As powerful and the not-so-powerful media outlets have relentlessly been telling us since the morning of Friday last week, British voters “shocked the world” when they voted to leave the European Union on Thursday June 23.

The exit, indeed, shook financial markets and the political establishment in the queen’s land and in Europe.

But while pundits have helped us picture the economic consequences and the political price, such as a probable disintegration of both the UK (e.g. by Scotland and Northern Ireland voting to leave “Great” Britain) and the EU (with other nations like France, Denmark, etc. emulating the “bad” example), what voters voted for is neither new nor, in the circumstances, surprising as some have argued.

For when one carefully listens to the messages in “leave” and “stay” camps during campaigns in the UK, the former was telling voters, “Vote leave” so that “We can take back our country”. The latter was saying, “Vote stay” because “Britain is stronger in Europe”.

Clearly, the leave message was saying Britain is somehow under “occupation” or “colonisation” from which it needs to “liberate” itself.

In fact, when believers in this message so voted, its proponents, including the UK Independent Party chief Nigel Farage and Conservative flamboyant MP Boris Johnson celebrated what they referred to as “Britain independence” day.

For those with a sense of history, clearly, the leave camp advocated a return to last century’s unshared nation-state sovereignty while the stay camp promoted post-World War II world order, where, in the case of Europe, states chose to share sovereignty with the EU.

In that sense, the UK vote is a reaffirmation of the supremacy of the idea of nation-state over supranational entities that have been aspiring to “kill” or “replace” or share sovereignty with it.

In other words, the vote is a return to the past and repudiation of a probable “United States of Europe” (from the current EU) and is a clear setback for other such entities like the EAC that aspires to be the “East African Political Federation” etc.

In broad terms, however, what this rejection of regionalism tell us is fourfold: first, that despite benefits from technological advances, interconnectedness and globalisation, at the core, we seem to have remained local and tribal.

This is in some ways surprising because, with the shrinking of space and time due to globalisation, increased human contact, travels; and the spread of ideas, we are supposed to have become more international, tolerant of each other and multicultural; instead, the opposite is happening.

Second, the politics of “Us” — the Great — against “Them” — the not-so-great still lives on in Europe, 77 years after the same politics caused the Second World War. And, this development isn’t unique to Britain, but currently prevalent across Europe with a resurgence of raw nationalism.

The same politics has engulfed the US where, apparently, the Republican presumptive nominee, Donald Trump, is aspiring to be president so that he can help Americans “Take Our Country Back”!

To those who closely follow these things, this return to nativist sentiments and patriotism isn’t surprising, considering that there are considerable economic hardships, glaring inequality and rising unemployment amid increasing “strangers” as refugees and migrants in these policies.

Thirdly, as history shows, it’s in such conditions that political demagogues and extremists gain traction and a winning following. For, under economic stress, political opportunists tell voters: “if you have no job, it’s because of these ‘strangers’” and the solution lies in kicking them out and closing borders.

It’s under the same conditions in the early 1930s that, for example, Adolf Hitler in Germany was born. So people, beware!

Finally, while disruptive, Brexit also “rescues” realist school of thought that has been in decline with rising liberalism in recent years for the vote is a clear rejection of shared sovereignty between the EU and its member states —regardless of whether this is good or bad.

Whether there is a contagion effect leading to European and UK disintegration and a discrediting supranational entities aspiring to gain the status of nations, only time will tell.

Christopher Kayumba, PhD. Senior Lecturer, School of Journalism and Communication, UR; Lead consultant, MGC Consult International Ltd. E-mail: [email protected]; twitter account: @Ckayumba Website:www.mgcconsult.com