July 2, 2016
Britain just shot itself in both feet by voting to quit the European Union. After this tragedy comes the farce.
London’s ruling class Tory toffs are now making even bigger fools of themselves by indulging in an ugly, backstabbing power struggle worthy of the TV drama, ‘Game of Thrones.’
Boris Johnson, the presumptive heir to the bungling prime minister, David Cameron, was ready to be crowned. But he was stabbed in the back at the 11th hour by his old friend and ally, Michael Gove. Other Tories, like the hardline Theresa May, jumped into the race. Poor old Boris, who charmingly resembles Paddington the Bear, was forced to quit the race.
On the Labour side, the startling ineffectual socialist leader, Jeremy Corbyn, utterly failed to rally his troops to oppose Brexit. Working class votes swung the vote to exit. Labour leaders now call for Corbyn’s head, and rightly so.
It’s by now clear that a thin majority of British voted to decamp the EU because of anger at falling wages and rising prices, unemployment, and immigration of brown skinned people. And, of course, ye olde English dislike of the ‘bloody foreigners.’
The insulated, well-padded political class in London really didn’t give a damn about the unwashed, drunken football hooligans in the north who were the antithesis of the faux Merry Olde England that Americans so love.
Worse, it now transpires that the leaders of the Brexit vote didn’t actually expect it to succeed and didn’t know what to do next when it did. Many Brexit supporters had no idea what the European Union was. Just a bunch of ‘bloody foreigners.’
Those Brexit fans who screamed about lack of democracy in the EU didn’t seem to appreciate the glaring lack of democracy in Britain’s own incestuous political system where party members, not the public, select the leadership in a process worthy of the Kremlin.
On a sunnier note, the financial panic caused by the Brexit vote seems to have subsided. Rickety British banks did not collapse – at least not yet. The pound sterling, which the government has kept seriously overvalued for decades, sagged. That was a good thing. Prices in Britain are absurdly expensive due to the fortified pound. A US $1.20 pound would do wonders for Britain’s industry and tourism.
But the Tory ruling class has kept the pound artificially high to support their nation’s pretensions of imperial grandeur. Britain can no longer afford to be America’s gendarme cum Trojan Horse in Europe.
Britannia no longer rules the waves. London spends far too much on ego-boosting military power and overly big government. Whitehall still appears proudly imperial, but the north of England, where tourists never go, looks grim and shabby.
The ever-sensible Scots, who were bribed into joining the United Kingdom in 1707, may soon vote soon to get out of the union with England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Cosmopolitan Greater London, which rather likes the ‘bloody foreigners,’ and is filled with them, would also like to divorce from Britain.
But money, as in most divorces, is at the heart of things. The disastrous reaction of western central banks to the 2007-2008 financial crisis to keep interest rates at rock bottom has punished savers, workers and the middle class in the UK and USA.
‘Why should we subsidize the big banks,’ they rightly ask. The central bank financial alchemists have run out of tricks, purple smoke, and spells. Britons, like Americans, see fat cats in London and New York living the life of Reilly while they scrape for pennies. This is a classic recipe for revolution.
The Brits simply picked the wrong target for their ire in good part thanks to London’s rabid gutter press which promotes xenophobia and Islamophobia. The right target should have been the still poisonous class system and medieval political parties. At least the Brits showed that Americans have no monopoly on picking awful political leaders.
Britain, which used to be the world’s factory, is a manufacturing wasteland. Eighty percent of its business is services – ie paper-passing and financial jiggery-pokery. Some of it will migrate to the Continent. Britain – maybe henceforth England, if the Scots and Irish depart – will become a middling power ever more reliant on the Americans while the detested French and Germans run Europe. English may no longer be the lingua franca of the EU.
In short, a jolly bad show, chaps.
Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2016
This post is in: Europe, Great Britain
Britain like America has joined in the ultimate act of hypocrisy namely the fact that the countries that have invaded more countries than any other are the ones most obsessed with keeping foreigners out and “stopping them from forcing their ways on us”.
I think you missed this one Eric. Mass immigration was the main generator of discontent leading to the Brexit vote. The disastrous immigration policies of the past 40 years finally pushed Britons to the wall.
Mass immigration led to increasing housing costs and job quality and wage declines – it is effectively a generator of wealth transfer from poor and middle classes to the rich. Just as has happened in the USA and Canada, this has generated increasing levels of inequality.
In Britain, the influx was so strong they have thrown the Green Belt plan out and are now building houses all over it. The idea of taking more people into a tiny island which runs energy, food and probably every other resource deficit you can imagine is ludicrous.
The anger was not misdirected, it was bang on. The British and EU leadership failed miserably in monitoring the welfare of their people and when given a chance, the people put an end to it.
As uncertain as the outcome is, the country will be charting a new course. When people get desperate enough changes are made in convulsions and this was a convulsion as is Trump. There is definitely enough anger and elite incompetence and arrogance to put Trump in the White House.
Don’t blame the American people if this happens.
Cheers,
John M.
This is much ado about nothing. It’ll take two years for Brexit to be worked out and when the smoke clears the UK will have free trade without as open borders. The Europeans want to trade with the Brits and visa versa and the business interests will pressure the pols to keep barriers to trade and money at a minimum. The “Remain” pols currently feel very sad and slighted but they’ll get over it once the bankers call them in to get their instructions.
Excellent column! Britain will indeed come to regret this decision to leave the EU, although many British people are still cheering the Brexit vote. Ironically, what’s left of Britain after Scotland and, maybe, Northern Ireland secede, will have to trade with the EU mostly on terms dictated by the EU. British exports to the EU countries will still have to meet the EU’s rules if Britain wants to retain duty free access to them for what few goods it still manufactures.