One possibility being floated by some pro-E.U. campaigners is a vote in the House of Commons against invoking Article 50. During the weekend, a number of constitutional experts pointed out that, under the British system, sovereignty rests in Parliament, and so the Leave vote was purely advisory.
.. A more likely outcome is a general election, a second referendum, or both. In 2011, Britain switched to a system of five-year fixed-term Parliaments, and under that system the next election isn’t due until 2020. But the Brexit crisis has already generated calls for the fixed term to be junked.
.. Most of the British politicians and commentators I’ve been in touch with in the past few days think that Johnson will be the next Prime Minister. But it’s far from certain that he could deliver what he has been promising: a break from the E.U. that preserves Britain’s full access to the single market. Several European officials have already said that the price of such a deal would be Britain agreeing to free movement of labor
.. If Johnson couldn’t guarantee British firms access to the huge European market, would he still support leaving the E.U.?
.. All indications are that Cameron’s resignation caught Johnson unprepared. Should he move into 10 Downing Street, he would face dissident backbenchers in his own party, and cries for an early election would be hard to resist. If one were called, the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party, which by then may well have a new and more credible leader to replace Jeremy Corbyn, would probably campaign on a platform that promised another referendum. The opposition parties would get a good deal of support in this from the U.K. business community, and from the dissident Tories.
Brexit Right
The U.K.’s vote to leave the European Union betrays a failure of empathy and imagination among its leaders. Will America’s political establishment fare any better?
Instead, they deploy slogans of the status quo: Remain, Stronger Together. These are intended as dark warnings of the costs of change, and intimations that those who vote for it are motivated solely by prejudice and ignorance.
And here is where the failure of imagination proved catastrophic for the established elites. They failed to paint a vision of a better, brighter future.
.. They audaciously gambled that by presenting a stark choice, an all-or-nothing vision of globalization, they could persuade their voters to go all in.
.. “Good on you for ignoring all the fear mongering from special interest globalists who tend to aim for that apocalyptic One World Government that dissolves a nation’s self-determination and sovereignty,” cheered Sarah Palin.
.. Will they display enough empathy to convince angry, hurting voters they understand their pain is real? Will they exercise enough imagination to offer a positive vision of the future, one that promises them that America’s greatness lies ahead, and not behind?
Why Britain Left
The June 23 vote represents a huge popular rebellion against a future in which British people feel increasingly crowded within—and even crowded out of—their own country.
.. U.S. policymakers have long worried about the statism and anti-Americanism likely to prevail in an EU from which Britain is absent.
.. The force that turned Britain away from the European Union was the greatest mass migration since perhaps the Anglo-Saxon invasion. 630,000 foreign nationals settled in Britain in the single year 2015.
.. Is it possible that leaders and elites had it all wrong? If they’re to save the open global economy, maybe they need to protect their populations better against globalization’s most unwelcome consequences—of which mass migration is the very least welcome of them all?
.. If any one person drove the United Kingdom out of the European Union, it was Angela Merkel, and her impulsive solo decision in the summer of 2015 to throw open Germany—and then all Europe—to 1.1 million Middle Eastern and North African migrants
.. That U.S. citizens might have different interests—and that it is the interests of citizens that deserve the highest attention of officials elected by those citizens—went unsaid and apparently unconsidered.
A Lesson From ‘Brexit’: On Immigration, Feelings Trump Facts
For people who are already destabilized by economic strain, those social changes contribute to a feeling that something precious is being lost, that their country is turning away from the things they value and toward a new and unfamiliar future.
.. In Australia, rising anti-immigration sentiment has focused especially on refugees from Southeast Asia, often disparaged as “boat people.” The country’s leadership, under growing popular pressure, created a system of offshore detention centers to warehouse refugees indefinitely rather than allow them onto Australian shores. These centers have been accused of abuses including rape, assault and child sexual abuse.
.. A relatively new body of social science research portrays a group of “authoritarians” who are dispersed across demographics but desire conformity, order and social norms. These can be “activated,” as the scholars describe it, when they feel threatened by social change, and then will seek harsh, punitive policies that target outsiders and restore the status quo.
.. “It’s as though a button is pushed on their forehead that says, ‘In case of moral threat, lock down the borders, kick out those who are different and punish those who are morally deviant.’”
.. In other words, social change and economic stress — exactly what many pro-Brexit communities have been experiencing in recent years — often lead to a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment.