By JOE RONCA
Staff Writer
The term “brexit” is largely unknown to most Americans, yet in Great Britain, and across the European continent at large, the term has been at the center of political debate in recent weeks. Brexit itself is a term that is composed of the combination of the words “British” and “exit,” and is used as a shorthand for the potential withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union.
The possibility of Brexit occurring has been debated for years in British politics, but recently it has come to the forefront of debate. On June 23 of this year, voters across the United Kingdom will vote in a referendum asking whether or not Britain should stay in the EU. The result of that vote could have huge effects for Great Britain, the European Union and the world at large.
The debate around Brexit in the United Kingdom is a complex one that deals with issues as diverse as the economy, immigration, security, and national sovereignty. Also, Euroscepticism, the opposition to either the existence of the EU, membership in the EU, or increased European integration, has a long history in the United Kingdom.
In 1973 the UK joined the European Economic Community, a group widely known as the Common Market and the legal predecessor of the EU. The next year, the Labour Party under Harold Wilson campaigned with the promise of holding a referendum on continued British membership in the Common Market.
Labour won that election and in 1975 an impressive 67 percent of British voters elected to stay in the Common Market. Support for leaving the European project remained high, though, so in 1983 the Labour Party campaigned on the promise of withdrawing Britain from the Common Market.
Labour was defeated in a landslide in that year by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives and so the party dropped the issue from its platform. In 1992 the Maastricht Treaty was signed, transforming the Common Area into the European Union. Opposition within Britain rose in the early years of the EU with the formation of the UK Independence Party, led by the colorful Nigel Farage.
The UKIP has remained mostly a fringe party, with only one Member of Parliament currently, but in the 2014 elections to the European Parliament, the party received the most votes of any party and won 24 of the UK’s 63 seats. This marked the first time since 1910 that a party other than Labour or the Conservatives had won a nationwide election in the United Kingdom.
Also, while only winning one seat in the 2015 elections to Parliament, the UKIP won the third largest share of the vote overall behind Labour and the Conservatives, beating both the Liberal Democrats, who had been part of the government in a coalition with the Conservatives, and the Scottish National Party, which has dominated Scottish elections in recent years. In short, Euroscepticism has been on the rise in the UK.
Currently, most established politicians and political parties in the UK support staying in the European Union. The Labour Party officially supports staying, as do the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National Party, the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru, the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, and the Green Party. Various British corporations have advocated remaining in the EU, with bankers and the financial industry being the most vocal.
Prime Minister David Cameron is personally in favor of staying in the European Union, but the Conservative Party itself is officially neutral in the referendum. Several prominent Conservative Party members have endorsed leaving including Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice Michael Gove, Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council Chris Grayling, Mayor of London Boris Johnson, leader of the Welsh Conservative Party Andrew R.T. Davies, former Leader Michael Howard, former Defense Secretary Liam Fox, Nigel Lawson, former Northern Ireland First Minister David Trimble, former party chairman Norman Tebbit, and former Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont.
The most vocal Conservative in favor of leaving is London Mayor Boris Johnson, one of the nation’s most prominent politicians and someone who wouldn’t make a bad Donald Trump impersonator. Look him up if you don’t believe me.
The other political parties supporting leaving the EU are UKIP, the British National Party, and the Democratic Unionist Party, a significant political force in Northern Ireland. Public opinion polling places support for leaving the EU at about 40 percent, with 10 percent of voters undecided. It is sure to be a close election.
One strange twist is the involvement of foreign politicians in the debate over Brexit. Leaders from across the globe have been weighing in on the debate, and overwhelmingly support those wishing to remain in the EU. New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Francois Hollande have all leant their support to Britain staying in the EU.
This week, even President Obama stated his view that Britain should stay in the European Union, remarking that the UK would be less able to negotiate with the United States on trade deals. This is a ludicrous intervention in the affairs of a foreign nation. The President of the United States should not be intervening in the day-to-day political affairs of a democracy, especially one that is supposed to be our staunchest ally.
