Some thoughts on Brexit

It has been a little over ten years since I made a trip to London. Early May, and very warm.

A few months before that, I had published my book ‘The Case for Commonwealth Free Trade’. In the days and weeks that followed, I had made the acquaintance of a good number of people – many of which I am still proud to count as valued colleagues and friends.

During that trip I met with a great number of individuals involved in government and business who told me that they liked the book and it’s general direction (although some felt that the idea of a Free Trade bloc encompassing the entire Commonwealth was far too ambitious).

Almost to a person, they told me that it was a great idea and that Canada should partner with Australia and New Zealand, and possibly a couple of other member states. They also said that it was a shame that they could never contemplate any involvement in such a venture. They explained that membership in the EU precluded them from ever contemplating signing on, but that they wished us every success.

During a few candid moments in private, I asked whether or not they saw a day when this might change.

Almost all of them, regardless of party stripe, remarked that they didn’t see this as a possibility, although they would certainly back a change.

For years, I had the sense that the sentiments in Britain were akin to what you would see at a grade school dance. Boys lined up along one wall, with girls along the other. A slow dance is playing, but the only thing dancing are the lights reflecting from the mirrored ball.

Possessing perfect knowledge and some degree of mind reading, you determine that there are at least a half-dozen cases where a boy would not be refused a dance by the girl he likes and vice versa. A dispassionate and neutral observer might see the attractions, but they don’t. What they see is the prospect of humiliation and disappointment. Given the notorious degree of self-consciousness among adolescents, those involved sit through ‘Stairway to Heaven’, moving either to the washroom or the refreshment table, not to the opposite wall.

Almost every Briton I spoke to was unhappy with the European Union. Yes, they wanted to trade freely with the continent, but the whole incremental move toward a United States of Europe was an entirely different matter.

The thing is that in the spring of 2006, the call to have a referendum was a decidedly minority view, and the push to quit the EU even more exclusive.

Today, ten years and about five weeks later, not only is there a vote on the issue, it will be decided in less than a week and if polling is to be believed, that departure is a real possibility. In short, a significant portion of the British electorate has summoned the courage to cross the dance floor and seize the moment.

What changed?

A lot of people will have their own views on what represented a pivot moment, and many theories are equally valid. Having said that, I have my own.

In October of 2008, while celebrating our 9^th wedding anniversary, I lay in a hotel suite in a Cuban resort. The television was turned to CNN and the camera was panned to a group of Congressmen and Senators in Washington. At the same time, to the side of the image, one could see the Dow Jones and NASDAQ dropping like a two ton boulder off a sheer cliff face.

Like a great deal of the world, we were shocked and nervous, although the abundance of rum and sun were effective distractions.

The biggest crisis to the global economy dictated a concerted response, and the world through everything it had at the situation. Interest rates at near zero, deficit spending and ‘quantitative easing’ on a historic scale.

The good news is that it worked, but even the most effective medicine has some nasty side-effects. When using chemotherapy, doctors can kill cancer cells (which is good), but the tradeoff is to knock your immune system down to nearly nothing.

In fixing the global economy, governments and authorities did something else. They exposed their weaknesses. Like the proverbial receding tide at a nudist beach, modesties and shortcomings were revealed.

The Eurozone had always had its inconsistencies and contradictions. Harmonizing currencies among still sovereign states with greatly differing economies and economic policies was going to be a difficult task at the best of times. The difficulty lie in the fact that abandoning a significant symbol of nationhood – a currency – meant rolling back the cause of an ‘ever closer union’. That’s what it’s been all about – a European Parliament, European Courts, European laws, and yes – European money.

The Euro was not so much a deception, but a delusion – that you could harmonize the currency before you harmonized the forces that controlled and regulated it. But delusions are as stubbornly held as deceptions, and are defended just as vigorously. The defense is also similar in its pathology – defend a deception by laying down another one to cover it. If that doesn’t work, then add another.

The problem is that a delusion, no matter how stubbornly held it is, is just that – a delusion.

The delusions in this case led to drastic economic measures, and it is in the effects of those drastic measures that everyday citizens felt the pain – higher unemployment, bank failures and credit constrictions.

Had 2008 not happened, I doubt that Britons would be presented with the referendum. There would certainly have been calls for one, but they would have been dismissed by the powers-that-be as a ‘fringe’ opinion.

Delusions have a short shelf life, and even with that, require a great deal of energy to sustain. For those fighting to create a ‘United States of Europe’, the delusions have been plentiful, and the effort to keep them up equally demanding.

The delusions that you could ignore national and cultural identities and histories, that you could introduce a single currency without fully merging economic and political power, that you could create political institutions without giving them democratic legitimacy are all significant, but they pale in comparison to the one that – for Britain – started it all.

It is the delusion that you must give up your flag, your Head of State, your currency, your laws and your system of government in order to sell 10 percent more widgets.

This coming Wednesday, the world will learn if the delusion holds, or if it collapses under the weight of its own inherent inconsistencies.