LONDON — From Brussels to Berlin to Washington, leaders of the Western democratic world awoke Friday morning to a blunt, once-unthinkable rebuke delivered by the flinty citizens of a small island nation in the North Atlantic. Populist anger against the established political order had finally boiled over.
The British had rebelled.
Their stunning vote to leave the European Union presents a political, economic, and existential crisis for a bloc already reeling from entrenched problems.
But the thumb-in-your-eye message is hardly limited to Britain. The same yawning gap between the elite and mass opinion is fueling a populist backlash in Austria, France, Germany, and elsewhere on the Continent.
Even as the European Union began to grapple with a new and potentially destabilizing period of political uncertainty, the British vote will inevitably be seized upon as further evidence of deepening public unease with the global economic order. Globalization and economic liberalization have produced winners and losers — and the big “Leave’’ vote in economically stagnant regions of Britain suggests that many of those who have lost out are fed up.
Time and again, the European Union has navigated political crises during the past decade with a Whac-a-Mole response that has maintained the status quo and the bloc’s lumbering forward momentum toward greater integration — without directly confronting the roiling public discontent beneath the surface.
But now the question is whether the dam has broken: Before breakfast on Friday, anti-Europe leaders in France and the Netherlands were rejoicing and demanding similar referendums on EU membership. Terms like Frexit and Nexit were being used, taking after Brexit, the popular name for the British exit.
“Victory for liberty!’’ the far-right French leader Marine Le Pen declared on Twitter.
It is not clear what lessons leaders on both sides of the Atlantic are taking from the shock of the exit.
In Brussels, many member governments appear divided between an instinct to respond to the British referendum vote by driving for greater integration among Germany, France, and other core members of the bloc and a willingness to moderate their ambitions in recognition of public opposition.
EU leaders were under pressure to reassure the European public, and the world, that the bloc was not at risk of unraveling. For decades, the EU had moved forward, always expanding in size and influence. Britain has now reversed that trend.
“We’re completely in uncharted territory,’’ said Hans Kundnani, a Berlin-based expert in European politics at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Kundnani said the British vote exposed a contradiction at the core of the European project. European leaders define success as steering member states toward greater political and economic integration. And many of the bloc’s inefficiencies and dysfunctions can be traced to the unfinished work of strengthening European institutions and achieving greater integration between member states in areas such as banking, finance, security, and defense.
But public opinion is deeply skeptical of this “more Europe’’ agenda. Far-right populist leaders have stoked public anxieties and resurgent nationalism by lashing out against immigrants, while portraying the European capital, Brussels, as a bastion of political elites out of touch with the concerns of ordinary people. Far-left populists have demanded a reexamination of the neoliberal economics of free trade and limited regulation, while resisting efforts to deconstruct the social democratic welfare state.
“The EU robs us of our money, our identity, our democracy, our sovereignty,’’ said Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch far-right Party for Freedom. “The elites want more EU. They think they know better than the people. They look down on the people and want to decide in their place. They want us to be ruled by undemocratic, unaccountable bureaucrats in a faraway place like Brussels.’’
Before the referendum, some European officials portrayed Britain as an idiosyncratic case that should not be seen as a bellwether for the Continent. But that is a hard argument to make.
In France, Le Pen’s far-right National Front party is experiencing steadily rising popularity as the country prepares for national elections next year.
In Germany, the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany polled strongly in recent state elections.
Right-wing leaders in Hungary and Poland are hostile to immigrants, while critics say the governments of those countries are also rewriting national laws to undermine democratic checks and balances. In Italy, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement scored major victories Sunday by winning mayoral elections in Rome and Turin.
Donald Tusk, one of the European Union’s top leaders, has started to talk about the risks facing the political establishment.
At a speech last month before Europe’s coalition of center-right political parties, Tusk cautioned his fellow political elites.
“Obsessed with the idea of instant and total integration, we failed to notice that ordinary people, the citizens of Europe, do not share our euro-enthusiasm,’’ said Tusk, the president of the European Council, which comprises the heads of state of all the 28 member states in the bloc. “Disillusioned with great visions of the future, they demand that we cope with the present reality better than we have been doing until now.’’
