| Although Britain has long lost its aura of the "Empire of the Sun",it still plays an important role in today's international political arena.In particular,its policy towards EU,from initial refusal to join,followed by repeated applications to join,to its recent obsessive withdrawal,has attracted worldwide attention.Britain's policy towards EU seems fickle.How can these changes be explained?What is the decisive force behind these change adjustments?This thesis holds that public opinion can provide an answer.In the first election after the end of the World War II,the Social Democracyoriented British Labour Party unexpectedly defeated the Conservative Party,which had high prestige for its victory in the war and.The Conservative Party followed the public opinion and adjusted its guiding ideology to the direction of social democracy in the following general election,thus forming the post-war social democratic consensus of Britain.In the 1950s,the British people often used the words "industrialization","modern","imperial","innovative","patriotic","free","democracy","benevolent","collective responsibility","fair","leading" and "statist" to describe Britain.This showed that the national identity of the British people in the early post-war period focused on the model of social democracy and imperial tradition.Although Britain was badly damaged in World War II and the material power that underpinned the empire was gone,but the imperial complex of the British still exists,the sense of responsibility to lead the world towards modernization still exists.Social democratic identity and imperial identity reinforced each other,together constituted the British identity of the time,so that Attlee proudly called the British model of social democracy "the beacon of the world".Joining European integration was tantamount to being associated with continental countries and erasing British identity,which was the consensus of the British elite and the people,the elite used the language of refusing to enter the EC to express the people's identity,so Britain's refusal to join the European integration in the early post-war period had a profound basis of public opinion.In the 1960s,Britain moved from confrontation to application to join the Common Market.Britain's imperial identity had been diluted,and social democratic identity had led to divisions over EC membership.With the change of objective environment,especially the increase of Britain's dependence on the EC economy and the support of the United States for the EC,some British people turned to the idea that applying for EU membership and using the power of EC to play a leading role within EC was more beneficial to Britain's model of social democracy and international status.Upper-class,men who had a job and Tory voters were the first to begin the transition,with their political spokesmen being pro-Europeans within the Tory and Labour party.Domestic economic conditions and national feelings together affected the British people's view of the European Community,polls showed that although there were ups and downs in the support of application for membership of the EC,but at the critical moment when the politicians applied for membership of the EC and restarted the negotiations,the proportion of people who supported EC had increased.In the late 1960s and early 1970s,"British sickness" worsened,and although Eurosceptics also resorted to popular social democracy and imperial identity,the majority of the British people believed the pro-European argument that membership and remaining in the EC were the only way out.It was on the basis of this public opinion that the pro-Europeans won the 1975 referendum.After the 1970s,the structure of British society changed more rapidly,and the proportion of the middle class increased significantly.Dissatisfied with the burden of old social democracy,they yearned for a new Britain "rich in reform,hard work,capitalism,indomitability,freedom,rule of law,competitive spirit",which laid the social foundation for the rise of neoliberalism.The Tories captured the change in public opinion,and Thatcher deliberately portrayed her father as a representative of the new British spirit to appeal to the imagination.Integration into the European Community is conducive to the establishment and maintenance of the image of the new Britain,domestic and international policies were in the direction of adapting to neoliberalism,so the Conservative Party who came to power in 1979 adopted the policy of integration into Europe.Thatcher set out to resolve the budget assessments that plagued BritainEU relations,actively promoted the European Single Market Plan,and Major who replaced Thatcher as prime minister contributed to the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty in the United Kingdom.In the 1990s,the new middle class became Britain's main constituency.Most of them were highly educated and politically engaged,held what Inglehart called postmaterialist values,promoted "multi-nationalist","multiculturalism" and"cosmopolitism",tended to support European integration.The long and bitter experience of opposition has led the Labour party leadership to abandon the radical policies of Labour's left-wing in order to win the support of the new middle class.Labour's policy shift was a success.With the support of the new middle class,New Labour party behaved more pro-European than the Conservatives,not only stopping at seeing the EU as a "capitalist club",but criticizing the Tories'Euroscepticism stance and signing the Treaty of Amsterdam.Although the relationship between Britain and Europe developed further during this period,there is still Euroscepticism sentiment,and even the most pro-European Blair government did not join the Eurozone.When the Labour party embraced neoliberalism,the bottom of the original pro-Labour party not only lost its political voice,but was also downplayed as a "scum" and a "shameless man" dependent on welfare.Their political apathy led to a sharp drop in turnout in the post-1990s British elections,and their discontent laid the stage for a future Brexit.Entering the 21st century,the democratic deficit,the financial crisis,the immigration crisis entangled in the public's increasing Eurosceptic sentiment,British politics once again entered a stage of sharp adjustment.Some of the people who had been politically aloof began to re-engage in politics,and Britain's populism took the form of right-wing populism,left-wing populism and regional populism.By linking immigration to Brexit,the Independence Party has ignited British Euroscepticism by linking immigration with Brexit,bringing together the underprivileged and some of the middle class,and had achieved a new voter reshuffle that had been the dominant manifestation of populism in this period.Polls showed that support for the EU had been falling from the early 1980s to 2008,but support for the bloc had been always in the majority for the time.Since 2008,most British people's perception of the EU had changed,and in their view,the EU was increasingly becoming an institution controlled by politicians,with EU-economic policies responsible for the division between rich and poor in the UK and EU immigration policies responsible for the UK's immigration crisis.This convergence of public opinion had gradually influenced Britain's policy towards EUe through the Independent Party and Tory Brexiteers,leading to a repoliticization of the UK's policy towards EU,paving the way for Brexit in 2016.The split in opinion had led Labour party to blur its position on EU policy,and the shift in public opinion had led the Conservatives to finally embark on the path to Brexit.Under representtive democracy and referendum system,public opinion has set the boundaries for Tory and Labour's policy towards EU.On the one hand,the two parties' policy towards EU should be in line with the people's value recognition,on the other hand,the two parties' policy towards EU should be based on the material interests of the people.Political elites have their own decision-making space in the short term,and can even guide public opinion to a certain extent,but once they cross the border,a rebound in public opinion will occur.Under Britain's two-party system,either the ruling party takes the initiative to correct,or the opposition and the third party offers alternatives.In conclusion,whether long or short,the policy towards EU will eventually return to the boundaries set by public opinion.In Engels' words,"When,therefore,it is a question of investigating the driving powers which—consciously or unconsciously,and indeed very often unconsciously—lie behind the motives of men who act in history and which constitute the real ultimate driving forces of history,then it is not a question so much of the motives of single individuals,however eminent,as of those motives which set in motion great masses,whole people,and again whole classes of the people in each people;and this,too,not merely for an instant,like the transient flaring up of a straw-fire which quickly dies down,but as a lasting action resulting in a great historical transformation."... |
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