Most of the pro-Brexit crowd voted the way they did because they don’t like faceless European bureaucrats deciding issues for Britain. The reality is that Britain’s only way forward post-Brexit is to assign even greater levels of authority to American bureaucrats.
Read the whole essay. Tart and idiosyncratic, as always.
The EU experiment is doing the right thing (free trade, integrating markets) in a very clunky way. It is something most conservatives wanted although there is dislike losing Sovereignty and such. It is the usual contradiction of wanting a competitive global economy against the increase of local politics.
1) I thought the BIG election driver of BREXIT was European Immigration and how much British like East European Immigrants. I still bet this is the big reason for Brexit.
2) I do think the great irony of potentially losing Ireland to the EU would the best revenge against the conservative Brexiters.
3) Sure London won’t lose all the finance center and jobs but they could see a slow withdrawal in the long run. Now EU banks will hire future workers in Brussels versus London, etc.
4) Even after Brexit, the ‘trading’ partners are still going to be the EU nations as they are neighboring nations that do have a fair amount of workers moving from nation to nation.
5) It rather weird to the various parallels of US and UK politics here although Labor/Democrats are moving in different directions.
Peter said in the essay “(ten years) … the sort of time frame the EU likely has left (which in and of itself will be a topic for later in this series of newsletters)”. As a Brit I have a huge sense that this possibility needs to be understood before any sensible decision about Brexit or otherwise can be made. As it happens, I was a remainer in the referendum, but I am acutely aware that we know just about nothing about whether this is a good decision (either way). As Peter (I think) said in a previous essay, what if the Italian sovereign debt crisis takes the Euro out? What then? This is just one of a huge number of unknowns, most of which are the legendary unknown unknowns.
This essay conforms to (even if genuinely independent from) the efforts that the establishment media (and the pundocracy) in the UK to “level” the playing field ahead of yesterday’s election. Labor wasn’t motivating voters with Corbyn’s brand of Socialism and was unwilling to debate Brexit on the merits. Thus the spin ahead of the election was turning into Tories will Americanize the NHS, and Brexiters will make the UK a Trumpian puppet. (I am surprised they did not throw in the bit about the Jewish cabal that “controls” America.) Well it did not work.