In this Friday, June 24, 2016 file photo, Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party speaks to the media on College Green in London, Friday, June 24, 2016. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)
What an irony it would be if the Leave vote led the U.K. to break up before the E.U. does. But after a remarkable night and morning, that didn’t seem beyond the bounds of possibility. Very little did. —John Cassidy, The New Yorker
British Prime Minister, David Cameron’s totally gratuitous decision to convene a referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union, “Brexit,” is a perfectly amazing example of the effects of frivolous stupidity.
The rest of us are to be helpless witnesses and perhaps direct victims of his decision for years to come.
David Cameron, the British prime minister, has no one to blame but himself. In 2013, besieged by the increasingly assertive anti-European Union wing of his own Conservative Party, Mr. Cameron made a promise intended to keep a short-term peace among the Tories before the 2015 general election: If re-elected, he would hold an in-or-out referendum on continued British membership in the bloc. But what seemed then like a relatively low-risk ploy to deal with a short-term political problem has metastasized into an issue that could badly damage Britain’s economy, influence the country’s direction for generations — and determine Mr. Cameron’s political fate. — The New York Times
If you like reading history, you’ll come across many examples of such frivolity and stupidity doing massive harm to millions of people. George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq is a textbook example. Millions of people have lost their homes or lives and one of the world’s most critical regions is in the process of disintegrating.
Could Cameron’s Brexit have an effect in any way comparable to Bush’s opening the gates of hell in the Middle East?
Knock-on effects are about cascading disasters. The world’s economy is still shaky after the crash of 2008 and, in today’s globalized finance, everything is interconnected. How could Brexit set off a chain of disasters?
An example: U.K.’s capital, London, is today the world’s most important financial center:
London has swapped places with New York to become the world’s leading financial centre, according to a detailed study of 86 cities. — Financial Times
It is axiomatic that money hates uncertainty:
One of the only things we can say for sure after the Brexit decision is that the U.K. and Europe are entering a period of great uncertainty. — The New Yorker
It is easy to imagine the knock-on effects of a major disruption of the intricate and intertwined activities of a place where the good and the great of the entire world go to trade currencies, bonds, shares, privileged information, launder and store their money, you name it.
One likely outcome of negotiations is that banks and financial firms in the City of London will be stripped of their lucrative EU “passports” that allow them to sell services to the rest of the EU. — The Guardian
You can’t imagine the knock-on effects of disrupting such a place? Think Lehman Brothers just for starters. If one major financial institution starts to unravel, the entire shaky recovery of the world economy could collapse.
Leaving Financial Armageddon behind, the ordinary human effects of Britain’s leaving Europe are worth describing: British young people will now find it difficult to reside or work in EU countries or study in their universities and talented young Europeans will find it difficult to do the same in the U.K. This will have significantly negative effects on generations to come.
The future of Britain’s people is the greatest victim of Brexit, but not just the young.
Here is an example of the sort of micro-tragedies that can befall elderly British people here in Spain, where I live. Thousands of British pensioners on retiring have sold their homes in grey and rainy Britain and, with their life savings, bought homes on the coasts of Sunny Spain, where as members (till now) of the EU, they have a right to residency, socialized medical care and even get to vote in municipal elections. Imagine their distress as they watch all of these rights disappear and even the value of their investment sink.
All this disruption because of what the President of the European Parliament Martin Schultz, calls “a whole continent [being] taken hostage because of an internal fight in the Tory party.”
Originally published at David Seaton’s News Links.
Content posted to MyMPN open blogs is the opinion of the author alone, and should not be attributed to MintPress News.
If David Sutton was a Spaniard living in the US he’d be an immigrant, not an expatriate. Just FYI.
Look, this commentary is the mainstream media’s take on the Brexit. He’s talking about dangers to an economy of the 1 percent, where workers get trickle down if anything. The European Union is a project of and by the ruling class. It allows the hiring of workers from anywhere so that workers in high cost of living countries like the UK have to compete with workers in Bulgaria and Romania. The xenophobia aspect of Brexit, just like Trumpism in the US, is a result of something real – declining living standards. Do away with that and much of xenophobia disappears. The EU and the TPIP, just like Hillary Clinton and the TPP, are part of the problem, not the solution.
David Seatin – perhaps you should spend more time figuring out the reasoning of your own (albeit disconnected from) country before you assume for even a second the feelings and motivations of us British. Cameron is an Etonian elitist club-member, it was myself and my compatriots that have taken the DEMOCRATIC (look it up) decision to leave Europe. This is mainly down to things like Italian tomato growers holding up our ability to trade with another nation, befuddled and extruded through the unelected nonsense if Brussels. It is to secure our health service, it s to begin rebuilding our transport, manufacturing, export, schools, hospitals.. It is to retake our God given right to self rule. It is a decision taken anything but light or in a knee-jerk fashion. My country has been systematically stripped of its industry and assets. Leaving the EU will affect our GDP around 1%. The us has recovered its GDP since 2008 and added 10% to its worth. (Good profit margin on genocide), China has doubled its GDP in the same period. Our GDP is at the SAME LEVEL IT WAS 10 YEARS AGO. Austerity has saved us far less (around 38Billion) than even our net cost of EU membership in the same period (around 42Billion). Which would have left change to reduce income ax and stimulate our an economy. I feel for the Ex-pats who seem to have single handedlybinformedcand fuelled your idiotic article, but at 300,000 in number, I will not jeopardise my children’s future and rights to access a global market of 2.2billion in upcoming economies to keep them tanned, or maintain the status-quo with the failed Undemocratic shambles that Europe is and has been for quite some time now.
You shout speak of imagining knock-on effects? Our farmers are paid not to grow crops so we can import. Our young families are using food banks on an unprecedented scale to support their children. Our pensioners are dying in drives because of austerity cuts while German pensioners illegally get over £450 per WEEK in support.
It is you who are removed sir, it is you who are informed by a bitter minority. It is you that writes in a frivolous and stupid manner, knowing nothing of the circumstances, Resolve, determination and capability of our Great nation, and how dare you.
The elites hate that this happened because out of everyone, they will be hardest hit. So, we see yet another fear-mongering op-ed meant to mislead the unthinking public to demand reversal of this decision.