Description
Brexit has posed an existential challenge to the UK and the EU, resulting in widespread anxieties in both Britain and the remaining 27 EU Member States as success of one threatens the sense of ontological security of the other. These anxieties have hampered attempts to adapt to the “new normal” as bilateral relations are marked by mutual mistrust and competition. Drawing on the work of Melanie Klein and integrating her concept of envy into Ontological Security Studies, we argue that bilateral UK-EU relations are best understood as characterised by this particular affect. Envy, in this context, comprises the angry feeling that the other possess, withholds, and keeps an object that one desires for oneself accompanied with the impulse to destroy the desired object to spoil it for the other. Looking at the so-called “Vaccine Wars” of 2021 between the UK and the EU, we show how what we call an envy dilemma arose. In this envy dilemma, UK and EU governments were preoccupied with “winning” against the other, or at least making sure that the other side was losing by disrupting supply lines, adopting triumphant and humiliating rhetoric, and projectively identifying bad intentions in the other.
