Sunday, April 7, 2019

Anarchy In the U.K. (Again)

Brexit is coming.  An the United Kingdom is completely unprepared for it.
The British Parliament has been trying to find a deal that would allow the U.K. to leave the European Union with some sort of financial or economic ties with that bloc, and every effort to come up with a deal that would spare the British people an abrupt transition to being left on its own has failed. The U.K. is scheduled to leave the European Union this coming Friday (April 12) and Tory Prime Minister Theresa May is scrambling to get a deal working with . . . the Labour opposition. Led by a guy some of called a Marxist.  Yeah, that'll work out fine.
Many of the British people who support Brexit pine for an imperial past, a strain that has persisted  long after the Empire was dismantled.  People saw that strain fifty years ago when the British sent troops to put down a pro-independence faction in one of their remaining colonies . . . the West Indian island of Anguilla.  It was obvious when Margaret Thatcher allied herself so closely to Ronald Reagan and dragged her heels negotiating the fate of Hong Kong with China.  And of course, there was the Falklands War.  Britain is still a global power in terms of its influence and multilateral activity, but it's going to end up being a global pretender, the way things are going with a backward scheme like Brexit.
The only consolation I get from watching the Brexit controversy is that there's at least one national government out in the world as screwed up as the American government.    

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