The British people have spoken—but what are they saying?
To be quite blunt about it, a great many people in Britain have just given a big middle finger to leaders who have ignored their concerns about national identity and autonomy, and their right to make decisions within their own country about the nature of that country. These principles used to be the bulwarks of a democracy such as Britain, with a long and proud tradition that has not yet died. Although the EU plan was designed to weaken that tradition—and probably has to a certain extent—the tradition is still strong enough, and the provocation great enough, to cause a majority of British voters to give a big resounding “no” to an EU scheme they’ve found to be increasingly intolerable, with diminishing rewards and increasing drawbacks.
Anti-EU feeling among the people of member-states isn’t limited to Britain, although it may be strongest there because Britain was a relative latecomer to the EU and retains some of its non-continental island identity. But nationalist movements are afoot in France, and Donald Trump represents the American version (although of course we’re not in the EU and therefore have no need to vote to get out of it).
Movements often come in waves. For example, I remember the international nature of the 60s’ cultural changes wrought by my generation. Everyone thinks he or she is an individual, and that’s true. But we’re all subject to, and reacting to, universal forces that can at times sweep different countries and even different continents. The UK and the US have a closeness which means they are often in sync: for example with Roosevelt and Churchill, Reagan and Thatcher. Those are especially great examples, but being in sync doesn’t always involve greatness.
In recent years in both countries, it has been said that “elites” have ignored the voters, the common man, the working class, whatever term you prefer—ignored their protests, ignored their concerns, ignored their problems, ignored their opinions and needs about immigration and a host of other things. I’m not completely sure they were “ignored”—not exactly, anyway. Rather, I think it was assumed that enough people could be placated, cajoled, soothed by comforting words, made to agree with what those leaders wanted them to think. The leaders thought they knew better, and who knows? Maybe they did; maybe leaving the EU will be the disaster for Britain that Cameron and many others have predicted, although I doubt it in the long run. At any rate, “the people” didn’t think so, and they voiced their disagreement through the ballot box.
Cameron had suggested the referendum on EU membership several years ago because he wanted to placate potential defectors within his own party who were anti-EU. He was fairly confident that eventually he would win the referendum vote and keep Britain in the EU’s grip. He thought he could persuade enough people that he was correct that remaining in the EU would be best for Britain, but he miscalculated and now he’s on his way out. Cameron had said the vote would be “a great festival of democracy,” and the people have celebrated that festival by telling him—and the EU—to get lost.
[NOTE: Now it promises to get even more “interesting.” There may be a little problem, one which commenter “Caedmon” has pointed out:
Now it is a leap in the dark, because everybody who knew how to run an independent country is long dead.
Or at least very, very old—even older than I am.]
[NOTE II: I’ve used “British” and “Britain” for my Brexit posts because I’ve noticed that many of the British papers use the terms, and of course “Brexit” also implies a reference to Britain (British exit). But “the UK” is probably more technically correct for this vote, and some newspapers have used that instead. I’ll leave it up to you to duke it out in the comments, if you’d like.]
I suspect that once the dust has settled and negotiations on an exit begin that a new treaty will emerge giving looser membership followed by another vote. Against that argument is the fact that the EC leadership will want to punish Britain by making things as difficult as possible to discourage other countries from taking a similar path. The fact is that GB runs a trade deficit with Europe and therefore it is not in the EC’s interest to start a trade war with the UK.
The most interesting sovereignty questions concern Gibraltar and Scotland. Gibraltar voted heavily to remain and might now grant Spain joint sovereignty and therefore remain a member. Scotland will likely have a new referendum but they have the problem that they won’t be able to remain without accepting the Euro and many in Scotland who want Independence don’t want the Euro.
One side effect to be concerned about is that there is now a possibility of a Corbyn government in the next year or two.
On the UK v GB question, I think that Great Britain or Britain is more commonly used within the country and UK tends to be more used in the US although UK is used in the country too. It is hard to remember after 15 years in the US.
I would have voted leave but haven’t registered for a vote in England since I moved to the US as I don’t think its fair for me to vote on UK issues any more.
Finally this is not some immigration related recent movement. I considered standing for parliament with Goldsmith’s now defunct Referendum party back in the nineties. There has always been a healthy Euro Skeptic wing in the Conservative party (and previously on the left of Labour – although that has changed) and it was splits post Thatcher/Major that contributed to Blair’s string of electoral victories.
I am pleased to see Great Britain re-emerge from the EU quagmire. There will be turmoil. So, this will be another test of their character. Does the iron that ran through the spines of their ancestors still exist? Interesting times.
Despite Obama’s putrid statements, I do not see how this is a negative for the U.S. It will probably take some time for the opinion makers to figure that out. Obama and other great thinkers forget that the EU was spawned by the Common Market, which was cobbled together to compete with us. They were up front about that. There were serious efforts to have the Euro replace the dollar as the international currency. I do not see the EU as a particularly good friend of the U.S.; whereas there have been few doubts about Great Britain, UK or whatever, once we got their attention around 1812.
“There have always been Euroskeptics”
Including someone called Vernan Coleman (apparently quite a well-known writer in the UK, per his website); I left a link on the other post this morning.
