Was Brexit inevitable?
FIESOLE, ITALY — In a short essay published almost 40 years ago, the French author Emmanuel Carrère observed that counterfactual history—imaginative accounts of what might have been—is driven by an abiding sense of intolerance for inevitability. For many in the nineteenth century, for example, it was simply intolerable that Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo and exiled to Saint Helena. One must rebel against the idea that it could not have been otherwise, Carrère claimed. Carrère’s argument is newly relevant now that we are marking the tenth anniversary of the Brexit referendum, when a slim majority of voters in the United Kingdom decided to leave the European Union. To understand how that outcome came about, we need to look back at least another decade, to the heyday of European integration. Starting in 2004, ten countries, including eight former Communist states, joined the EU in what was the largest expansion in the bloc’s history. The euro had entered circulation two years earlier, and the Schengen system (visa-free travel) had opened borders that previously separated p
