Brexit Day: Free At Last

Today is the day! After waiting years, yearning to be free, Britain has finally arrived at Independence Day. Again. Forty years after they voted to join the European Union, the Queen has given royal assent to the Brexit vote, making withdrawl official. They seal the deal tonight at midnight, which would be 6 pm Eastern. The New York Times is keeping a live update of the progress towards official exit on Brexit Day, and of course, there are plenty of “news sites” waiting to tell you how to feel about it and what you “need to know.”

There are plenty of consequences of leaving the EU, and not all of them are bad. But you wouldn’t know it from msm postings. Reuters has this to offer: “At a stroke, the EU will be deprived of 15% of its economy, its biggest military spender and the world’s international financial capital of London. The divorce will shape the fate of the United Kingdom — and determine its wealth — for generations to come.”

Brexit Day: What it Really Means

Come to think of it, maybe none of those consequences are bad. If the EU is “deprived” of 15% of its economy, this means the architects who engineered Brexit have saved their own people a whopping lot of money and may have stopped the flow of “migrants and refugees” they got in return. As far as military spending goes, perhaps enriching countries hell bent on destroying your national identity isn’t a very good idea no matter what you’re buying from them. There is no reason anymore why Britain cannot take a bigger role in international finance now that they have no rules except their own.

Mind you, this is speculation. But it seems the only people who benefited by Britain’s membership in the EU were the other members. No wonder they’re complaining so loudly. They don’t benefit from Brexit Day. Since joining the EU, Britons haven’t been faring very well. Their crime stats went way up, and their unemployment rates followed the lead. In fact, 2017 registered the lowest unemployment rates since 1975. Despite healthcare for all, a child’s life is worth only as much as the state is willing to pay for it, and cannot be transferred to a country willing to do more.

It’s Independence Day

All of this leads one to believe there are far worse consequences to staying in the EU. But you wouldn’t know it reading NPR: “The U.K. and the European Union will immediately enter a transition period until the end of this year, during which the free movement of people and trade between them will continue as before. There is no expectation of long lines at ports on the English Channel. Britons will no longer be EU citizens, but they will still broadly enjoy the same rights they do now. The U.K. will keep paying into the EU budget during this transition period, but British lawmakers will no longer sit in the European Parliament or help shape EU rules. Next month, British and EU negotiators will begin trying to hammer out a free trade deal to take effect when the transition ends on Dec. 31.”

It looks as if the only bad thing is they’ll be paying money into the same slush fund they had always paid into, and get just about as much back as they did as members, with about as much say so in the whole business. That, however, ends December 31, when Brexit is made final. In addition, Britain may have no say so in how the EU does things, but that outcome is a two way street. In short, Britain has their country back, and a trade deal in the works to boot. NPR does share a few tidbits which are really rather revealing in this particular piece.

Wait, What?

“The Brexit vote is part of a much larger trend in parts of the West that values national sovereignty and independence over political and economic integration. Simply put, it’s a backlash against a long-running trend toward globalization… British politicians learned that taking a question as complex as membership in the EU to a public referendum is very risky. The British people have found that unraveling decades of relations with the European Union is far more fraught than anyone imagined. Finally, some Britons have discovered — after years of domestic political chaos and the U.K.’s failure to have its way with Brussels — that their country is nowhere near as politically powerful or as influential as they thought.”

Oh, but the New World Order is a conspiracy theory, isn’t it? In all seriousness though, here is the translation: British elite found out that letting the people of Britain decide the fate of their own country may disrupt their plans of total domination and self enriching rule. The British people are suffering the petty acts of vengeance these tyrannical toddlers wreak on those who don’t give them what they want, and some Britons have noticed their membership in the EU has cost them their strength and their voice. How dare they wish to get all that back.

There is Always a Way

The United States, and particularly the Trump administration, is in full agreement with Brexit, and has indicated a Brexit completion could mean improved trade relations with the US, which Britain is anxious to achieve due to the fact that America’s economy is booming. Business Insider reports Mike Pompeo as stating “We will be able to reduce transaction costs and share [goods and services] in ways we could not do when the United Kingdom was part of that and I look forward to working through that.”

After today, Britain will be free to discuss trade deals with the United States, and Mike Pompeo has mentioned that Britain is at the front of the line as far as new trade deals are concerned. In other words, the doom and gloomers are making a huge mess of a relatively small problem to deal with. It’s about time Britain ignored cries of “You’re nothing without us!” and joined the free world as the stately and dignified country she is. Happy Brexit Day, Britain!