Far From EUtopia: How Europe is Failing – And Britain Could Do Better

Christopher Owens 🔖 “Britain was particularly ill suited as a liberal parliamentary democracy to deliberation by plebiscite on such a complex matter as leaving the EU.”

This quote, from TPQ columnist Barry Gilheany, is telling in so many ways.

Nearly a decade on from the UK's decision to leave the European Union, the ramifications and recriminations continue with many people not willing to understand why their fellow countrymen voted the way they did.

Of course, we should criticise the rushed and unnuanced way it was handled as, realistically, it should have been a two-year project culminating in a referendum. Ultimately, the majority voted to leave and the vilification of democracy, of the working class and even the country itself from supposedly ‘right on’ people went into overdrive.

What was exposed was not only a decaying political system that had outsourced every aspect possible to quangos (thus undermining a basic principle of democracy: if you disagree with the decisions of your MLA/MP, vote them out) but also a cultural divide between the urbane, metropolitan types and the ordinary working class.

Paul Embery described this divide in heated terms:

…I had witnessed up close how the Left had increasingly looked upon traditional working-class voters as some kind of embarrassing elderly relative. They wanted their votes at election time but didn’t really want to be seen in public with them. They - along with the liberal establishment more generally - had come to despise the small ‘c’ conservative instincts of many of these voters and did not understand their desire for cultural, as well as economic, security. The intense deindustrialisation and demographic change visited upon working-class communities over the past couple of decades has served to create vast enclaves inside our country where inhabitants feel an acute sense of alienation and believe that out-of-touch politicians possess no understanding of their grievances and concerns. Brexit was their way of hitting back.

It may have been messy; it may not have been articulate. But such actions by people backed up against a wall rarely are.

Recent events have also seen a rise in right wing nationalism which has seen the EU turn a blind eye to Romania cancelling a presidential election, and El Presidente Trump’s new isolationist policies now mean that Europe can no longer rely on the USA bankrolling their defence.

Meanwhile, Britain has not collapsed as predicted by some of the more hysterical commentators but nor has it really thrown off the shackles of the EU to do its own thing. This contradiction is the core theme at the heart of this thought provoking read from Times journalist Ross Clark.

Speaking on the book tour, Clark made these pertinent points about the current state of the conversation around Brexit:

Since the Brexit vote, week after week, we’ve seen news reports blaming everything that’s going wrong in the UK on leaving the EU. It’s true that our economy is flatlining and that we’re running up higher debts. But that has nothing to do with Brexit – no British government has balanced the books in more than 20 years. The whole narrative that the UK is stuck in economic decline, while the EU is sailing off confidently without us, relies on us not looking too closely at what’s going on across the Channel. Germany is about to enter its third year of recession. France is up to its eyeballs in debt. And we saw what the Italian healthcare system was like during Covid. Britain and Europe are still locked in this cycle of low economic growth. We have an opportunity to escape from it and put ourselves on a higher trajectory of growth, but we haven’t taken advantage of our Brexit freedoms.

Examining various ways in which the EU has strangled productivity (contradictory regulations, a lack of innovation, single currency, high rates of corruption, commitment to Net Zero and no democratic mandate), Clark builds up a compelling image of a bloc that is stagnant overall and, in places, crumbling (such as transport and building).

While most of these apply to Britain as well, Clark is quick to point out Britain (despite middling productivity) is actually outperforming France and Germany in areas such as public transport reliability, low levels of corruption and pupil performance.

He then compares EU countries to the United States and China and the difference in GDP is astonishing: the World Bank estimate for the USA in 2023 is 27,360,935. The highest EU country was Germany with a whopping 4,456,081. By contrast, Britain is 3,340,032, ahead of France and Italy.

Obviously, as Clark points out, America has a very different culture to the EU. One where innovators can thrive and aren’t tied down by bureaucracy (unless they’re in California of course), whereas there is a prevailing view that creativity and innovation (such as gene splicing and GM foods) are stifled by EU regulations.

Interestingly, as Ross reveals, whenever Britain was given the chance to scrap EU regulations, it merely opted to bin ones that were well out of date but were still on the books (such as ones relating to the BSE crisis in 1996).

At times quite heavy on statistics, Far From EUtopia is a skilful, entertaining and provocative piece of propaganda that isn’t afraid to criticise the various Tory and Labour governments failing to utilise the opportunities on offer due to no longer being tied to the EU. Hence why some have ‘Brexit regret’.

One that will provoke many a pointed argument and should be read by those who wish to see an Irexit: England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity.

Ross Clark, 2025, Far From EUtopia: How Europe is Failing – and Britain Could Do Better. Abacus. ISBN-13: Paperback ISBN: 978-0349146966

⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.