Post Brexit

It's a tired subject now. the EU referendum and the result. Friday was the panic day for many, (even those who voted out). Glued as we were to the BBC and other news services doing comparative analysis of the narratives being presented, trying to find the truth somewhere between the extremes of opinion.

It's Saturday, the weekend. There'll be some hand wringing and worrying going on, and then on Monday people will go back to work, in modern offices suites in the City of London, and elsewhere. And the money making strategies that have been the source of many tedious meetings since January 2013 will suddenly bear fruit. Business will adapt, there will be a prepared for pause. A new normal will form, and if we are lucky the process going forward will be necessarily thoughtful, deliberate and still conceived for the greater good of all. But why?

The EEC was a good idea, European unity after centuries of war, border changes, annexations, liberations, revolts, and renaissances. After the Great War and the Second World war (just consider that a moment, every continent and almost every country on every continent gave up peace to kill 122,000,0000 people – civilian and military approximately, `One Hundred and Twenty Two Million’ (I haven’t bothered with a figure for wounded). In the European area where this insanity started it was decided finally, to bury the hatchet and devote seventy years to peace and in the main prosperity, growth, technological advancement, longer life, science and so forth (I’m expeditiously ignoring the fact that in the wake of this peace and prosperity, that the west decided to have a cold war, destabilised the Middle East and abandoned Africa and the Indian sub-continent and others).

Unity and peace are great ideals, but you can legislate for them only so far, and then you have to let the peace habit work for itself. The matter of free trade seems to me to be intrinsic to the concept of wider peace. Why should there be trade barriers between peaceful nations? After all we are a global community, never mind our immediate continental neighbours … one day regardless of race religion colour or creed we will just be one world.

There are many areas that aren’t quite up to speed on the notion that peace and prosperity are better than intolerance and destruction, and the notion won’t be universal for centuries more (in my humble opinion). And the bigots and racists within our own country will delude themselves for a while longer that at least 50% of the UK population is as racist as themselves. We aren’t, you’re retarded, you’ll never read this, three or four lines of a Facebook meme is about as intellectual as you get. The xenophobes can sit back and bask in the sense of isolation, and the rest of the Brexiters can enjoy the sense of independence, that being self-determining brings - setbacks and all. All balanced by nearly 50% of the UK that was happy with the EU/UK status quo, and will still be a voice for balance in the years ahead.

Britain now stands aside from the EU, but we are linked and will always be linked. What we’ve done is say to the rest of the union that we can be self-determining peaceful, productive, without the stifling oppressive over regulation of everything we say and do. Without being a party to `positive discrimination on a continental scale’. We can trade on our local continental plate, and freely with the rest of the world, we won’t war with our nearest neighbours and I’m fairly sure we wouldn’t war elsewhere if it could be helped. We will come to your aid in times of disaster as we do all over the world. We are a mature country, a mature economy (maybe a little spoilt and islandic). We are reliable, pragmatic and interested, why would you not want to trade with the UK, why would you not want us as visitors (football hooligan twats aside).

I look forward to a time (beyond my life span no doubt), where to the rest of continental Europe, the EU is just a background admin office, not trying to shoehorn it’s one size fits all bureaucracy into every nook and cranny, and failing miserably because such a management task is way beyond the whit of even a huge number of individuals.

One day all of Europe will stand on an equal egalitarian footing … like the Federation in Star Trek, or Ian M Banks Culture. That has to be the aim. Parents as a general rule want their offspring to fledge and fly free. The European Union should be there as a support tool to allow partners of unequal size, to foster trade and peace and when those countries feel the need to go their own way either in a big way or as a parallel to the union they should not be impeded or vetoed by their nearest neighbours, because those neighbours feel that they didn’t get a slice of the pie, even though they didn’t provide the flour, butter, eggs or pie filling or any of the facilities to create said pie (maybe I’m naïve). But from where I’ve watched the EU develop over the nearly three decades I’ve had a side interest in politics, having a job, paying a mortgage, there seems to have been compromise after compromise to what seems like no ones best interest, unless they were a speculator sitting on the fringes eking out miniscule margins but across a global spread, hedging their bets and staying rich regardless of the crash. And while the Union fell over its own rules, argued the toss amongst itself, and created the Euro, it sat in ignorance of exactly how extreme a problem was developing in the `globalised private sector … banking system’ that all its regulating and oversight had failed to see coming. And then when it fell to pieces we the grey collar and blue collar workers paid the price in jobs, pensions and rights. Rights that the EU allegedly enshrined, but were in fact hijacked by the wealthiest, using free movement to ensure that wages have been held (for the poorest) in practical limbo for nearly a decade.

Project fear was the final ranting scare mongering, bullying drivel trotted out to terrify the people of Britain into staying in the EU, and I’m sure if you could actually pin down the Remainers reasons for remaining in the EU, it’s the fear of the unknown and only that, that made them vote remain in the EU. Lets just note that while President Obama sounded off that the UK would be better off in the EU than out, that for most of his first term he was only really interested in the tiger economies of the Far east. I’m also sure that if beyond all the utter shite that was trotted out by both sides you actually nurtured the notion that history will record a blip in our fortunes, the majority voting leave would have been even greater. I’m sure that the UKs recovery from last Thursday will be rapid. I also think that the businesses that upsticks to other parts of Europe will spread their particular employment toxicity to those countries and that their diminished influence in our country will in the long term benefit us, whilst proving that the European Project has been fundamentally undermined and hijacked by the banks, and by huge business cartels.

Why as a big business would you not want access to 500 million potential employees in one of the most stable and wealthy parts of the world. 500 million … half a billion people all looking to earn a living, in an economic area where the playing field is regulated by an unelected political elite, that meets only with itself and the business leaders that want access to that pool of employees at the best price for their own interests. The phrase conflict of interest doesn’t even come close to describing the situation.

I’m glad we are out, the recriminations will carry on for decades, as have the recriminations since 1973, when we first joined the EEC. The little people have had a revolution, a revolution that proves the pen is mightier than the sword or the guillotine. Britain has demonstrated that it and therefore any country that wants to peacefully demonstrate its dissatisfaction can do so through debate and the ballot box and force change. But I bet that that particular lesson won’t be realised or seen except through the lens of history, when I and all those who voted on Thursday are dead and gone by decades.