The United Kingdom’s referendum to leave the European Union, or the “Brexit,” as it has been affectionately called, has been a long time coming with strangely not a lot of attention throughout the world until it happened.
Brexit is the highlight of the greater anti-establishment zeitgeist that is gripping politics all around the world. As communications technologies become more readily available, the voices of those that feel cheated them become more readily heard.
This came to a culmination in the U.K. as members of the conservative party not only ran successfully on the promise of a referendum, but actually initiated it as well leading to the slaying of the EU dragon.
Nobody has used the word dragon to describe the ever-complicated EU system but it was pitched as something similar, and the rhetoric is not unique to the U.K. We’ve been hearing it for nearly a year as the U.S. presidential election has been occurring, talk of the “establishment” as this giant monolithic entity that is destroying everything that everybody holds dear. In the British case, economic costs and protection from rampant immigration were reasons to abandon the EU entirely.
But as I have written about before, this monolithic entity portrayed by political leaders lacks the nuance to deal with the problems that people actually elect these leaders for.
The EU does have problems, the most apparent being its colossal bureaucracy and its lack of sovereignty over issues like immigration control.
The only problem is these are issues the U.K. could have fixed. The so-called overbearing regulations on products in the U.K. would still have to be implemented if it wanted to stay in the massive market of Europe. Also, the complaint of immigrants from the continent coming into the U.K. ignore the fact that British workers do the same thing, including all of those U.K. citizens who work in Brussels for the EU.
Brexit’s economic impact has been felt immediately, but the actual separation from the EU will take at least two years. The U.K. and EU have to deal with some effects of the breakup, such as U.K. citizens living and working in Europe, and current economic agreements.
But hey, at least they got their sovereignty back that they never really gave up, so that’s nice.
Kevin Foster is a UF political science senior. His column appears on Tuesdays.
