Brexit has become the benchmark of an idiotic mistake
You’ve had enough of experts? Of facts? Of data? Magnificent. We shall see how you enjoy poverty, dysfunction and chaos. For such are the fruits of ignorance.
The UK in the 2000s had its problems like everywhere else, but Lord knows London, which was my home for most of that decade, was on top of the world. It was unrivalled as a financial center in its hemisphere, wealth was skyrocketing and the culture veritably crackled with a sense of destiny and progress.
Then the UK Conservatives came to power in 2010, after 13 years of Labour, as part of a natural cycle. They looked around for a purpose. There was some data flowing around that provided an argument for spending cuts, but mainly there was an ideological obsession with austerity masked by a plan called the “Big Society” to empower local initiatives at the expense of central authority.
Thus began a steady decline that went into overdrive when the Tories finally won an absolute majority in Parliament, making their centrist Liberal Democrat allies unneeded and putting Prime Minister David Cameron at the mercy of his own party’s Euroskeptic nutjobs.
The argument for leaving the European Union, which had contributed to keeping the peace and expanding prosperity, was not totally insane. The EU requires conceding some sovereignty to the union and a bureaucracy whose rules and procedures can seem petty and ridiculous. They may want to define a pickle or a beer or an olive a certain way. As with any family or group of friends, the EU requires compromises.
A purist hates compromises. A fanatic disdains the big picture. The heart wants what it wants. The heart of a child wants everything now. “Take back control"!” became the infantile Leave slogan. Experts raised a eyebrow and awkwardly shuffled their papers.
Almost all serious economists, and most observers who understood how Britain goes about its business, warned that the campaign to leave the European Union was based on false claims and numbers. They shouted to the heavens that if the so-called “Brexit” (a once-facetious updating of “Grexit”) happened, the cost would be dire.
The response by Britain’s populists was this:
· They insisted that the change would bring benefit, not damage: more freedom, more governability, more democracy, more wealth even.
· They issued subtle appeals to racism. Thus did confused British bigots vote to leave the EU (instead of the Commonwealth) for fear of Africans and Caribbeans, achieving only a wall between themselves and white Europe.
· They claimed that their opponents are elitists detached from the real people, the Salt of the Earth.
· They dismissed with disdain the warnings. The Brexit campaigner Michael Gove, with breathtaking indifference to math, put it this way: “The people of this country have had enough of experts.”
Gove hit paydirt there. It is a quite powerful idea: Evidence suggests the masses are in such rebellion against “global elites” that when educated and successful people point right they will turn left just out of spite, almost no matter the consequences. The source of the anger is an interesting question. Is it inequality? culture wars? social media? jobs vanishing? But there’s no disputing the rage, and it’s not making us much smarter. That’s how Donald Trump somehow won the White House in 2016.
The British were once the most sober of nations, even if not in the literal sense. But they lost it with Brexit, and the mistake is painfully coming home to roost.
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