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Brexit

Trump’s Victory is Our Fault

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As it begins to sink in that a political earthquake has occurred in the United States, it is obvious that the media got it wrong in just the same way it got it wrong with the Brexit vote. Wrong in the first instance, they chose to assume that Brexit had simply been an aberration. More importantly, they made this assumption because they had no way of reflecting upon the earthquake in everyday life that is the real context of the current earthquake in politics in the United States — as was the case with Brexit.

Brexit and After

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While many commentators have expressed relief that the financial dust has settled after the decision of UK voters to withdraw from the EU, there is reason to think they relax too soon. Certainly in terms of immediate effects the political shockwaves in the UK are catastrophic and any ‘solution’ for either of the main parties is likely to have a medium (and probably longer) term unraveling effect. On the one hand there is a basic loss of trust within each party, and on the other the implicit perspective that held together general political strategy — a shared sense of positive development, of what is a desirable future — has been punctured. The two orientations reinforce each other.

When the hurly-burly’s done is the battle lost or won?

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Was it a mistake? The voice of the people was heard, certainly. What they were saying isn’t quite so clear, and many comments since from Brexit voters suggest that it was the political caste per se, as much at the EU itself, that was the focus of protest. Whether the vote, which has sent shock waves around the world, and particularly in Europe, will have as its outcome some radical political change—which might be the best possible result—only time will tell. Because, surely, this is in part what the vote meant. This is the 60 per cent of the 40/60 society saying they have had enough.

Bumbling Boris the Confidence Trickster?

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Where EU leaders have got it wrong is that Brexit is less a crisis for Britain (though it is that), than the latest manifestation of a deep-seated European malady. A sense of the risk of the EU unravelling is alive in the air in Germany and France because the fear is that Brexit has launched a dangerous dynamic of EU disintegration that, if uncontrolled, may, like Brexit itself, prove unstoppable. Perhaps this is something of which David Cameron, but also Boris “Opt-Out” Johnson, are painfully aware.