Though the stock markets are reeling and Scotland and Northern Ireland–and maybe even London!— are considering leaving Great Britain, turning it into “Little Britain,” others are congratulating the United Kingdom for achieving “Independence” from the European Union. Five more countries–France, Austria, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Finland–are now considering their own exits. UPDATE: Also Italy, Poland, and Slovakia. After the jump, thoughts supporting Britain’s action from ex-Republican George Will.
From George Will, Brexit: Britain’s welcome revival of nationhood – The Washington Post:
The “leave” campaign won the referendum on withdrawing Britain from the European Union because the arguments on which the “remain” side relied made leave’s case. The remain campaign began with a sham, was monomaniacal with its Project Fear and ended in governmental thuggishness.
The sham was Prime Minister David Cameron’s attempt to justify remain by negotiating E.U. concessions regarding Britain’s subservience to the E.U. This dickering for scraps of lost sovereignty underscored Britain’s servitude and achieved so little that Remainers rarely mentioned it during their campaign.
Project Fear was the relentless and ultimately ludicrous parade of Cassandras, “experts” all, warning that Britain, after more than a millennium of sovereign existence, and now with the world’s fifth-largest economy, would endure myriad calamities were it to end its 23-year membership in the E.U. Remain advocates rarely even feigned enthusiasm for the ramshackle, sclerotic E.U. Instead, they implausibly promised that if Brexit were rejected, Britain — although it would then be without the leverage of the threat to leave — would nevertheless somehow negotiate substantially better membership terms than Cameron managed when Brexit was an option.
Voters were not amused by the Cameron government’s threat of what critics called a Punishment Budget to inflict pain on pensioners (e.g., no more free bus passes) and others because Brexit might cause the gross domestic product to contract 9.5 percent and home prices might plummet 18 percent. Voters did not like being told that they really had no choice. And that it was too late to escape from entanglement in the E.U.’s ever-multiplying tentacles. And that the very viscosity of the E.U.’s statism guarantees its immortality.
Voters chose the optimism of Brexit. Sixty years after Britain’s humiliation in the Suez debacle, Britain has a spring in its step, confident that it will flourish when Brussels no longer controls 60 to 70 percent of the British government’s actions. Britain was last conquered by an invading army in 1066. In 2016, it repelled an attempted conquest by the E.U.’s nomenklatura .
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