When I opened this space for commentary, I had no idea a quite extraordinary event would occur in the United Kingdom, but I think last week many of us felt the financial world shutter. By a vote of 52% to 48% citizens of the U.K. voted to leave their 42 year old membership in the European Union. A prime minister who bet his leadership and party on a Remain vote is now resigned, his legacy in tatters. The Labour leader may go, and the pound has slipped to a three decade low. International banks are discussing moving to Berlin. New investment in the U.K. is probably on hold, and leaders in Scotland and Northern Ireland are mumbling about removing themselves from the United Kingdom.
This seems to be a case study in unexpected consequences for many Britishers. Where all will end, one cannot tell, but there is no doubt global markets are shaking. Will the already world economy slip into a collective recession and may the E.U. further disintegrate? Have the western nations entered an age of nationalism where walls replace gates? Will European states cease to cooperate and again compete, and lose the feel of collective security?
In this blog, two competing views. We have the previous articles by David Lott, a founder of the United Kingdom Independence Party and a leader of the Leave position, and Terry Field, reluctantly but fiercely defending the Remain position. Other comments emailed this site will be published in the next blog. - GNH
First David and his immediate thoughts Friday morning, 24 July 2016, with the results counted.
We did it. We won the referendum. For me victory was very sweet. I first started campaigning for this day over 22 years ago. For many years it took my time and treasure for what seemed little return. But little by little we made progress and at last we have won the battle of the ordinary people versus the Establishment, politicised bureaucracy and mega business with it's hordes of lobbyists in Brussels.
I think our story has much to teach younger cynical people. Pure determination, integrity, passion and belief glued together by immutable persistence have overcome a corrupt, tired and deceitful ruling class. What a grand story that anything can be achieved if you just try hard enough.
Over the next couple of weeks the massive impact of this decision will emerge. The short term financial reaction is interesting. Exit polls were forbidden but the great financial institutions conducted their own in secret and from their results the made a killing. The polls closed at 10 pm but at 9.50 pm the price of gold started a dramatic rise, sterling fell and bank shares took a huge hit! All this before the first result came in from one small constituency at midnight. I am sure many in the mega banks are wallowing in profit.
Equilibrium will be restored quite quickly in the markets as much of the immediate instability was down to the big boys enjoying manipulating them.
The other immediate fear is of a UK break up as Scotland and Northern Ireland voted against the trend and in favour of remaining in the EU. In Scotland, their political leader Ms Sturgeon talked of responsibility in the immediate aftermath of the vote and then stirred the pot by announcing there would be a second Scottish Independence referendum in order to stay in the EU with rule from Brussels. Some Independence!
However she is trapped within the EU because she cannot win a referendum. Why, because in the 2014 referendum in Scotland the oil price had not collapsed and the sums just about added up for economic survival and they thought the relationship with the Westminster government would underpin a Scottish pound pegged to the Pound sterling.
The EU Commission in Brussels made it clear they would have to reapply for membership and that would mean joining the Euro.The Scots will never vote for the Euro whilst it remains in crisis. Spain will veto their membership in any case as their fear breakup with Catalonia desperate for independence. So Scotland cannot leave for many reasons. In any case there may not even be a European Union to join!
Northern Ireland is different as Sein Fein has always worked towards the unification of Ireland and their former terrorist leadership, sees and is seizing, an opportunity to achieve this. The main fear of the Northern Irish is the question of open borders with the South and that this will be lost when the UK leaves the EU which could mean the creation of border controls. It would also mean adopting the Euro which again is unpopular.
The Leave campaign made it clear that there could easily be a bilateral arrangement to keep the border open which would be especially easy if we were to have the same access to the EU market as does Mexico. In other words a free trade agreement.
So I do think the integrity of the UK is not in question and all we have here is a bit of opportunism. Before the next election, probably in 2020 we shall be free to do our own thing just as any other normal country.
We now have our own Independence Day - June 23rd that we shall celebrate for as long as we can foresee. How truly splendid. - David Lott
And now a very contrary opinion from Terry -
I am not just sad.
This is a catastrophe; a catastrophe for what was left of permanently declining Britain, a catastrophe for other than the naturally fascistic mob, a catastrophe for the hopes of the sensitive and the intelligent, the high-minded and the educated since the British so foolishly decided not to join the coal and steel agreement in the 1950, and sneered in their declining imperial faux-arrogance at the ideals embodied in the Club of Rome.
It is a disaster for the future relevance, scale, significance and moral worth of Britain.
Scotland will go - they overwhelmingly wanted a European future. Northern Ireland will probably do the same, and unify with Eire.
The young in England will live their lives imprisoned there.
75% of the young voted to remain.
Their idiot parents voted with their prejudices and absurd dreams of a reconstruction of their imagined past.
This is in part a reaction of the mob to the present downturn, of New Labour's social experiment with totally unconstrained immigration, of the decamping of the hordes who had voted Labour into the arms of the National Socialists-light.
There are vast numbers who wish to move to Britain. The French concession in Calais of having British customs on French soil will very probably end, and the Europeans will scour the continent for anyone who may wish to be a migrant going to England.
A huge number could end up in Kent. Maybe many hundreds of thousands.
As for cultural cooperation, mutuality of a shared future, forget it. We have rejected them. This is personal, nasty, direct.
Bitterness will abound. State recriminations in Europe will be severe to try to stem the tide of others such as the Dutch and the Danes and the Swedes to have their own referenda.
Personally, it may become very difficult indeed. I wish to remain here, and the idea of being corralled back to the Island I spent so many years trying to escape from is distinctly uncomfortable. (Terry and his wife Fina have a farm house in Normandy, France.)
I anticipate considerable difficulties; the mutual healthcare arrangements will probably not survive. pensions will cease to be inflation indexed and the value of both investments, and their yields in Britain will be badly affected. Our legal right to remain may not survive this.
There is over one million pensioner Britains living in the EU. The UE may well wish to rid itself of their burdensome presence.
Thank God I bought the US condo, a dollar denominated asset. Bought at pre-collapse rates.
Mr Cameron has announced his resignation. He will be replaced by a squalid self-seeking petty nationalist. This nightmare is only just beginning.
Now Britain will, finally, decline to the point it occupied before the accession of Henry VIII.
An insignificant, divided, poor, isolated unenviable place, with a population at war with itself, bitter, unstable, and for very many indeed, devoid of hope.
This is a good day for the shire Tory, the man brought up on arrogant privilege; a good day for the unintelligent, industrially educated, unproductive and venal, who think that kicking out the European work-competitor will restore their unjustified comfort.
In the mid 18th century, our first prime Minister said, in reference to another stupid mob action, ''They are ringing their bells, in six months they will be wringing their hands''. I pinch myself in disbelief.
To offer up the future direction of a once-great state to the deliberations of the stupid, the ignorant, the ill-educated, the blinkered local, the venal, the lovers-of-the-populist-leader, in replacement of the wisdom of a developed representative democracy.
The campaigning has been textbook fascist thuggery. Political assassination from the whipped-up hate and rage. If I can I will change my nationality and wish I had done so a very long time ago. A day I did not consider to be probable, despite the howling mob. - Terry Field
I think I shall leave it right here for now. A number of you have sent comments which I shall post, probably tomorrow, in a new blog. The opposite opinions of the two very decent and knowledgeable men - David and Terry - capsulize two very different views of European civilization. History, as always, will tell us who has it right. But in the meantime...your learned thoughts welcome. - GNH
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