In Britain, questions of identity loom

LONDON — For David Cameron, the worst-case scenario for Britain’s future looks something like this:

It’s 2018, and he’s in his second term as prime minister. Against his advice, his country has just ripped up its membership card in the European Union, alienating its biggest trading partner and closest neighbors. That prompts Washington to seek a new ally to advocate U.S. interests across the Atlantic; suddenly, the Anglo-American “special relationship” is a little less special.

Great Britain is also a little less great. To Cameron’s dismay, Scotland has separated from England and Wales to become an independent nation. A marriage that had held for more than three centuries is over, the rights to North Sea oil are in dispute and Britain’s four nuclear submarines have been banished from their home bases in the Scottish lochs.

The vision of a Britain diminished in size at home and in influence abroad is a bleak one. But it’s a nightmare Cameron and his compatriots could wake up to, depending on the outcome of two momentous referendums that voters here could face in the next five years.

One has already been set: Scotland will decide late next year whether to embrace independence. The other has been promised by Cameron if he wins reelection the following spring: a vote by the end of 2017 on whether Britain should remain in the EU on renegotiated terms or pull out of the world’s largest trading bloc.

Either referendum has the potential to alter this country irrevocably. Together, they could radically reshape it.

The dual plebiscites are not directly related, but they reflect the struggles of a once-mighty nation, which previously commanded a global empire, trying to define its place in a rapidly changing world.

“Bring the two together, and there’s — I wouldn’t call it a crisis of identity, but at least an uncertainty of identity,” said Peter Kellner, the president of YouGov, a leading polling organization.

Both issues have been brewing for a long time in the public consciousness. Nationalism has simmered — and occasionally boiled over — in Scotland ever since it formally joined up with England in 1707. British dissatisfaction with the European Union has also been building over decades, as integration between member states deepens, often against London’s wishes.

That the two issues may come to a head within a relatively brief period is mostly political happenstance. In Scotland, a nationalist party’s surprise victory in local elections two years ago gave it a mandate to call for a vote on independence. As for Europe, the Conservative-led government that took power under Cameron in 2010 is chock-full of “Euroskeptics” pushing for Britain to loosen its ties to the EU or sever them completely.

But complicated notions of identity are in play in both situations, raising questions Britons must wrestle with as residents of an island that is at once part of Europe yet cut off from it, and that contains three distinct groups within its shores — the English, the Scottish and the Welsh.

“There has always been, going back centuries, a certain level of ambiguity about our national identity in terms of whether we’re English or British, Scottish or British, Welsh or British,” Kellner said. “Add on to that the question of Europe. Here the problem is that there has never really been a sense of European identity, whereas on the Continent … there’s a sense of European-ness.”

Britain has traditionally been most comfortable with an arm’s-length relationship with its neighbors across the English Channel, which for centuries served as a barrier against invading armies and ideas. In his long-awaited speech Jan. 23 pledging a referendum on EU membership, Cameron acknowledged that the histories of Britain and Europe were inextricably linked but warned that there was no escaping Britain’s view of itself as a breed apart.

“Our geography has shaped our psychology,” he said. “We have the character of an island nation: independent, forthright, passionate in defense of our sovereignty.”

It’s that last quality that fuels much of British hostility toward the EU.

Rules from Brussels limiting work hours, mandating environmental protections or even dictating the shape and size of fruit for sale have exasperated many Britons, who say they never agreed to give the EU such sweeping powers. What they signed up for was the common market — an economic convergence, not a political one.

“We’re being precluded from our historical rights. The EU is trying to take away our identity and take democratic rights away from people,” said Martin Kelly, 71, a retired banker. “It’s most unwelcome and very dangerous. People don’t realize it, and like lemmings are following the Pied Piper of the EU straight for the cliff.”

Cameron vowed to win concessions and exemptions for Britain and then put continued membership in the EU to a referendum. He said he would campaign to stay in.

Currently, polls show more of his compatriots want to get out.

It would be wrong to read this simply as insularity or xenophobia. Brits vacation on the Continent, have European friends and are generally receptive to French or German or Spanish culture in greater numbers than ever before.

In fact, the increased exposure may be tipping into overexposure, sparking a bit of push-back, said Robert Colls, a cultural historian at De Montfort University in central England.

George Orwell “said the British hardly eat any garlic. We hardly eat anything else now,” Colls said. “However, eating pasta doesn’t make you Italian. These identities are essentially local and intimate.”

Some analysts detect a specific local identity asserting itself as Britain tries to map its future: Englishness.

England has always been the dominant partner in its relationship with Scotland and Wales. That’s partly due to sheer weight of numbers: About 85% of the British population lives in England, with London at its core.

Although Scottish independence will be decided by Scottish voters only, a surprising poll released last year found that plenty of English people had no problem with Scotland going its own way. That’s because many believe Scotland has gotten more out of being yoked to England than the other way around — needless to say, the Scots disagree — and that a divorce would hardly hurt.

Similarly, a majority of people in England think that the British presence in the EU has been more beneficial to Europe than to Britain, which coughs up billions of dollars in club dues every year.

“These are unions that they are members of that they don’t think they’re necessarily gaining from. In fact, they think they’re losing,” said Guy Lodge, associate director of the London-based Institute for Public Policy Research. “The English do seem to be more suspicious of Europe than [do] Scots or the Welsh.”

In the end, Cameron’s nightmare of going down in history as the leader who oversaw the breakup of Britain and its withdrawal from the EU may be averted by another very British trait: pragmatism.

In the abstract, independence for Scotland might appeal to some Scots as a way to assert their identity, just as the idea of turning heel on the EU might sound an attractive way for some of expressing British sovereignty and pride. But presented with a real-life choice, with the potential costs of their actions laid out, people here are more likely to vote with their heads and not their hearts, said Kellner, the pollster.

So far in Scotland, no poll has shown a majority of voters in support of independence.

As for the EU, once Cameron actually proposed a referendum, Kellner’s organization noticed that support for an exit began to ebb as people contemplated the consequences of life outside the club and as some high-profile figures spoke out against withdrawal.

“When people think about it, they’re identity-driven,” Kellner said. “But when it becomes a practical proposition, they take a much more pragmatic view.”

henry.chu@latimes.com

Janet Stobart of The Times’ London bureau contributed to this report.