 2018 as populist Eurosceptic movements took power in established and newcomer members of the Union, while performing sufficiently well in other elections to push mainstream parties into adopting much of their rhetoric and policy promises (Nulli, 2018; Foster, 2017a, 2017b; Galpin, 2017; Neuhold, 2017). The failure of these parties to gain power has altered predictions of a domino-style collapse of the EU, but they remain a potent indicator of the most significant challenges to European integration and the limits of the EU. This chapter uses Brexit to illustrate four challenges.

First, the upswing in popular support for Eurosceptic, anti-establishment parties across Europe tessellates with a return of nationalist rhetoric in a postausterity, post-migration crisis shift towards anti-establishment sentiment, and a rejection (or at least profound suspicion) of the status quo in which the EU serves as a convenient scapegoat for popular anger and anxiety. Second, the widespread support base of Eurosceptic movements and policies requires a reappraisal of neofunctionalism – the dominant theory of European integration since the early 1950s – which holds that nationalism is compatible with ‘Europeanness’, and that parochial nationalism will fade as economic success and political integration increases. Third, the predicted European identity which was to emerge from integration is indeed manifesting, but in a starkly different style. Instead of a civic and banal European nationalism, the strongest pan-European identity emerging in Europe today is the hostile and politically turbulent phenomenon of Identitarianism, a new identity framed by nostalgia and ethnicity, which separates ‘Europe’ from ‘EUrope’, framing the former as an exclusionary civilisation distinct from, and opposed to, the European Union. Fourth, the EUropean identity exemplified by Britain’s Remainers demonstrates the same violent rhetoric, exclusion and Othering as ethnic nationalism.