I’m a firm believer in the principle that the United States government should not intervene in the affairs of foreign nation except when actually needed to protect our national strategic interests or in order to prevent genocide or human rights abuses of that nature. We should never as a nation intervene in the electoral politics of another democracy, especially when comes to an issue that is so heated.
We would never allow a foreign leader to so openly attempt to influence the result of an election in this country, so why should we allow ourselves to do so? President Obama crossed the line from political standard operating procedure to irresponsible condescension when he advised the British to stay in a union that so many people obviously dislike.
Personally, I believe that the voters in Great Britain should choose to leave the European Union and forge their own path as a nation. Sure, there will be consequences of a successful Brexit. If Scotland votes to stay while England votes to leave, the SNP have stated their intent to hold another referendum on Scottish independence and Welsh nationalists have alluded to doing the same.
A dismembered UK might not be the worst thing to ever happen, though, as it may resolve long-standing constitutional issues inherent in British government, while keeping the newly created states in a form of looser federation. Of course, it’s believed that the economy will falter a little with a successful Brexit, but once the political situation stabilizes the financial markets should as well.
The markets would drop only due to uncertainty, which would evaporate once the details of a Brexit are fully hashed out. The potential benefits of a Brexit will greatly outweigh any potential harm done to Britain. The economy is actually expected to expand over the long run without burdensome EU regulations.
Also, it is likely that, free from EU limits on where they can fish, British fishermen will experience a boom in profits. The UK would also be able to enforce border controls of their own choosing, instead of having to follow EU agreements on freedom of movement.
The greatest reason for leaving the EU is not pragmatic, but philosophical. Under the EU, British sovereignty is limited as decisions are made on a continent-wide basis. The European Union is constituted in a manner that allows the large continental nations, especially Germany, France, and Italy, to control much of the policy carried out by the EU.
This is made possible by their large share of seats in both the European Parliament and the European Council, which combined are roughly equivalent to Congress in the United States. The Germans in particular exercise a massive influence on Europe-wide policymaking.
Now, I ask, how are policymakers in Berlin, acting through their proxies in Brussels, supposed to make decisions as to which laws would work best in Britain? They cannot. Policy crafted in Berlin and Brussels is enforced in Britain, oftentimes overriding British laws and creating outcomes that are not ideal for the British people.
This is a gross erosion of national sovereignty that has been surprisingly acquiesced to by governments across the continent in the name of the great Pan-European ideal. Instead of gaining stability and prosperity, the smaller nations of Europe, and Britain and Ireland which are both largely excluded from Union-wide governance, have simply abdicated their sovereignty and become satellites controlled by Berlin.
The best example of this is the Greek debt crisis of last summer. In a referendum, the Greek people overwhelmingly rejected a plan crafted in Brussels that would have cut public services in an effort to pay off the nation’s mostly German creditors. Less than a week later, the Greek Government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipiras approved a strikingly similar package of debt relief that again bore the fingerprints of Merkel and her cronies in Berlin and Brussels.
Democracy was done a disservice and the Greek people were betrayed, all in the name of furthering the interests of the German government. The Western world took a step backwards that hot summer day, as the idea that the will of the people should always prevail was openly trampled in the name of German foreign policy disguised as a measured response to protect the grand European goal.
This is the fundamental flaw with centralized control of governmental power. It almost always results in the tyranny of the interests of the few over the many. In the former Soviet Union the interests of Russia were placed above those of the outlying republics, in the U.S. states like California and Texas have outsized influence, and in the European Union the Germans rule.
The problem with this is self-evident: laws that may work well in Munich and Milan may not be smart policy in Manchester. The people who should be making decisions that affect Britain are people who live in Britain, not those who live in Germany. Apparently this is not so intuitive, but it is the only democratic way of doing things.
The British people, if they care about democracy, or their sovereignty, or even just having control of their own affairs as a nation,will vote to leave the EU. It is the only sensible choice available if they wish to choose their own destiny.