“It was the British press which helped lying, cheating, conniving politicians trick the electorate into accepting membership of the EEC.
How many people would have voted for the EEC if they had known the truth?”
British PM David Cameron resigns after Brexit vote
A very good speech. A very correct speech. A very British speech. Worth listening to in full
David Cameron has resigned as Prime Minister after the UK public voted to leave the European Union in the referendum. Excerpts from his speech:
A tearful Mr Cameron – with his wife by his side – said he had already spoken to the Queen about his decision.
The PM campaigned to remain in the EU but the public rejected his arguments and chose to leave the EU by 51.9% to 48.1%.
Speaking to masses of reporters outside Downing Street, the PM said a new leader would be in place by the Tory party conference in October.
‘The British people have voted to leave the European Union and their will must be respected,’ Mr Cameron said.
‘The country requires fresh leadership to take it in this direction,’ added the PM.
‘I will do everything I can as Prime Minister to steady the ship over the coming weeks and months, but I don’t think it would be right for me to try to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination.’
Mr Cameron said he had fought ‘head, heart and soul’ to stay in the EU but that voters had chosen a different path.
Tears in his eyes and his voice cracking slightly, Mr Cameron’s final words were: ‘I love this country, and I feel honoured to have served it, and I will do everything I can in the future to help this great country succeed.’
http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2016/06/24/brexit–will-cameron-leave-no-10–.html
AesopFan: I read your comment. I think Coleman’s take is a complete rewriting of history. The 1975 referendum was on remaining a member of a vastly different entity. The EEC was a customs union and at that point there was no thought of a political or currency union. Also the UK economy was very sick at the time while Europe’s was strong. The press coverage and vote totals reflect that it was not a controversial decision to remain at the time.
Note that this time round many newspapers favored Leave, including the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail.
They are saying that they have had enough of Euromiscreants in Brussels degrading their daily lives, and that they are entitled to sever relations when those relations no longer serve their interests.
There’s probably no harm in that. And even theoretically, a currency union. But, as we all know, especially those who have followed the story of the U.S. constitution’s commerce clause, “commerce” eventually extends its hand into every corner, and provides social management pretexts aplenty for those looking for them.
And then there’s the Greeks.
London Trader and DNW, thanks for your inputs.
I think it is now a demonstrable law of nature that any organized human endeavor will eventually morph into a greatly different form from that originally visualized; and will grow to gargantuan proportions if not tightly controlled.
I think this vote, and the sentiments it reveals, can play to Trump’s benefit if he can rise to the occasion. There is little doubt in my mind that a great swath of the U.S. sees parallels between the UK-EU relationship and that of the individual states vs Washington. Although exit is not an option for states; re-negotiation of the relationship certainly is–and is overdue. Tell us how you will do the deal Mr Trump.
It’s a beginning but only a beginning. It’s a setback for the leftist/liberal labour party but only a set back.
90% of Scots are on some form of welfare.
Every major city in the UK voted to remain.
Muslim rape gangs are still ignored.
The UK is as divided as are we.
In her 4th paragraph, Neo notes that “the elites” haven’t really “ignored” the working class. Rather, she says, the elites assumed they could cajole and soothe the working class. In so doing, they followed the lead of Obama, adopting his attitude of patronizing superiority toward the little people in flyover country, the bitter clingers.
The elites have been too self-congratulatory to see that the little people are not as dumb as they think, and that anger has been building for eight years.
The people of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland said they are a distinct people and culture from the continent with different ideas about the nature of freedom and individual rights. It’s hardly an accident that our Founding Fathers were all British although that was a new term in the 1700’s.
As Thatcher famously put it and I paraphrase, “They didn’t fight two massive wars to later surrender their freedom and sovereignty to foreigners in Brussels”.
A common currency requires some political coordination, or at least strong commonality in fiscal decisions. The EU as is doesn’t strike me as a bad thing, but it’s almost impossible for it to remain as is without expanding authority – and that’s even aside from the natural tendency of things to get bigger and more complicated. Britain was in a strange place, being connected to the operation but not sharing the currency.
It’ll be interesting to see how this vote affects the EU, and not just in terms of the UK leaving. Will it prompt them to loosen their grip, in order to keep other countries from leaving? Will it bond the remaining countries, or some of them, closer together? Will the member countries with separate currencies be pressured to commit to the euro? Will the euro itself take another hit? A lot of countries are unsatisfied with it. It’ll be interesting to see who and what the EU is five years from now.
I would just remind people that these referenda involving the EU almost always lose to the anti-EU forces, and yet the EU continued to grow in power and scope through it all. I strongly suspect the is vote will be no different. Some “agreement” will be made allowing Parliament to simply ignore the vote.
Yancey Ward: Apparently there have been 29 refrenda across Europe over the past 43 years with Europe winning 18 and losing 11 (although that would be 27-16-11) if Ireland didn’t repeat votes twice. The Brexit vote is not legally binding but it will not be ignored. However a new treaty could be negotiated as part of the leave negotiations which would be put to another referendum. I suspect that Europe won’t go that route though as there are other countries that would want that deal that must be discouraged from seeking it.
