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What Happens Brex’t?
Global financial panic, Sterling collapsing, and Scotland — possibly Northern Ireland, too — apt to break away. Quite a day’s work.
A striking aspect of the results is the extent to which the vote represents a victory of the old over the young. “Young voters wanted Brexit the least,” as the Mirror put it, “and will have to live with it the longest.”
The final YouGov poll before the referendum showed 72% of 18 to 24-year-olds backed a Remain vote – with just 19% backing Brexit.
Brexiters were led to victory in the referendum overnight by triumphing in Tory shires and Old Labour heartlands in Wales and the north of England.
But the Kingdom is no longer United after London, Scotland and Northern Ireland all backed Remain.
The more damaging legacy, however, could be the staggering difference in how people of different ages [voted].
The final YouGov poll before the referendum showed 72% of 18 to 24-year-olds backed a Remain vote – with just 19% backing Brexit.
Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said: “Young people voted to remain by a considerable margin, but were outvoted. They were voting for their future, yet it has been taken from them.”
I hope that the optimists are proven right and that this is the first day of a bright new future for Britain and Europe. But unless it is — and unless the gain that justifies the pain comes sooner, rather than later — Britain (or what’s left of it) will experience an unprecedented generational war. Or at least, I’m racking my mind, and I can’t think of a precedent, can you?
Adam Newman@NewmanDipFa I’m so angry. A generation given everything: Free education, golden pensions, social mobility have voted to strip my generation’s future.
The pain will certainly be acute in the immediate term.
Now we’ll watch Europe’s biggest divorce case since Henry VIII. I posted this a few months ago, but it’s worth dusting off and watching again. This is from Open Europe’s simulation post-Brexit negotiations. Former Chancellor Norman Lamont is playing the role of the UK:
As someone who wishes Britain and Europe well, I hope very much that Britain withdraws in an orderly way and recovers as quickly as possible, leaving behind a Europe that’s better for the experience. I hope the rest of the EU learns and benefits from crisis and failure. And if it neither learns nor survives, I hope Europe’s reversion to a gaggle of fractious, quarreling states goes better than history would indicate.
Whatever happens, I’ll report. If you make a contribution this week, it will be earmarked for a chapter of Brave New World about Brexit and its consequences. Please contribute! This story is getting more and more interesting by the day — but I’m still well away from the goal.
This is unalloyed good news.
It will force all of Europe, including Britain, to take responsibility for failed policies, for defense, for the preservation of borders. It will allow and promote competition in deregulation of labor and financial and all other markets.
Most importantly, Brexit is a vote for civilizational confidence, for the belief that there is something valuable about being distinct. Proud civilizations endure.
England’s legacy is the greatest of the modern age: it has inspired or founded every non-corrupt, hardworking, freedom-loving country in the world. It is wonderful to see the Mother Ship have a chance at rejuvenating itself.
And I LOVE anonymous’s #Texit.
It will quite soon be the English people. I don’t see how Britain can hold together after this. Quite something: If you’d asked me which country was more apt to fracture, Great Britain or Iraq, I would have wagered on Iraq.
Self evident.
More seriously – two hundred years is good but not thaaaaaat long, and every country believes it has something special that sets it apart from everybody else.
Which I guess is what’s behind the vote for the Brexit.
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!
I, too, must join in the chorus who find Claire’s affection for the EU both baffling and disappointing. Even though we went through our own separation two centuries ago England is still our mother country. We speak her language (more or less) and carry her DNA within us. There is no Constitution without Magna Carta, no rule of law. English common law and so much of her greatness flows through our veins and gives us oxygen.
The fear that grips the monied and politically connected – where does this originate? Is it founded in the idea that a nation and a people that once built an Empire are unable to compete upon the world stage? Or does it lie in the fear that this is the moment when the audience will discover the magician’s secret, the moment the mirror cracked and reveals the truth? It’s alright if the little PIIGS suffer under the unsustainable weight of their postwar socialism as long as the illusion can be kept going elsewhere?
I agree with Old Bathos on the new nature of the left. Big money, big business, big information, big government have formed a coalition that seeks supersized governments to minimize risk and squash competition. They hate democracy but love the ability to reach into the public purse to cover their losses.
Let us reach back through the ages and remember the words of the Great Man himself, the greatest Briton of all the ages – “Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days – the greatest our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.”
They’re beside themselves with delight.
The sanctions regime isn’t apt to stand up long, I don’t think. Some hardcore US diplomatic effort needs to go into trying to make sure they stay in place. I wonder if we’re too diplomatically overstretched to put this at the top of the list.
Well that’s how and why the Empire ended.
I thought the same as you when I read Claire’s comments on the ‘collapse of Western Civilization’ resulting from Brexit. Perhaps Claire is not nearly as ‘conservative’ as many here at Ricochet.
