By Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog
It’s hard to get the Western mainstream media to discuss Brexit properly: Wikipedia’s timeline doesn’t start until 2016, for some reason, and I’m sure that’s where many journalists’ research starts and ends on serious subjects of global importance.
What’s certain is that the last thing the Western mainstream media wants to talk about regarding Brexit is the single most important reason for its historical importance: a successful Brexit will show Eurosceptic nations that leaving is actually not fatal, and thus Brexit could be the start of the end of the pan-European movement.
The reality is that a Brexit success is likely the only, best chance to save the pan-European project: Brussels will only be pushed for more democratic accountability, transparency and progressive reforms if pushed to do so by an outside force, if ever.
While Europe has been forced to watch Brexit with baited breath for nearly three years – justice delayed is justice denied… but when was the EU ever concerned about democratic justice? Let’s not pretend that prior to their historic vote we weren’t also discussing “Grexit”, “Frexit”, “Quitaly”, and others (I most preferred “Nullgaria”, “Czech-Out” and “Malternative”).
And yet Brexit is portrayed as a catastrophe which unexpectedly descended from heaven, as opposed to a long-building reaction like as any other major historical process? It is as if the whole European debacle from 2009-16 was swept under the rug, and not just by Wikipedia.
The Brexit process won’t be accurately judged for 3-5 years, but if the UK is economically humming and culturally dynamic by 2022 it’s sure that a wave of “–exits” will be demanded. What we can honestly foresee is a 1989 Berlin Wall moment: mass demonstrations to abolish the EU in the near future. “Ms. Lagarde… tear down this wall of taxpayer Quantitative Easing!” (Bankers run the West, so she’s basically top on the totem pole.)
How did we get to do discussing an EU “Berlin Wall” moment? I can say what one wrong answer is: refugee migration, which is what the bulk of Brexit coverage has been since 2016.
Don’t believe the revisionist history of capitalist Western media – the primary root of Brexit was the UK’s rightful abhorrence for the economic and democratic deficiencies of the Eurozone. From 2009 onward it grew worse and worse and more obvious to all, even to allegedly “stupid” Brexiteers.
As Britain goes back to the polls on December 12, it’s crucial to accurately remember the timeline of what led up to Brexit and what really caused it.
Demand an honest timeline – Brexit’s true beginnings
Let’s go back to 2012: the Great Recession was clearly not going anywhere – the proposed solution of QE and ZIRP (zero percent interest rates) was not producing results for the real economy. The Occupy Movement had just begun the previous fall, and anti-1% and anti-banker sentiment was peaking. The European Sovereign Debt Crisis also peaked that year, causing the largest macro-economic bloc to be on the verge of total chaos. The victory of an anti-austerity candidate in France provoked the same reaction as it did in 1981 with Francois Mitterrand: attacks on the national bond market by high finance. 2012 was chaotic in Europe, to say the least.
I bring up 2012 because this is when the European Sovereign Debt crisis threw into stark relief the fundamentally unjust, unaccountable, unequal nature of the pan-European project… and this was not at all missed by the average person in the UK.
The Eurozone scrambled to come up with ways to coordinate budgets, debt and banks. The answer was “more Europe, not less Europe” remember? Germany rejected all these ideas so they never got off the ground, but anybody can see how this slogan is often anathema to a Britain which has for decades emphatically shown with actions that they are dedicated Eurosceptics. Unsurprisingly, the government of David Cameron also wanted no part of the proposed compact for “more Europe”.
As 2012-13 rolled on the pan-European project did nothing to cover themselves in glory: Francois Hollande proved all the worst British stereotypes of the cowardly Frenchman, the European Central Bank promised “whatever it takes” via as QE (the Brits have always publicly opposed QE and easy money, like the Germans) which was obviously viewed in the UK as what it really was – more foreign bank bailouts via the ballooning of national debts. Brussels had definitively proved how punitive and stupid it could be as the Greek bailout gutted the country for the benefit of German and French bankers. The Eurozone averted total chaos but also had horrible economic performance, which continues today.
All of these things are forgotten by the Mainstream Media, which says, “Pro-Brexit Brits are racists who hate foreigners!”
Wikipedia’s late timeline doesn’t include this, but Brexit was first proposed by then-Prime Minister David Cameron in a January 2013 speech: he said what everybody was thinking back then – that the Eurozone is structurally flawed, that the EU is democratically unaccountable, and that public disillusionment with the bloc was at an “all-time high”. He thus promised a Brexit vote if the Conservatives won the 2015 election.