THE WRATH OF THE AWAKENED SAXON
by Rudyard Kipling
It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.
They were not easily moved,
They were icy — willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the Saxon began to hate.
Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.
It was not preached to the crowd.
It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud
When the Saxon began to hate.
It was not suddently bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.
“And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. The semantic difference between “Britain” and “UK” will very likely decrease with time when Scotland (and maybe more members of the UK) will hold another referendum.
Morlocks 2, Eloi 0.
@wreath,
A special treat for Kipling fans:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDQEoK0-J9c
Today’s vote is also about immigration and nationality.
This is a huge win for Trump. Big Mo takes over.
For the Remain campaign, it was not lead by the unlikable criminal Hillary. She has to be very worried today.
Turnout was 70% plus. Will Dems turn out for Hillary?
Trump needs to hit the big swing states: MN,WI, MI, OH, PA, VA, NC and FL.
People are sick of the failed status quo. Trump is change despite his faults.
And I note his voice’s tone today in Scotland. Cool and even.
It is difficult, at least for me, to say just how much if any of the liberty preempting social-management legal regime currently cited in Great Britain, is a result of the transposition of Continental legal sensibilities to the UK.
My guess is “not much”; and, that most of the civil liberties sacrifices made there on the altar of inclusiveness and sensitivity have been the result of a home grown leftism which flourished in a preexisting political environment. One, in which any so called bill of rights they may have enjoyed, had no greater status in law than, as Dicey put it, the Dentists’ Act.
I can’t recognize the Scots as related to the same people who settled here. They don’t even look like them; unless the news papers take great care to ensure that everyone they take a picture of is a sagging potato-faced pug, or drug addled.
I simply can’t stop feeling a bit smug, and the grin hasn’t left my face since 11P PST last night when I logged onto the BBC.
What a great day.
…I have no idea why tho’. None. It’s a mystery.
I wouldn’t draw sweeping conclusions from a 50/50 vote.
The UK has never been home to the forms of extremism which have swept the continent. There is something in the English character which resists authoritarianism. This self governing trait has been assimilated in varying degrees by the peoples who have been a part of the UK or the empire.
DNW – I completely agree with your description of today’s Scots. I read somewhere that 90% of Scots are receiving some form of Welfare. Did all the Scots with gumption move to America?
Possibly something almost like that. My familiarity with the history of that area ends with the late Middle Ages. But I seem to vaguely recall a catastrophic period of dispossession and land consolidation in Scotland that took place long after the period of The Enclosures in England.
Ok, No time to reflect but a quick look up shows that in England it actually peaked in the late 18th century not during the Middle ages and the introduction of sheep; and in Scotland it was even later called “The Clearances”
Scotland appears to have been almost deliberately de-peopled; a social restructuring carried out in order to eliminate an entire class of small farmers.
Perhaps someone with time to do deep reading or already familiar with this could comment. I’m only good up to the Tudors for social history, and even then it is in the context of law mostly.
Richard Saunders
I read somewhere that 90% of Scots are receiving some form of Welfare. Did all the Scots with gumption move to America?
Not just the Scots, apparently. Consider the current mess that is Greece. But in the US, the people of Greek descent I have known have been either professionals or small businessmen. And one cop whose father was a small businessman.
Though the Scots had a pretty good run for a while in the UK. Think of Adam Smith, James Watt, and David Hume in the 18th century, and all the Scotsmen who went abroad in service to the British Empire in the 19th century.
My paternal inheritance is Scot-Irish, they fled to America in the 1740s and followed Boone through the Cumberland Gap. Isolated in the hills and hollows, they intermarriaged with their fellow Scot-Irish for generations. My great grandfather married a French/Shawnee woman. I come from proud, don’t trend on me people. They would not recognize their ancestors who remained in Europe.
A curse upon all who seek to trend on my sovereign individuality. I am free, all the collectivists can do is kill me and mine
To learn about the Scots of old, read, “How the Scots Invented the Modern World.” A nice history of the Scots of the 17th, to the 20th centuries.
Much of what we know of capitalism and conservatism was ideated by those leading Scots intellectuals of the time – Kames, Hume, Smith, and many more.
What has been called the Anglosphere is a state of mind and culture derived from those men. It emphasized private property protected by law, individual effort, high moral standards, and free markets What so many leftists want through their open borders, cultural diversity, socialistic policies, etc. is to destroy that mind set and culture.
The open borders people are like those who want more light rail (A current cause celebre’ here in the Evergreen State) and fewer roads. They cannot imagine how wrong they are. Twits!
Foolish EUlite occupying Britain held the vote before they’d chosen a new people. The EUlite believed the millions of immigrants and millions of Muslims rapping and pillage Britain had cowed its people. Not yet.
This is for Parker.
Hey Parker, I don’t know who this painter is, but when I was doing the highlander Google, one of these images came up which led me to his website
Tell me that this man has not somehow met or seen one of your uncles or cousins and removing them from the shop or law office or the ball field, painted their faces into his scene. He certainly caused my jaw to drop.
On, now back to the poison ivy.