How Brexit Became the UK’s National Suicide Game
Who wants to struggle with reality when fantasy is so much nicer?
Back in 2016 the British were invited to vote on whether or not they wanted to leave the European Union, an institution that brought lasting peace and prosperity to a continent marred by centuries of war and distrust. At the time, 47% of Britain’s gross domestic product depended in one way or another on friction-free trade and freedom of movement within the European Union.
You’d have thought the answer would be obvious.
But you’d have been wrong.
British politicians, faced with difficult and unpopular decisions, had been blaming the EU for decades because pretending that the EU was always to blame for everything made life temporarily easier for UK politicians. Not clever and not foresightful, but effective.
British people spend inordinate amounts of time gawping at endless re-runs of television programs that harp on about how they “won” World War II. These fantasy versions of history have totally distorted British perceptions about what really happened and the result has been to convince a great many Brits that their gloomy little middle-rank economy could really “stand alone.”
Because most people are fundamentally lazy, hardly anyone bothers to do the research that would reveal a very different truth. Fantasy is so much nicer than complex and uncomfortable reality.
Older uneducated British people were told that leaving the EU would, essentially, get the old glory days back. Magically Britain would be “free” to assert itself on the world stage, be “free” of all those nasty regulations imposed by Brussels, and “free” of all those foreigners with their strange foods and even stranger languages. Magically the Empire would return, Spitfires would fly over the White Cliffs of Dover, and all would be well.
The Brexit campaign itself was a curious beast. The Brits were given a yes/no option with no details about what leaving the EU would actually mean in real life. The idea was so preposterous that those campaigning to Leave were convinced they’d lose. This conviction freed them to make the most outrageous statements, because each Leave campaigner was certain they’d never be forced to live up to the endless…