Forgetting this “all-time high” is the number one strategy of the fundamentally insulting, provoking and inadequate “Brexit Vote 2” campaign. Cameron has seemingly earned his daily bread by giving speeches which are a mea culpa, but he fails to remind listeners how the problem in 2012 was not just the pan-European project’s crisis but the realization that it is impossible to remedy given the current structure, which is organized and modeled on American neoliberal and bourgeois (aristocratic) ideology.
Clearly, Brexit did not – and obviously could not – start with the vote in 2016. Nor did it start with the Global Refugee Crisis in 2015. The reality is that the pan-European project lost the UK far earlier due to mismanagement, worrying performance, and a lack of democracy.
What came first: Euroscepticism or the ineffective, undemocratic pan-European project?
That doesn’t really matter. My primary point is that Brexit sentiment reached a point where mainstream politicians had to respond/capitalize on it way back in 2013. This was long before the far-right UKIP won seats in 2014, the Global Refugee Crisis and when Wikipedia finally took note.
Does anyone honesty believe that if – all things being equal, economically – that migration alone would have produced such a pro-Brexit vote? Preposterous – there is no way that 51% of the UK is xenophobic to the point where that is the one issue they make their votes on. Of course, the capitalist-dominated private Western media is 100% pro-globalization so they have to make it seem as if xenophobia was the only motivation. They absolutely never want to talk about the undemocratic nature of the EU, nor the massive opposition to banker bailouts and their compound interest which is ruining the present and the future.
In late 2015 Cameron was using, correctly, the pan-European project’s continued failure to argue that the UK would be distanced from their continued bailouts, QE, economic stagnation and totally unchanged-and-still-at-risk structure: by early 2016 he got it written down that Europe’s “ever closer union” doesn’t include the UK, which concisely describes the nature of the concessions. The Brexit vote was in June 2016.
Brexiteers, seeing that the Eurozone was only worsening, knew this was their chance to get free. Euroscepticism had been proven correct and democratic, even though fake-leftists and Europhiles will say that in 2015 the Global Refugee Crisis hit and that is what scared voters into Brexit.
Predicted on that idea is the assumption that British voters don’t have the capacity to recall long-term memories, and that they are easily manipulated by whatever is the latest headline. We journalists would like to believe this is true, but that is only our arrogance, stupidity and absurd belief that people believe every single thing we say. Why should we ignore, or why should the Brits turn a blind eye to, the Eurozone’s long-running crisis?
The Brits didn’t and, combined with their initial lack of faith in the pan-European project it is historically logical that they are the first out.
If there is one thing which a journalist must do it is to honor the man on the street. Literally, that is what a journalist does often – stick their microphone into the face of someone on their way to work and ask their opinion. I guarantee that if you do this it is IMPOSSIBLE to not realize that such answers are repeatedly off-the-charts intelligent and astute. However, this experience and knowledge is fundamentally at odds with Western capitalist decision-making, which foolishly values technocratic skills at the expense of morality and practical experience.
If the status quo is bad, why not change it when you can?
Because of the December 12th election I decided to publish this part of my 10-part series on the current state of the Western QE economy out of order. It was supposed the the 9th part, but is now the 6th, for those of you keeping score at home.
This 10-part series uses as its jumping-off point the 2018 book Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World by Nomi Prins, a former Wall Street executive who saw the light and is now informing on the crimes of Western imperialism-capitalism. Prins gives a thorough and chronological account of central banker doings in key areas – Mexico, China, Brazil, Japan and Europe – ever since US banker crimes set off the Great Recession in 2007. The essence of her thesis is that the US orchestrated collusion among the central bankers of many of the G20 economies and the Eurozone in order to primarily save busted US banks, and then also to maintain the 1%-enriching policies of QE, ZIRP and no-strings attached bailouts.
Even though Prins’ book is chronological she fails to note these events I listed. However, she at least gets the start date of Brexit a bit better than Wikipedia, and she understands better the economic and pro-democracy foundation of the Brexit movement. She recounts the “ever closer union” discussions back in November 2015:
“Two weeks later, speaking at the Federation of German Industries (BDI) lobby in Berlin, British chancellor (of the Exchequer) George Osborne said Britain would only support a treaty to save the euro from collapse if its own renegotiation demands were accepted. The project to strengthen the Eurozone through a French fiscal arrangement was aimed at avoiding a repeat of crises. It was supported by Germany, France and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker. The idea was to prevent crises from attacking the common currency.
