One would be hard pressed to overstate the seismic political import of what happened in the UK last night when the supporters of “Leave” edged “Remain” by 51.9% to 48.1% (17,410,742 to 16,141,241,) handing “Brexit” supporters a monumental victory of shockingly historic proportions.
On the vast political stage, the vote shakes the EU to its fiscally bankrupt, crony bankster core; on the local level, the referendum will have ramifications for the livelihoods of many Brits across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
To get a clear and concise picture of what this means worldwide, let’s offer a sizeable bit of background information on the EU, its origins, its major problems, what happened last night, and what the process looks like for UK withdrawal.
Here are the basics:
- The concept for the EU was started in 1945 as the brainchild of a handful of people, principally Jeanne Monnet, a well-connected French businessman and string-puller who believed that a large European super-state could prevent sub-states such as Germany from rekindling a world war. Essential to his concept was deception of the populace – no joke.
- According to Monnet: “Europe’s nations should be guided towards the super-state without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation.”
- Great Britain officially joined the EU in 1973.
- Early supporters of a European Union believed it would act as a free trade zone, lowering tariffs and allowing easier movement of labor from nation to nation. Within two decades, it became clear that the EU was seething with bureaucrats, and was a revolving door for crony political mercantilists from banks like Goldman Sachs who filled the EU books with reams of regulations and got the European Central Bank to hand out money to member nations in order to protect the “interests” of banks like… Goldman Sachs.
- “Member nations” such as Greece, Spain, Cyprus, Portugal and Ireland ran up massive debts in the past ten years, and the ECB not only bailed them out, but also installed new leaders in some, leaders who were hand-picked from -- you guessed it -- Goldman Sachs.
- These bailouts and debt relief boondoggles forced the ECB to print massive amounts of debt itself, lowering the future value of the Euro, and inspiring many people in nations that are net taxpayers to the EU to reconsider their union.
- Britain is one of the top EU tax paying nations in the union. Last year, the British people paid 35 million Pounds per day in taxes to the EU.
- EU regulations have become so numerous and onerous that many small business owners and farmers have had enough. EU leadership recently tried to implement “Codex Alimentarius” or “The Food Code”, a goal of centralizers since the 1960s that would have dictated to all citizens in every EU nation what kinds of seeds they could plant in their own gardens.
- Since the flood of refugees from Libya and Syria began in 2012, many residents have opposed the broad immigration policies of the EU and its political supporters in Britain. This has led to the sudden rise of “UKIP,” the UK Independence Party, led by politician Nigel Farange and backed by former London Mayor Boris Johnson, whom many see as in a strong position to become the next Prime Minister of Britain.
- On the subject of prime ministers, conservative PM David Cameron did what was expected upon hearing the news of Brexit. He offered his resignation this morning, promising to stay on until the path could be cleared for the next PM.
- The vote last night is just a referendum. Parliament must vote to leave the EU. This is expected to happen. The UK parliament must notify Brussels that it is leaving, which Labour Leader Jeremy Corbin says should happen right away. But Cameron, still the de facto leader of the Conservatives, wants a more deliberative process. Once this process begins, it will be up to the British government to negotiate trade arrangements with the other 27 EU national governments.
- According to the Independent, many experts say this exit process could take two years, since politicians in other EU nations want to discourage any more departures. While this happens, the UK will continue to be subject to EU mandates and “laws."
Now that those basics are set out, let’s analyze what this “means," if we can be so bold.
First, Britain's disconnect from the EU has come just in time. The EU is economic poison, and attaching a political body to it is like accepting a transfusion from someone with sepsis. The EU is also economically bankrupt, and the Brits will save a lot of tax money per day by leaving it. No longer will the taxpayers in Britain be forced to pay for the bailouts of Goldman Sachs and its pals in places like Greece.
But while this is clearly a populist victory, the financial houses in London have been, and will continue to try to be, all in with the big investment and banking firms in Europe. The interests of these crony corporations and the interests of the British workers will be at odds, because most of these crony corporations have deep investments in the failing EU, and they will do everything they can to keep the British workers on the tab for their corporate pals.
Immigration is going to be a huge issue in the UK. Many people who supported Brexit not only find the influx of refugees to be angering and unmanageable, they oppose immigration on economic grounds, believing immigrants steal the jobs of natives. This is incorrect. Like imported goods, immigrants allow people to get what they want for lower costs, allowing them to have more money left over, with which they will fund new ventures and products. Immigrants help lower the costs of production and better livelihoods. But the nativist instinct is strong, and this issue will be enormous.
The vast majority of the UK population has also become accustomed to the national collectivist mentality. For example, despite the fact that the National Health System is a completely bankrupt failure that actually engages in euthanasia to lower costs, many Brits still support it. They have a normalcy bias towards collectivism and regulation of “big business” that must be overcome by any political group hoping to offer the people in Britain an opportunity to see new international investment come to the nation.
The “way forward," as the tortuous political cliché goes, is unclear. In Parliament, it could take months to work out the exit. Populist factions will be accused by the political “elite” and hardcore intellectual left of being racist. But this is a chance, a small, glimmering chance, for the UK citizens to disconnect from a sinking ship and set off into waters unknown.
They could sink, but if they do not cut the ties now, they surely will drown with the EU behemoth.