I with you if we cannot put Washington into retrograde mode.
I too am animated by affection and concern for Britain. But the reality is that the British have been sold a bill of goods. The likely outcome for them is years of political discord, recession, poverty, and the breakup of Britain into its component parts. And the young will no longer even be able to escape from this by leaving for the rest of Europe.
I’m neither monied nor politically connected. But I don’t believe that Britain will be stronger, more secure, or more prosperous on its own — or at least, I see no good reason to believe that.
It’s just not. It’s a small country. It can punch beyond its weight, but it can’t compete with the US, India, China, the rest of the EU.
This isn’t a new version of “the left.” This is what the left has always said.
Fox was a leftist puke.
Forgetting, for a moment, the many reasons I have for thinking this result is the best thing for the UK, can we all just stand back and appreciate the refreshing notion of them seceding from something rather than the other way around?
a) Adopting a truly federal constitution; with equal parliaments for all four British nations; with Westminster limited to foreign affairs, criminal law, defense, the central bank, and overseas territories; and with an independent, regionally-balanced supreme court to adjudicate disputes between the four nations; would go a long way towards filling the need that Scotland has for the EU.
b) Scotland can secede from the union without abandoning the British crown. She need not become a republic.
Maybe Daniel Hannan speaking for Brexit at the Oxford Union can cheer Claire up:
https://youtu.be/rJcuKfcxo9w
Claire, I fail to see how this leads to a recession. The EU cannot afford to severely limit trade with the UK. The rest of the EU ran a trade surplus with them. They are not going to throw that away. The next two years will see favorable trade deals negotiated. Shunning the UK will only further the eventual demise of the EU. Britain never made the mistake of adopting the Euro and will no longer be responsible for cleaning up the mess the PIIGS have made.
Please tell that to Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland and Taiwan.
I’m pretty sure the answer’s yes, though the best studies might be proprietary rather than published.
Actually, it is. The US Constitution is far older than any other Western nation’s constitution. 200 years is a Very Big Deal.
Not so. Most countries exist for their citizens, and they celebrate that which makes them interesting or different – food, or festivals or somesuch.
The United States is the only country founded and built on ideas, not on a government for a given people.
Unless I’m mistaking the term, wasn’t our government founded explicitly as a propositional nation?
Oh? You don’t hold citizenship in an EU state. Have the French shown interest in deporting you? I had not read that all persons with a non-EU passport would be shunned.
That’s because perhaps you have purchased your own bill of goods? Ever closer political union. The superstate with a Parliament that can not even draft legislation? The power lies in the European Commission, the most undemocratic and unaccountable power in the Western world.
Stability without freedom or a political voice. The life of the happy serf.
I can’t legally work here. And I worry quite a bit about being deported if the political situation grows more unstable, yes.
Iraq is having a civil war. I’m sure Iraqi Kurdistan and the Sunni areas would love to have a secession vote.
The problem with Scottish secession is they need other people’s money for their socialism. The prospect of North Sea oil was really attractive a few years ago, but not as much now. Who will fund Scottish socialism without England?
Yes, no doubt most countries think they are the best, but one of them is right.
Ah, yes. The state that thinks if people are working, it must be a bad thing. So we should make sure that people don’t.
England is so fortunate to have escaped.
I was just in Singapore for the first time, and I was floored by the vitality and proud civic spirit there. I’m leery of the big brother-esque elements of the government there, but isn’t it telling that the overweening Right produces Singapore while the extreme Left has Cuba/Venezuela/North Korea to show for its efforts.
While it can be argued, with a spatter of justification, that this is a matter of nostalgia, there’s a more important factor at work here: the old remember what it was like to be sovereign and independent. The young are too used to being led by their Betters.
Eric Hines
Most people who ‘worry’ about being deported take actions to remedy that.
This is argument for Parliament to decrease Scottish power in England. Why do Scottish MP’s get to rule England, but English ones don’t get to rule Scotland again?
I think the English should be looking to kick the Scotts out, and let their socialist utopia fail.
How do you live exactly, if you cannot work? I mean, you make enough from your writing to buy a house and food and such?
From what I saw, the Leave/Remain split was not between parties, but intra-party. Labor and Conservatives both were split over the question. UKIP and SNP obviously were each pulling as parties in opposite directions. But the two main parties – Labour and Conservative — could be equally found on either side. (Is there a Liberal Party any more?)
It was really more a ruling class/regular folks split. Kind of like what is happening here in the US. The Democrats and Republicans are equally split. That is because the elites/ruling classes/(pick your description) who control the high ground of the media and academy are able to punch far above their weight, and ignore the concerns of regular people.
This is not a long term tenable situation. In the past the elites have been willing to eat their humble crow and recognize their errors. Evolving change to address the issues. This time, there is a resistance like we’ve never seen before. That is bad for everyone.