Business, Economics, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Brexit

36 Comments

James Bennett proposes a CANZUK union to replace the UK’s membership in the EU.

Meanwhile, it looks as though the permission of the Scottish Parliament and Ulster may be required to leave:

We asked Sir David whether he thought the Scottish Parliament would have to give its consent to measures extinguishing the application of EU law in Scotland. He noted that such measures would entail amendment of section 29 of the Scotland Act 1998, which binds the Scottish Parliament to act in a manner compatible with EU law, and he therefore believed that the Scottish Parliament’s consent would be required.83 He could envisage certain political advantages being drawn from not giving consent.

We note that the European Communities Act is also entrenched in the devolution settlements of Wales and Northern Ireland. Though we have taken no evidence on this specific point, we have no reason to believe that the requirement for legislative consent for its repeal would not apply to all the devolved nations.

Stay tuned.

[Update a while later]

“Citizens of the World?” Nice thought, but don’t hold your breath:

The inability of those elites to grapple with the rich world’s populist moment was in full display on social media last night. Journalists and academics seemed to feel that they had not made it sufficiently clear that people who oppose open borders are a bunch of racist rubes who couldn’t count to 20 with their shoes on, and hence will believe any daft thing they’re told. Given how badly this strategy had just failed, this seemed a strange time to be doubling down. But perhaps, like the fellow I once saw lose a packet by betting on 17 for 20 straight turns of the roulette wheel, they reasoned that the recent loss actually makes a subsequent victory more likely, since the number has to come up sometime.

Or perhaps they were just unable to grasp what I noted in a column last week: that nationalism and place still matter, and that elites forget this at their peril. A lot people do not view their country the way some elites do: as though the nation were something like a rental apartment — a nice place to live, but if there are problems, or you just fancy a change, you’ll happily swap it for a new one.

[Update a few minutes later]

Brexit’s complicated aftermath:

For a long time, Britons who wanted their country to leave the European Union were regarded almost as mentally ill by those who wanted it to stay. The leavers didn’t have an opinion; they had a pathology. Since one doesn’t argue with pathology, it wasn’t necessary for the remainers to answer the leavers with more than sneers and derision.

Even after the vote, the attitude persists. Those who voted to leave are described as, ipso facto, small-minded, xenophobic, and fearful of the future. Those who voted to stay are described as, ipso facto, open-minded, cosmopolitan, and forward-looking. The BBC itself suggested as much on its website. In short, the desire to leave was a return to the insularity that resulted in the famous—though apocryphal—newspaper headline: fog in the channel: continent cut off.

And then there’s this:

One possible reason for the success of the Brexit campaign was President Obama’s ill-conceived intervention, when he threatened that if Britain voted to leave the Union, it would have to go to the “back of the queue” as far as any trade agreements are concerned. This sounded like bullying, and was not well-received by much of the British population, which had already been subjected to quite a lot of such bullying from others. If I were an American, I shouldn’t have been pleased with it either, for Obama spoke not as a president with a few months left in office, but as a president-for-life, or at least one with the right to decide his successor’s policy.

Yes, the arrogance would have been stunning, if it hadn’t been typical. And on that last Nigel Farage agrees:

Obama certainly has that reverse Midas touch. Recall his efforts to secure the Olympics for Chicago that ended in embarrassing failure.

After nearly eight years in the White House, President Obama can’t understand that the influence he has as president is a precious resource not to be wasted unless he is sure that he can make a difference. That includes efforts to influence domestic as well as foreign policy.

Have any of his ham-handed attempts to influence events overseas not backfired on him? I can’t think of any.

[Sunday-morning update]

Walter Russell Mead: The problem with Brexit is the “leaders,” not the voters.

And Roger Kimball says it’s not an exit, but an entrance.

Meanwhile, Richard Fernandez has a tart rejoinder to whinging from the children:

Essentially people much older than you gave you what you now take for granted. They won World War 2, fueled the great boom, walked through the valley of the shadow of nuclear death — and had you.

You didn’t make the present, nor as you now complain, are you making the future. No children, no national defense, no love of God or country.

But that’s just it. You’ve brainwashed yourselves into thinking someone else: the old, the older, the government, the dead would always do things for you.

If you learn anything from Brexit, learn that nobody got anywhere expecting someone to do things for him.

Time to grow up.

