Treatment of those who voted to leave the EU sounds like the way that Cambridge, MA residents and politicians act toward critics and those who disagree with their extremist policies.
The EU is run by appointed bureaucrats who do not have to face the public or be elected. In my view, the people who voted to leave the EU are sick of rule by fiat. If members of Parliament don't get this, let's hope the Brits kick them out, too.
[From article]
For a long time, Britons who wanted their country to leave the European Union were regarded almost as mentally ill by those who wanted it to stay. The leavers didn’t have an opinion; they had a pathology. Since one doesn’t argue with pathology, it wasn’t necessary for the remainers to answer the leavers with more than sneers and derision.
Even after the vote, the attitude persists. Those who voted to leave are described as, ipso facto, small-minded, xenophobic, and fearful of the future. Those who voted to stay are described as, ipso facto, open-minded, cosmopolitan, and forward-looking. The BBC itself suggested as much on its website. In short, the desire to leave was a return to the insularity that resulted in the famous—though apocryphal—newspaper headline: fog in the channel: continent cut off.
If insularity is indeed on the rise, it is affecting increasing numbers of Europeans. According to the latest polls, nearly a half of the Italians and Dutch want their countries to leave. Discontent with the Union is also widespread in other countries. The French have a poorer opinion of the European Union than do the British, but because the French believe it to be reformable, fewer want to leave. Before the vote, the danger of Brexit to the integrity of the European Union was described in the French media in pathological terms, as a possible “contagion,” rather than merely an example to be followed
[. . .]
The vote might also lead to a unification of Ireland, for the Northern Irish also voted to remain in Europe. Sinn Fein has already called for a referendum on unification. Such unification would be a great blessing for England, but not necessarily for Ireland.
One possible reason for the success of the Brexit campaign was President Obama’s ill-conceived intervention, when he threatened that if Britain voted to leave the Union, it would have to go to the “back of the queue” as far as any trade agreements are concerned. This sounded like bullying, and was not well-received by much of the British population, which had already been subjected to quite a lot of such bullying from others. If I were an American, I shouldn’t have been pleased with it either, for Obama spoke not as a president with a few months left in office, but as a president-for-life, or at least one with the right to decide his successor’s policy.
[. . .]
Among the many subjects not properly discussed during the campaign was whether large and fundamental political changes should be made based on 50 percent-plus-one of the votes cast in a single plebiscite. The House of Commons is not constitutionally bound by the results, and most members of Parliament support remaining in the European Union. They could argue, not without plausibility, that a vote representing no more than three-eighths of the total electorate isn’t quite the groundswell of opinion that should be required for fundamental change. If they acted on this argument, however, violence might erupt.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/brexits-complicated-aftermath-14590.html
Brexit’s Complicated Aftermath
What comes next? Nobody really knows.
Theodore Dalrymple
June 24, 2016
No comments:
Post a Comment