The chancellor said the price to be paid for Britain’s support would be the guarantee that it would never have to participate in Eurozone bailouts and that a new voting mechanism would prevent coalitions against the United Kingdom’s interests. It was the beginning of a potentially irrevocable fracture between the United Kingdom and the European Union. A similar project of Eurozone strengthening had already been vetoed by prime minster David Cameron in 2011, but this one seemed to have more legs.”
This one had “more legs” because the EU has never addressed its horrific, endemic issues with its lack of democracy, its endless 1%-er bailouts and its constant teetering on the edge of collapse. Banker bailouts and usurpation of national sovereignties – this is the cause of Brexit, not racism and identity politics.
What Prins gets perfectly right is that QE, austerity and central banker collusion may not be able to survive the loss of the UK. Who really knows what will happen when a load-bearing support is pulled out of the QE house of cards? Collusion is a tricky business.
Brexit will certainly lead to a lower pound, a lower euro and a stronger yen. This will have major effects on corporations, banks and borrowing, which is really the only parts of the economy the shareholder 1% cares about. Brexit will thus put pressure on “safe haven” currencies and force them to rise – this means they will increase QE in order to devalue their currencies. This QE war will only raise more anger domestically and throw more clearly into relief the inequality which is the moral (non-) heart of the “QE with no strings attached because otherwise its socialist central planning” Western neoliberal system.
It’s surprising how very wrong so many people get the history of Brexit considering just how much the West has been talking about it. Hopefully this article remedied that, and debunked the dominant idea that Brexiteers are a “basket of deplorables” and racists, and somehow less intelligent and less democratic than Remainers; certainly, the least democratic faction in this fight is the EU.
The Eurozone has had mostly bad times since its inception – how many generations of adults could possibly be expected to support it? How much abuse can one continent take? The EU and Eurozone have created boom times for the 1% but not for their average citizen.
Given the undeniable failure of the pan-European project into 2019, Brexit may lead to either vital democratic reforms or the abandonment of that project – even the latter would be hugely positive for Europeans because “ending loss is a profit”, as the saying goes. Brexit could also upend the status quo of the Western economic neoliberal & neo-imperial system – this would be hugely positive for non-Europeans.
After reporting from Paris for a decade may I pass on my opinion, which I arrived at thanks to my job requiring the solicitation of a huge cross section of society and not just alleged “experts”: not this union.
The lack of democracy, accountability and morality is baked into this bitter European pie. It has clearly failed on all these counts – isn’t that crystal clear? British voters don’t have to be against every pan-European project, but this current one cannot be supported for the reasons that it is so very neoliberal and so fundamentally undemocratic.
The EU, it is correctly said, is a “neoliberal empire” – most everyone has had a negative experience with empires: the UK would do well to leave.
Sure, history shows that the developing world has much to fear from neo-imperialist Europeans, but perhaps a “new” European project will be far more positive?
But if you don’t think you can change it – I suggest voting to leave it when you can.
Come back again later… maybe.
Back to the series as planned with the next part, ‘The new ‘beggar thy neighbor’: wars to devalue labor, not currencies’. Considering that France has just begun its biggest general strike since 1995 because of a new effort to devalue labor, that part is rather timely as well.
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Here is the list of articles slated to be published soon, and I hope you will find them useful in your leftist struggle!
Part 1 – Western central bankers: they’re God, they trust – a 10-part series on the QE economy
Part 2 – How QE has radically changed the nature of the West’s financial system
Part 3 – QE paid for a foreign buying spree: developing countries hurt the most
Part 4 – Iran vs Mexico: ‘economic inflows’ versus ‘economic independence’
Part 5 – Understanding the West’s obsession with inflation
Part 6 – The new ‘beggar thy neighbor’: wars to devalue labor, not currencies
Part 7 – Blaming China for the Great Recession… to avoid emulating China’s (socialist-inspired) success
Part 8 – 1941, 1981, 2017 or today – Europe’s mess is still Germany’s fault
Part 9 – Don’t forget the real root of Brexit: fear of Eurozone economic contagion
Part 10 – Bankocracies: the real Western governance model
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of the books I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China and the upcoming Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television.
I know very well what their ideology is: greed.
Definitely not any sort of liberalism – the only freedoms they support are the freedoms of useful idiots, nowadays literal idiots and subhumans.
