The BBC explains why it thinks BREXIT won. Let me save you the trouble: Remain ran an ineffective campaign and too many old farts voted out of nostalgia. And that’s actually a step up (or perhaps a refined version) of the “racism and xenophobia” excuse most of the left has embraced as the reason. And a very few sources have noted that British taxpayers have been paying £13 billion a year for the privilege of belonging to the EU and thinking maybe that money could be better spent to shore up their decrepit system of bureaucratized health care. The one thing that is almost never discussed is how undemocratic and dysfunctional the European Union actually is.
- It is axiomatic that the EU is structured in an undemocratic way. While in theory, voters elect representatives to the European Parliament, in fact the governing organs of the EU are not transparent and have little in the way of checks and balances. Even defenders of the EU concede that it is in serious need of reform and that its Eurocrats are extremely resistant to reform. In 2001, the European Court of Justice even made it illegal to criticize the European Union, its politicians and bureaucrats, and its policies.
- Hand in hand with that lack of transparency is endemic corruption, waste, and fraud by Eurocrats.
- The unelected EU bureaucracy in Brussels micromanages everything, and has regulated, banned, or tried to ban curved bananas, olive oil served from glass bottles in restaurants, and declared as a matter of science that it was illegal to claim that drinking water prevents dehydration.
And even if the EU were a transparent and well-functioning democratic institution, there would be occasions (probably a lot of them) when the EU… through a transparent democratic process… would simply enact policies that favored the interests of Portuguese or Romanians over Britons. Germans were unhappy to be taxed to bail Greece, and even less happy to accept hundreds of thousands of “refugees,” but the EU demanded it as the cost of unity.
The media are acting as if the British have gone nutzoid and embraced BREXIT because they hate those stinky brown foreign people so much that they will sabotage their own economy just to send a message. The flaws of the EU are never discussed because the EU is pretty much the model for Progressive Transnational Government.
The ultimate goal of the Progressive Left is a borderless world where national identities have been brushed aside. They envision something like a Global version of the EU as the Government of this one-world utopia. There is little difference between an American socialist like Bernie Sanders and a Swedish socialist, a Chinese socialist, a Latin American socialist, a British Labourite, a French socialist… so it’s very easy when these types get together to imagine a borderless world governed by they themselves. And they also don’t see why anyone would ever disagree with their policies because they are so self-evidently right. But as BREXIT showed when the people they want to rule over are actually allowed to vote, they don’t want it.
And now the Remain folks are demanding a second vote. They’ll probably demand a third vote if they get the second one and it still goes to the Leave crowd.
Hey, Remain folks: demanding repeat votes until your side wins isn’t democracy.
Strange, I remember from history class that someone else, 80 odd years ago, had a vision for Progressive Transnational Government where national identities had been bombed away…errr…brushed aside and made into a one world Utopia. Where was that Capital supposed to be…gosh, just don’t remember…oh, look Angela Merkel is giving a speech…
There’s truth in the idea that Remain ran an ineffective campaign.
First – Remain lost. So, *by definition*, they ran an ineffective campaign. Saying “We lost because our campaign was ineffective” is like saying “I got arrested because I thought the cop was a prostitute.” It’s glaringly stupid, yet utterly truthful.
Second – Guess what? Remain’s campaign was headed by Jim Messina, a top Obama-Hillary campaign adviser and not a Brit. And Leave jumped 8 points in the polls after Obama so crudely tried to tell the Brits how to vote in mid-April. see here: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-24/was-deciding-factor-brits-vote-leave
Again, I would call that pretty much the definition of an ineffective campaign.
Third: “They ran an ineffective campaign” may, for all we know, be a way of saying “They were sloppy and didn’t get the vote-rigging machinery set up properly, or were afraid of the pitchforks in the streets if they did rig it properly.” And that may be the point of the calls for a do-over.
A majority of ordinary Brits want to be out of the EU, on current terms. What will happen now is, the Brit-EU elites will propose new terms, then try to stage-manage the UK into staying. There will be another referendum – if they think they can arrange it to win. If not, then not.
Perhaps the Brit-EU elites will throw up some legal obstacles, as part of all this. For example, perhaps they may declare that leaving the EU is a human rights violation or something. Indeed, the fight is not over. Removing Britain from the EU will not happen overnight.
All that has happened now, is that part of the mask has been ripped off. A majority of Brits rejected the EU, for all to see. For the time being, that can’t be denied. It can only be minimized, or carped at (a la the various left-wing tweeters, or our commentors JE or CCP in other threads).
You can bet that right now, the US-UK-EU ruling class’ top minds are thinking feverishly about how they can overcome it. Wait for the next chapter, “The Empire Strikes Back”.
P.S. I predict that Britain will not actually leave the EU (i.e., will not be allowed to)….UNLESS the EU basically disintegrates on its own, first. And that might happen, if the Independence movement catches fire in other EU countries. Interesting times.
P.P.S. Ever notice how much today’s world is like Panem?
Not the literal Hunger Games, of course. But the centralization of power; and the disgusting public figures, betrayals of trust, distractions, marginalizations of dissent, taxes, lies, bombings, border wars, murders, regulations, and various other evils and curses that come with centralized power fighting to maintain itself.
As to the “too many old farts were nostalgic” argument, and those young people tweeting “My fate was just decided by old people”….all I can say is, what goes around comes around 🙂
Today’s “old people” (who voted for Britain’s exit) are the 60s generation who once said things like “Don’t trust anyone over 30” and “Hope I die before I get old”.
This is unsurprising considering the continuing centralization of political and bureaucratic decision-making at Westminster and Brussels at the expense of local government and regional councils. Plus individual MPs and MEPs don’t have the direct personal accountability and advocacy that American City and County officials, State Legislators, and Federal Congress-critters and Senators have to their constituencies. All power is in the hands of the Parliamentary and EU Parliamentary leadership through back-channels and unofficial committees. Many UK MPs don’t even attend on a regular-basis. In-fact the House Chamber was deliberately-configured so there are not enough seats for all the Members of Parliament to attend.
The vampire squids lost one. Their goal is to have nothing but serfs & peons beneath them. Middle class people threaten to engage their turf and understand their frauds. Stalin was the richest man in history while telling his slaves they all had equality.
The ones who voted exit were the ones who could remember what Great Britian was before the EU.
Due to various bunglings, when the Royal Navy’s two new aircraft carriers to to sea, they will have US Marine Corps air-wings on-deck since Parliament sold-off the RN’s Harriers for parts.
maybe the brits voted to leave because they wanted a sovereign government.
ILoveCapitalism @ 5: You probably know this, but I’ll ask anyway: do you know where the name “Panem” comes from? The author herself said she chose it from the Latin phrase “Panem et Circenses.” (“Bread and Circuses,” as in the way the government of the Roman Empire kept the populace distracted from the intractable problems that caused their downfall.) Just a fun bit of trivia.
BF: I had heard that; but I also like the subconcious echoes of “Pan American” – not the old airline, but rather, something universal (the Greek “pan” for all-inclusive) and suffocating, on the North American continent that no one can escape from.
Has anyone blamed Bush for stealing or rigging this thing yet?