LONDON — Don’t get too comfortable, we have not even reached the Great Terror phase of the Brexit revolution yet.

In the bars and tea rooms of the Palace of Westminster, Conservative MPs have begun drawing playful comparisons between Britain’s chaotic exit from the European Union and the decades-long convulsion sparked by the French Revolution.

Roles have been assigned to leading Brexiteers. Michael Gove as Brissot, the hard-line republican who compromises to enter government and is the first to face the guillotine; Boris Johnson as Danton, the great orator who outlasts Brissot but also falls to the mob; and then there’s Jacob Rees-Mogg as Robespierre, the arch radical pursuing a “Republic of Virtue” but who also eventually faces the chop himself.

Lurking off stage, unknown and unassigned: Bonaparte.

“We’re all wondering who our Napoleon will be,” said one leading Tory MP who has spent time running through the analogy with colleagues. “Who’s going to grab this thing and sort it out? Obviously Boris thinks it’s him, but of course it’s not. He’s too dipped in the blood,” he adds referring to the former foreign secretary who was a leader of the campaign to leave the EU.

While the analogy is meant to be (at least partly) tongue-in-cheek, a number of influential Conservative MPs and leading historians of the era believe the joke reveals a deeper truth about the dilemmas, trade-offs and unknown consequences of Brexit.

Execution is not yet on the cards for its protagonists, but Britain’s EU exit does involve overturning decades of the U.K. foreign and economic policy, for something new but not yet properly defined.

At the heart of the drama, Britain’s leading political players face some of the same dilemmas as Danton, Robespierre and Louis XVI: To fight or to compromise? To attack or defend? To stand on principle or accept partial victory? How those dilemmas are resolved will shape Britain’s political future and its place in the world for decades to come.

“I’ve often thought about [the comparison],” said Michael Broers, professor of Western European history at Oxford University who specializes in 18th century France. “As issues become more sharply defined, so do red lines — and that’s when character starts to emerge. As the crisis deepens, you’ll get these tendencies: [those] who will try to smooth it over, try to keep a consensus together — then the other who says ‘no, there’s an issue here we’ve got to address it.’ And they force the issue.”

The point is about a Napoleon figure, a Cromwell figure — a Stalin — you can’t possibly know who they are at this stage" — Michael Broers, Oxford University professor

Broers said that in political crises, the course of events determines who is politically up or down. “If the crisis passes, it’s the appeasers, the bridge-builders, who win. If it doesn’t, if the crisis sharpens, then there’s going to be a clash and things are going to be pushed to the [extremes].”

Senior Tory MPs are concerned about just such a course of events. “That’s the danger,” said one, who has been tipped as a possible future leader.

Compromise vs. purity

Those looking for parallels between the French Revolution and Brexit can expect a bumpy ride ahead.

In 1791, the first phase of the revolution came to a conclusion of sorts with a new constitutional settlement, replacing the absolute rule of King Louis XVI with a constitutional monarchy and limited democracy. This compromise, however, failed to satisfy the purist leaders of the revolution.

“The red line for all those guys, Danton, Robespierre, is the [democratic] franchise,” said Broers. “For them there is only one legitimate government and that is a democracy. It’s got to be universal manhood suffrage.”

For Broers, May’s Brexit deal risks being consigned to the historical dustbin like the 1791 constitution.

“The second phase is very like Brexit,” said Broers. “There are people clinging to that deal, the ’91 constitution. On the right you get the king who is only playing along with it, who wants his own powers back. On the other side, you’ve got the radicals: Danton, Robespierre, who stick to their red lines.”

While unacceptable to some radicals, the 1791 constitution was grudgingly backed by others. Revolutionaries like Brissot decided to stand for the elections and go into the new parliament in order to wreck it from the inside.

Other hard-liners, however, did not want anything to do with it and held out for a hard revolution.

Faced with impending crisis brought on by a series of military defeats against the German powers and an economy collapsing at home, the new settlement fell apart, precipitating the rise of Robespierre and the purists.

The king went to the guillotine, the constitution was torn up and the Reign of Terror unleashed — cheered on by the Parisian mob disenfranchised by the 1791 constitution.

“That’s when the paranoia starts that you can’t trust anybody and they start devouring each other,” said Broers. “That’s the really radicalizing moment, until it all goes too far and then people realign.”

Rebecca Spang, professor of history at Indiana University, agrees that there are comparisons between Britain and the U.S. today and 18th century France.

“The origins of the French Revolution, from the 1770s to the 1780s, are in the aristocratic reaction to the modernizing changes that the monarchy is trying to make. This has parallels with Brexit. It is the reaction from the right which forced Cameron to call the referendum,” she said.

Both Cameron and Louis XVI thought they could use a constitutional stunt to control the bubbling discontent. In France, the monarch called a meeting of the ancient “Estates General” — a long-dormant legislative and consultative assembly. Cameron called a referendum.

“It was a conservative reaction which produced a moment which then radicalized in all sorts of unexpected ways,” said Spang. The difference in the U.K. today is that the right wing of Cameron’s party are also the Brexit revolutionaries.

Many on the left, though, see leading Brexiteers as faux revolutionaries. They view them as nostalgic defenders of the establishment, who hark after an ancien régime in which Britain had a more self-assured role in a less globalized world. Unlike the French revolutionaries, Brexiteers have no desire to start afresh and tear down sacred institutions like church and monarchy — their critics see them as a reactionaries, who want to preserve the old order.

Deepening crisis

Spang says the revolution in France was itself further revolutionized by the actions of the new government of France, which sought new ways to deal with its problems: in its case, paying off the national debt by nationalizing the property of the Catholic Church.

The reaction to an economic crisis caused by Brexit could similarly revolutionize Brexit, Spang and Broers suggest, and that could gather its own momentum.

“The deeper the crisis gets, there are only two ways out of it,” said Broers. “One, what the Queen appealed for, which is: ‘For goodness sake, let’s see some sense here: compromise.’ But if that fails, the lines become harder and that will inevitably push it to the extremes.”

And amid chaos, new leaders emerge.

“Who is going to become the heroic, mythical figure on the back of fighting most of the rest of Europe for 22 years? We don’t know" — Rebecca Spang

“If you look at the crisis which brought Napoleon to power in 1799, for the first time in about four years the war had gone disastrously wrong for France and there’s going to be a foreign invasion,” said Broers.

The government was split. “Napoleon plays along. Chaos is a ladder,” said Broers.

So, who is the British Napoleon?

“We don’t know who the Napoleon is yet. The point is about a Napoleon figure, a Cromwell figure — a Stalin — you can’t possibly know who they are at this stage,” says Broers. “This is going to be somebody we haven’t heard of yet.”

Spang agrees: “Who is going to become the heroic, mythical figure on the back of fighting most of the rest of Europe for 22 years? We don’t know.”

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