Aristocracy? The average 0,01%er (1% covers like 75 million people, that masks just how ridiculous their power is) probably doesn’t even know what arete is. This bullshit is caused exactly because they DON’T have any arete in them, chances are that your average junkie has more of it than them, and that’s the sign to the people to start to intervene (see my comment on another post about cultural revolutions – I think it’s also Ramin’s, about yellow vests). All stable governments that have popular support and actually care about the people, are in my eyes nearly by default aristocracies.
Imperialism? Imperialism is infinitely more honorable – because even though others are damaged, at least the populace of the empire doing the plundering benefit somehow. Here everyone suffers, even if unequaly. What I would call this, is simple globalized robber-baronism. Imperialists do their things in the name of their country. The 0,01% do it for their own personal gain, and often at the harm of their own country as well.
Some say “fascism”! But it’s nearly the same as with imperialism.
No, what we see here is pure evil. This is why you have fascists, neonazis, communists, centrists, socialists, racial supremacists of all kinds, anarcho-capitalists, anarcho-primitivists, all the leftist anarchists all fighting against these human garbage, even if theh profounsly disagree on nearly everything else.
We’re no longer in left-right dichotomy. It has become secondary – instead, now the primary political division is cosmopolitsnism vs communitarianism. Or sovereignism. Or whatever you call it. The ruthless rootless demons against the local men of all positions,p professions etc.
To add: wanna know something interesting?
Wanna know how the underdeveloped EU countries stay underdeveloped despite the aid?
Ask people of those countries if they actually got anything. Nope!
It works like this: EU takes money from the people of wealthier states, then gives it to the poor countries. The comprador elites the EU placed in power pocket a percent for themselves, then send nearly everything to the western elites that placed them in power.
That way, the poor stay poor, and everyone above except the ultra mega giga rich go poorer until they’re poor too. Maximum control.
As an Australian, I always wondered why Great Britain, who already had a global Commonwealth of allied resource rich daughter nations would rather be part of European Union mostly comprised of historical enemies.
Trade deals and the like should only be freely distributed amongst friends and allies who are on the same page socially and economically, not struck with former enemies and competing states or nations that refuse to be open and transparent or societies that are still diametrically opposed to one’s own beliefs.
One might dangle a trade deal with the latter in the form of incentives to get their act together as in a carrot and stick approach, but one would assume that first preference would be to look after one’s staunchest friends and allies.
Europe may be close and convenient for Great Britain but as she has found out the widely diverging political systems, aspirations priorities and goals of so many disparate nations has created a quagmire. Yet most Commonwealth Nations share mostly similar political and legal systems all based of the parent model of Great Britain.
But the elites in Britain would rather align themselves with a mish mash of European Nations that includes several basket case economies and many former belligerents, than trying to look after their own daughter nations and strengthen an already existing global empire.
Every day Great Britain is slowly losing its Commonwealth of nations as we see them as out of touch, irrelevant and distant. They give fuel to fan the flames of Republican movements in their former dominions. How can HRH Queen Elizabeth 2 be the head of state of Australia while her nation is part of Europe?
As I stated above, as an Australian it confuses me. I feel insulted that we were always amongst the first of nations to rally around Great Britain in her hours of need, whether it was in our interests or not, the blood of countless Australian and New Zealand servicemen was spilt shoring up the empire only fo them to give it away.
If CIty of London (ANZ) were ever serious about permanent ‘EU’ membership they would have adopted the EURO.
They didn’t they kept their British-Pound, this is telling.
Never give up your right to print money, pull cash out of your ass to infinity. This is the only true power of government.
UK got Continental Europe via Brussles and years of MI6/mossad/cia backdoors to take over all sovereign country’s in europe. Now ANZ can do as it wishes, EU can be just another mercenary colony for foreign wars, just like the USA.
UK never intended to stay in the EU, they just joined to give it credibility, I find it ironic they were the only ones to hold-out printing their own cash, smart, well there is Norway, and Swiss they too kept the ability to print their own money. But most of Europe fell for the trap, and now all of Europe is screwed.
City of London is clever they make “Trump Type” Maga-uk village idiots the supporters for brexit, but the elite of UK don’t want to live under the rules imposed by Brussels, and they never intended to, just like Israel would never become EU. ANZ are owners, they’re not slaves to their creation.
‘If CIty of London (ANZ) were ever serious about permanent ‘EU’ membership they would have adopted the EURO.’
No, I don’t believe that is correct. Instead I think that the British keeping their Pound was a sop to the domestic voters to make them think they had some sort of independence from Brussels, while convincing the EU was a great idea.