[Monday-morning update]

The howla against democracy:

Media commentary has dripped with contempt for the moronic people. ‘Some of the oldest and whitest people on the planet leapt at a chance to vote against the monsters in their heads’, howled a writer for Esquire. There’s much talk about the people being ‘manipulated’ by lies and misinformation, as if they’re lifeless putty in the hands of the likes of Farage. Some have gone so far as to twist the definition of democracy in an attempt to rubbish the people’s will. ‘The idea that somehow any decision reached anytime by majority rule is necessarily “democratic” is a perversion of the term’, says Harvard professor Kenneth Rogoff. Sometimes, democracy means making sure the people ‘avoid making uninformed decisions with catastrophic consequences’, he says. So it can be democratic to thwart the majority’s wishes if we think they’re stupid. And they have the gall to talk about manipulation.

And make no mistake: it is their aim to thwart our will. They want to use the law or politicians’ clout to undermine the result.

Because their totalitarian dream of world government is being undermined.

36 thoughts on “Brexit”

  1. Britian is always going to trade with the EU, that trade isn’t going to end with Brexit, and is only going to be impeded to a moderate extent, after all, everyone trades with the EU.

    What Brexit does is allow Britain to go after free trade agreements with the rest of the world, I think she’ll quickly get agreements in place with the CANZ countries but also with China, the ASEAN countries, and most of the countries the EU and EFTA have agreements with. The big question is whether she can get an agreement with the US, it seems likely, but sometimes the US is nearly as bad as the EU in getting internal approval through Government – TPP being the current example, which both Presidential contenders are now opposed to.

        1. Amazing how you know exactly what Trump will do but millions of voters are clueless.

          Which is it? He’s predictable or he’s not?

      1. Investment markets are so overbought from zero interest rate policies and quantitative easing, debt so deep from the same, that it doesn’t take much to produce a major disruption. Having a scapegoat seems enough to trigger major sell offs.

  2. So they get out of one bad marriage and immediately people want them to get into another?

    1. A federal superstate with regulatory and judicial supremacy is not the same thing as a free trade and free movement treaty. It wouldn’t really be a “marriage.”

      1. Norway isn’t in the EU and they have free trade and free movement treaties signed with it. But the UK never wanted the free movement treaties in the first place. In fact even before the referendum they weren’t part of the free movement (aka Schengen) zone.

        You would be surprised at the amount of regulatory and judicial supremacy you can lose with a trade treaty. The TPP is just one example of it. It depends on how its negotiated but there has been a tendency for creating supra-national entities for quite some time now.

        1. You would be surprised at the amount of regulatory and judicial supremacy you can lose with a trade treaty.

          Good point. I would simplify that to say “you would be surprised at the amount of sovereignty you can lose with a trade treaty.”

        2. TPP may be a trade treaty, but it most certainly isn’t a Free trade treaty like the proponents want to label it.

    2. Australia and New Zealand are two separate, sovereign nations. Politically we don’t always agree, New Zealand’s reaction to the Iraq war was different from ours ( I’m an Aussie) but we have had free movement and free trade for years. Adding the Canadians and the Poms to the group is an excellent suggestions.

      1. Add in India, and you’ve got a formidable trading bloc. We could give it a fancy name – how about “the Commonwealth”?

          2. The Commonwealth that exists has over 50 countries and over 2.1 billion people in it, the one you’re proposing has 5 countries and 1.4 billion people.
            Not the same at all.

  3. Oh please, people. Did a referendum on Gay “Marriage” in California result in the outcome the majority voted for? Did a Republican Primary majority vote in Alaska result in a “Tea Party” insurgent taking a Senate seat away from the nepotist who had inherited it? Did Houston voters, by a landslide majority, settle the issue of transgender bathrooms?

    Is Al Franken still doing Saturday Night Live?

    Oh please. Why do you think democracy is taken seriously at all? Of COURSE the courts and the sub-legislatures and the power-brokers are going to settle this. They had hoped the idea of global-ity would look more popular that it does. But it’s not really a question of how popular the idea is, after all. It’s about what can be enforced.

    I would like to think otherwise, but experience strongly shows voting is rather secondary.

    1. I would like to think that you are wrong. But it wouldn’t be the first time the “elites” of Europe ignore a referendum or plebiscite. There’s what happened in Greece recently for one example. But there are plenty more examples:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_European_Constitution_referendum,_2005
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_European_Constitution_referendum,_2005

      When France and the Netherlands rejected the EU Constitution the EU simply called it a treaty and rammed all the relevant legislation through anyway.

  4. The people of Britain declared that they have a great culture worthy of preservation….that being a nation means something good….and that they are on to the one worlders.

  5. Pouncer has a good point though. The people in control don’t care what the voters want. They will continue to be relentless in asserting their control however they can.

    Eventually they will over play their hand and the voters will not bother to vote. Unless pitchforks and torches count as voting.

    Andrew is right about trade.

