Brexit Aftermath Thoughts

Now that the world has had a few days to come to grips with Brexit and how to react to it, figured it was time to add my thoughts to the fray.

For one, this is a disaster that both the Leave campaign leaders and the people who voted for it arguably didn't want to happen. There have been multiple stories and articles where Leave voters repeatedly say they didn't think they were going to win and they just wanted to register a protest vote against the European Union. Apparently none of them stopped to think that if a majority of the country voted to leave the EU in protest, than that would mean that they would be leaving the fucking EU.  

This is what happens when you have a population that largely disregards the power of their vote and just expects everyone else to solve the problem with theirs. The parallels between voting for Clinton over Trump were swift and immediate, and not entirely wrong. If the Brexit vote proves anything, you can't trust the logic and rationality of your fellow citizens to save you from calamity when you casually toss your vote to whatever side makes you feel better in that moment alone.

But, the deed is done, and we're now looking down the barrel of the dissolution of the United Kingdom. Scotland will undoubtedly be leaving, given that the only reason their previous independence vote failed is England threatened to block an independent Scotland's EU membership. With that leverage tossed by the wayside, and given Scotland overwhelmingly voted to remain, it's only a matter of time before another independence referendum is called and a country that's existed for over 300 years will suddenly be no more.  

Adding to this rosy picture is the reemergence of the Irish Question, an outcome so stupidly reckless it questions how well or how far anyone involved in the Leave campaign bothered to think this through. The EU helped keep the peace between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland and made any dispute between the two unthinkable. Northern Ireland understood this wasn't something to be casually tossed aside, and voted to remain in the highest number second only to... Scotland. 

The fact that the UK will have to renegotiate one of the most contentious relationships in its history will probably not go all that well, considering that the Leave campaign seems to have been blindsided by this development and is wholly unprepared to answer it. Factor in the rampant nativism the Leave campaign has brought out and it's not too hard to imagine the general feeling on the British Isle is that the Irish are a problem for the Irish to solve and in a few years we'll also have a unified Ireland.

Seeing all that happen, I'm wondering what it's like to be David Cameron right now and how it feels to have single-handedly started the process that will most likely be the end of the country you were elected to govern. I'm sure we'll find out later when he publishes his tell-all memoir about how he isn't a stupid twat for calling this referendum in the first place and how he really thought it wouldn't go this way, okay? Really, my only hope for that book is that it is large and hefty enough to knock him unconscious when people pelt him with it whenever he walks down the fucking street.

In other happy news, the economy is crashing. The pound has dropped to a 31-year low, Morgan Stanley is moving thousands of jobs away from London since the City of London can't be the financial hub of the EU anymore, and the stock market is face planting as well. All of this was completely predictable, and plenty did predict it, but what the hell do they know? (A bit, as it turns out.) 

Normally, a plunging currency would be an opportunity for a country's manufacturing and export business to boom since all their goods will be dirt-fucking-cheap now. But Britain isn't really in a position to capitalize on that since most of its manufacturing and trade sectors were completely decimated by Margaret Thatcher back in the 80's. And Morgan Stanley won't be the last financial firm to jump ship to other shores, because it's apparently a little difficult to facilitate trades and other business deals from around the world and the EU when you stop going to the party. Since those financial services were also the backbone of your economy, all the jobs that those services needed for support won't be there any more either. Whoops. It's almost as if the only weight the U.K. had to throw around in the EU came from being in the EU. Weird.

Of course, the Tories will save Britain with some brilliant economic plan, right? Right? Well, most likely no, not at all. See, a primary reason for Britain's economic woes is their continued pursuit of austerity plans and budget cuts. Less government spending in a time of low private spending only makes the economy worse, and there's likely going to be even more austerity as the U.K. finds itself unable to match things like the 60 million pounds Cornwall was getting every year from the EU with its current tax base.  Add to that the shocks that will come when Scotland leaves and a probable Irish exit too, and it looks like all the people who voted to leave because of the EU's supposed burden on their economy will pray for the day where they can claw their way back to where they are now.

Or, probably, they won't. Since the majority of the Leave vote was made by people over 65, they'll have the benefit of dying before things turn really nasty for everyone. It's mostly just their children and grandchildren who will have to live with their terrible, stupid decision for decades and decades to come.

All that good stuff is just what's waiting for Britain, but there's plenty of misery to go around, so let's shift focus to what happens on the continent in the wake of this blunder.  For one, the far-right and anti-EU parties are going to be even more emboldened and confident in their moves going forward. The first crack in the EU's structure has appeared and you can guarantee they're going to exploit that for all its worth. On top of that, they just have to let the EU be the EU. 

The EU has a really horrendous habit of being insanely vindictive and punitive to anything that questions the governing bodies competence or authority.  Look at Greece, which is going to stay in an economic depression for the foreseeable future by the EU's explicit design, for all the proof of that.  So now that the U.K. has voted to leave all together, you can expect the EU to punish it and make withdrawal from the Union as painful an option as possible that no one else will ever think to attempt it.

The problem with this line of thinking, though, is that it has no concern for what the consequences will be for real, living people.  Immigration, economic and environmental regulations, wages, healthcare and medicine trades, all of these things affect real people and make real decisions for how they live and what the quality of that life will be. But, the EU's governing bodies have traditionally not given two-shits about any of that since they have done nothing to stop the 25% unemployment and 50% youth unemployment rates that Greece and Spain have had for years now.  

Any governing body that not only allows those problems to continue but visibly sneers at the thought that its responsible for solving will only be seen as illegitimate and deservedly so. And since the EU leadership has already signaled that they plan to go 100% total dick in the Article 50 negotiations, all any anti-EU party will have to do is point and say "See, see, they don't care about the people, only their own power. Let's be brave like our British friends and cast these monsters out!"

On some level, I understand Brexit, and the motives of the protest voters who brought it about.  The EU is supposed to function as a body that brings peace and prosperity to all of Europe, and it has quite frankly been a complete and utter failure in that regard for a very long time now. Income inequality and unemployment have run rampant in the continent ever since the 2007 recession started, and the EU's insistence on austerity among all its members whether they have the Euro or not has only cemented that recession and economic malaise that is driving the nationalistic parties in practically every member state in the EU.  

The Brexit vote is a wake up call that the EU's governing bodies have lost all legitimacy and people are going to start finding their own way forward without them. The sad thing is, I don't think the EU is an organization that is even capable of hearing that call, because if they were, they would have responded to all the calls before this to stop world from coming to the brink in the first place. But they didn't, and here we are, standing on the edge of the cliff hoping that if there is a plunge, it won't be too long and the bottom won't be so hard that we break to bits when we hit it.