It probably was, while it remained a purely economic union. Instead the British found themselves increasingly kow-towing to a ever-growing and authoritarian EC bureaucracy. I regard he Schengen zone as a game-breaker. After Syria, Libya, Europe was inundated with literally millions of war refugees. Many of which probably should arrested as war criminals (along with Bush the Younger, Tony Blair and John Howard).
The result is now an increasing tide of nationalism, as various countries attempt to belatedly protect their own cultures, which they have had for hundreds, if not thousands of years. For some, it’s too late.
@Glen Batterham: “the elites in Britain”
There are no longer an elite in Britain. For the past century Bankers’ Britain has been a nation owned by Anglo Zio Capitalists and ruled by Parliamentary agents of Anglo Zio Capitalism to work for the profit of Capitalists and Zionazis. ANZAC spilt its blood in WW1 to help the Anglo Zio Capitalists to cripple Germany as an industrial competitor, take over the Middle East, grab its oil wealth for “Dear Lord Rothschild” and set up a National Home for the Jews in Palestine. And it wasn’t only ANZAC who shed their blood for Anglo Zio Capitalism; so did a million English soldiers, who were the real elite of Britain — driven like sheep into a meat grinder to make profit for the Zio Capitalists who still rule Great Britain.
Why do you think Australian soldiers are fighting against Syria today — a country halfway across the world from Oz, that has never harmed you nor New Zealand?
“Elite” — the chosen, the best; a Latin word related to the Greek word Arete’ meaning the best, the excellent (see first post above, by ВЕЛИКИ ВУУ). Elite definitely does not describe the greedy, ruthless, vulgar, narrowminded, incompetent regimes of the Anglo Zio Capitalist West.
True, our current military situation only proves how we have removed ourselves from being a subservient vassal of Great Britain to now being the same bootlickers for the U.S.
Every day now it’s becoming more apparent that even though we jump unquestionably to the aide of what we perceive as so called “allies” one also now recounts how on the handful of occasions that we really needed them that they were noticeably absent, even outright refusing support.
At the moment we are experiencing a severe bush fire emergency exacerbated by years of severe drought, with the bulk of the firefighting being bravely tackled mostly by volunteers, where are our allies now? At least Canada and has provided a handful of boots on the ground as has the U.S. in the past.
It’s no comfort to realise that while we are currently hiring fire fighting air craft from abroad at huge expense that elements of our own air force is currently, as you rightly pointed out, abroad in the Middle East engaged in illegal interventions at the behest of the U.S. at huge expense.
Being a large nation of small population saw our so called leaders believe that being attached to a substantially larger ally would have reciprocal benefits, jumping unquestionably when ordered to do so has got us no where.
As I originally stated our unswerving loyalty wasn’t enough for Great Britain, they’d rather cosy up to European banking interests. Just as our unswerving loyalty to the U.S. now sees us having to hire resources off them at great cost rather than them giving them freely.
Remember the Brexit vote wasn’t a resounding majority but a very slim one that was almost 50/50, just as many Brits wish to remain. Maybe we’re better off by letting Europe keep Great Britain.
I suppose one of my points is that no matter how hard we’ve tried to impress nations like Great Britain and the U.S. by going along with their unscrupulous shenanigans, sometimes knowing full well that it’s a crock of excrement, it’s gotten us nowhere and rarely been reciprocated when required.
It’s like our mother has ran off to live with another family and our new step mother only sees us as casual labour.
“Aristocracy? The average 0,01%er (1% covers like 75 million people, that masks just how ridiculous their power is) probably doesn’t even know what arete is”.
That’s why the EU (and the USA and the UK…) should be described as an oligarchy, or, most accurately, a plutocracy.
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf
Aristotle explained that a political system based on elections is bound to be plutocratic: the rich simply buy votes (directly or indirectly). That is the system that prevails throughout the West today.
UK went into the EEC in 1973 because at the time there was this worldwide regional trade block idea and UK industry thought there was a quid in it. But things have changed. Recession in the 70s-80s and 90s changed the equation. With a lot of the UK mfg gone it doesnt need the EU mkt.
CIA-OSS planning created the EU post ww2 it was always their plan, “A united states of Europe” that could be controlled by LONDON(ANZ)
For credibility UK had to join
Brexit is about cutting off the agreement, so they’re not involved in London’s control of its colonys. ( Just like the USA became a UK corporation post civil-war )
There is really nothing else you need to know, the entire ‘brexit’ debate is class ANZ circus-act like Trump’s impeachment,
Brexit will take place, and the EU will live under ANZ control forever, and UK can do as it wishes.