  6. If the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and Austria also exit they should form some kind of organization with Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, and Britain, becoming a non-EU union. They could coordinate on trade and other policies and set up headquarters in Amsterdam.

      1. Yes and now Britain can join back showing other countries who are becoming dissatisfied with the EU theres an alternative.

  7. attempts to influence

    He did get them to do one thing a president has never done before… he got them to allow him to bow down to them.

  8. Trump: Texas won’t secede because ‘Texas loves me’

    Wow, how modest of him, does that mean that if he doesn’t get to be President they will? Does it mean that they would have seceded if he had never been born?

    All hail the Great Trump!

    All hail the Great Trump!

    1. As silly as Trump-based Texan unity is a less intelligent politician would suggest that Texas leaving would “send them to the back of the line.”

  9. I was not very hopeful about the vote. I really thought that Remain would win.

    I was so happy with the news that I dipped into the bottle of Glenlivet 18 that I bought back in April to celebrate SpaceX’s first successful droneship landing.

    1. I don’t think that bottle is going to be a whole lot older when you get to have another to celebrate the complete end of the EU.

  10. What I don’t understand is all the so called libertarians tering their heair out at the vote, to me it seems a clear case of a group voting to bring the power home closer to the people… a good thing….

    The Free trade part of this is orthogonal to the governance part, you can have free trade and separate governance… the real issue is how vindictive is the EU going to be in negotiating the trade deal with the now free UK. One of the issues is some define Trade more broadly than I and include things like wages, working conditions, labor unis etc… in the definition of trade, I don’t.

    1. Any libertarian who supports the EU because ‘free trade’ is a moron, anyway.

      The libertarian idea of ‘free trade’ is that I make a product in France that they want to buy in Germany, and no-one can stop us trading.

      The EU’s idea of ‘free trade’ is that they take the strictest regulation of that product in every country and combine them into one new regulation that must be followed in every country.

      So Germans, say, ban curved bananas because a study showed children could choke on them, and only allow straight bananas. The EU now rules that all bananas sold in the EU must meet Regulation 27B/6, and curved bananas can no longer be sold. Doesn’t matter that the English happen to prefer curved bananas, they can no longer sell them.

      But it gets worse. In the old days, if a truckload of curved bananas turned up from Poland, a German food inspector could turn the truck round and send it back. Now that truck comes with a Certificate Of Compliance With Regulation 27B/6 from a corrupt Romanian food inspector, and EU law prohibits the German inspectors from doing any further checks. The magic certificate says the curved bananas are straight bananas, so they are straight bananas no matter how curved they might actually be.

      This is how Europe ended up eating ‘beef’ that was actually thirty-year-old Soviet horsemeat. The magic certificate said it was beef, therefore it was beef. Testing it to verify that it was beef would be illegal.

      So the EU is pretty much the antithesis of free trade. You can’t sell without a bureaucrat authorizing it, and, if that thing they wanted to buy from me in France is illegal in Germany, odds are it’s now illegal in France, under Regulation 28D/9.

      Libertarians should be cheering for the UK for getting out of such a corrupt, authoritarian bureaucracy.

  11. It’s a pity that a lot of the media has taken the negative view without considering the opportunities that Brexit open up for the UK – in shedding the cost of the Brussels gravy train, the EU compliance legislation and being able to deal with other trading nations directly, even here in NZ the focus has been “oh no, this is going to make trading with the EU harder!” Not a mention in the media of how it’ll make trading with the UK far easier.

    It’s too easy for countries to talk themselves into a depression, both literally and figuratively, and the UK seems bent on doing just that.

    1. The media, mostly, are people who wanted their transnationalist friends to win, building a hierarchy that they could use to climb their own professional ladders with, by schmoozing hierarchs over lunch instead of investigating, and having the hierarchs send someone after them. The UK media *does* want the people who voted for “Leave” to become depressed, and sink back into somnolent acceptance of hierarchy from Brussels. The US media would like that too, in regards to those who will vote against Hillary, if they vote at all.

      In both cases, we have people who think their 4+ year degrees entitle them to pre-eminence in society. They think they can get that easier in a society that pays attention to hierarchs over voters. Here, they intend to be what Hillary can make them, the ones who inform us how we will vote. In Britain, they want the EU Commission to mark them out as the same thing.

      If the people ignore them through November on both sides of the Atlantic, they may just fail. Yes, …then we have to deal with whatever calamities “The art of the Deal” will inflict on us. Hopefully the first Deal from that “artist” will be bringing Britain, Australia, and NZ into NAFTA.

  12. If you knew nothing about Brexit, you might notice that the usual gang of tax lice, government sniffers and Staat-shtuppers are aghast at the vote.

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