All this was planned in the 1950’s, and is well documented about how CIA(OSS) lobbied post ww2 for the EU.
ANZ – Rule is just like Israel “Do as I say, not as I do”
“Brussels will only be pushed for more democratic accountability, transparency and progressive reforms if pushed to do so by an outside force, if ever.”
Not only Brussels. Same age-old problem all over the world: how to put honest people in government, and how to dislodge them when they become dishonest. Power corrupts. I fear the British regime will be just as corrupt “outside” the EU as it was “inside”; and just as poorly performing as it was before it joined the EU. In fact, it was the poor performance of Sterling which forced Great Britain to swallow its Imperial pride and knock at the door of prosperous Europe. The poor performance of Europe since say, 1980, is the result of increasing corruption, nepotism and infiltration by Anglo Zio Capitalism.
Nepotism: a word meaning corruption in office, from the Latin for nephew. In Greek, Plato’s Republic takes measures to ensure that competent people, once in power, do not choose their incompetent relatives for jobs.
https://youtu.be/CYudowTKytU?t=4
Tom Welsh above recalled aristotle. Over 2000 years ago greeks gathered all knowledge there was to now regarding democracy and its problems.
And they found the solution. Ramdomly select parlament, for small periods, and asume you can randomly get a thief or worst, so never completely trust them by requiring them to be fully transparent and accountable.
That would sort out all our “democratic” problems.
Btw, romans also fixed the currency/monetary problem.
If only we would learn instead of fall over and over into the same tricks.
All you ever need to know about BREXIT and UK-EU.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvYuoWyk8iU
BREXIT is a wonderful thing and is about the UK not wanting to be controlled from Brussels by bureaucrats and rubber stamped by EU country politicians.
The economic contagion is a minor part of it BUT the UK doesnt want to be dragged down by it.
Also the EU is planning another war with Russia and UK doesnt want any part of it just like in 1933-1945.
They dont want to be involved or pay for the cost of it.
Conservatives in UK also hate EU rules overriding their policies.
Also Germany & France have never since the Common Mkt or EEC wanted UK in the EU – the UK forced themselves into it in the 70s thinking it would be an eco benefit but they have realized it isnt in the long term.
The Eu is a defacto way of Germany and France controlling the continent and the others including Italy Holland etc…have also started to realize the problem.
What needs to happen with EU is for its parliament to be dissolved permanently and go back to the EEC format and keep the Euro but have several Euro currencies where eg Euro 1 would be issued and used by top line EU countries, Euro 2 (worth 90% of Euro 1) would be issued by second line EU countries, and Euro 3 (worth 80% of Euro1) used by third line countries who have eco problems like Greece – so that those EU states having problems could get an eco boost from a lower valued currency. The EU needs to be merely a eco union not a legal one. Its the legal impositions & rigidity thats causing all the problems.
Unless Brexit does happen there will be more strife for UK.
UK has realized also in the past 20 yrs that the EU wasnt performing economically despite all the promises.
It also has realized its 1973 decision to dump its trade relationships with its former colonies and favor the EEC was a mistake.
UK Canada Australia & NZ have combined population and mkt of 127 million people and when you include expat colonies/protectorates like Sth Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Zambia, Tanzania, Malaysia, Hong Kong etc… that figure goes up. There is also a large anglo mkt relationship with US. You are talking of mkt larger than US and EU of 400m+.
Why would UK want to be in EU to sell mfg goods, especially as Germany now does most of the manufacturing that Britain has withdrawn from (eg ship building). UK is a financial management centre mainly these days.
UK doesnt need EU to power along and its been a net drain on it for years.
The only reason it got into it was because UK Labor Govts and their Trade Union supporters.saw it as a means of preventing Troy Govts from changing workers cosy entitlements under EU rules and all the other perks and kickbacks which a lot of UK people dont get.
UK merely needs to re-establish is Commonwealth eco ties like before 1973 after Brexit and it will do well.
Dear Author,
I have not understood the Brexit issue until I read your article today.
I now understand the issues having already read n understood William Stewart’s book The Secret …. . I look forward to reading more of your writings.
Sincerely n with thanks,
Andrew Allman- Brown
Barrister HKong
LSE MSc Int Relations
SAIS Wash DC Passed PhD Comprehensive Exams
One time assistant late Victor Zorza.
One time Research Assistant to Director of Studies RIIA London