Brexit: The Beginning of the End of Great Britain

A couple of recent polls seem to show support for Brexit-ie, Britain leaving the EU:

"Britain's "Leave" campaign opened up a 7-point lead over "Remain" ahead of a referendum on membership of the European Union an opinion poll showed late Monday, while the nation's biggest-selling newspaper urged readers to vote to quit the bloc."

"The result of the June 23 referendum will have far-reaching consequences for politics, the economy, defense, migration and diplomacy in Britain and elsewhere."

"Recent polls are suggesting that momentum has swung towards the "Leave" camp, or a so called Brexit, unsettling investors. "Leave" in recent days has focused its campaign on the issue of immigration."

"According to the YouGov poll for The Times, "Leave" held 46 percent support compared with 39 percent support for "Remain." Undecided voters were 11 percent, while 4 percent won't vote."

"Last Monday The Times/YouGov had reported a 1 percent lead for the "Remain" campaign."

"In another, though not unexpected, boost for "Leave," media tycoon Rupert Murdoch's Sun newspaper called on its readers to vote to quit the 28-member EU."

"The Sun urges everyone to vote Leave. We must set ourselves free from dictatorial Brussels," said the tabloid, which has a circulation of 1.7 million."

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-poll-idUSKCN0YZ2FY

If Britain does leave this likely will be the end of David Cameron who will likely be replaced by someone like Boris Johnson-the former London Mayor who buddies up with Trump.

No shock then that Murdoch supports Brexit-as he supports Trump in the US.

It also may well be the end of Great Britain as we know it. If they do vote Brexit, it probably also means the Scottish decide to leave the UK once and for all.

Meanwhile. Brad Delong and Simon Wren-Lewis look at the issue of Brexit.

Delong comments on Simon Wren-Lewis:

"Some nice backup from the wise Simon Wren-Lewis. The frame of eurocrats vs. democrats is much, much, much too simple to be more than misleading. We want democracy where democracy belongs, with technocracy where it is needed–always acknowledging that circumstances alter cases, mechanism design is complex, and that democracy’s key benefits are as a legitimacy machine and an anti rent-seeking machine, not as a wise leader or wise policy selection machine."

http://equitablegrowth.org/must-read-simon-wren-lewis-8/

This is a contentious point in the mind of populists who believe that democracy is always right and always knows best.

Yet, Delong and Wren-Lewis argue that the problem with the EU is not that it's undemocratic.

It seems to me that Britain has managed to avoid the real problem by not going on the euro. What they gain by getting out of the EU as such is not clear.

Wren-Lewis:

"Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes eloquently and honestly about why he will be voting for the UK to leave the EU. Honestly because he gives chapter and verse on how “anybody who claims that Britain can lightly disengage after 43 years enmeshed in EU affairs is a charlatan or a dreamer.” His argument to nevertheless Leave is straightforward:

“it comes down to an elemental choice: whether to restore the full self-government of this nation, or to continue living under a higher supranational regime, ruled by a European Council that we do not elect in any meaningful sense, and that the British people can never remove, even when it persists in error.”

"Although he does attack the Commission “with quasi-executive powers that operates more like the priesthood of the 13th Century papacy than a modern civil service”, and although he talks about the European Court of Justice on which I have no expertise, most words are spent denouncing those that created the Euro, and here I have some knowledge. He writes:

“Nobody has ever been held to account for the design faults and hubris of the euro, or for the monetary and fiscal contraction that turned recession into depression, and led to levels of youth unemployment across a large arc of Europe that nobody would have thought possible or tolerable in a modern civilized society. … We do not know who exactly was responsible for anything because power was exercised through a shadowy interplay of elites in Berlin, Frankfurt, Brussels, and Paris, and still is.”

https://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/brexit-and-democracy.html

Again, though the problem was not the EU as such but the euro-which Britain was right to avoid.

"Is this really the case? We know that the push for a monetary union came from France in particular. Germany was less enthusiastic, and therefore demanded as a price some central control of national budgets because they feared that a profligate government could cause systemic problems. When those fears proved correct, they doubled down on that central control and also believed a union wide demonstration of austerity was required. I strongly disagree with all of this, and have thought a lot about why it happened, but a lack of democracy is not high on my list of culprits. After all the Eurozone did not cause austerity to happen in the UK and US."

"The fact that democracy was overridden in Greece so cruelly was not the result of actions of unelected bureaucrats, but of elected finance ministers from the other union countries. One reason these finance ministers refused to write off any debt was because of pressure from their own electorates. This exercise in raw political power worked because the Greek people wanted to stay in the Euro. The ‘bad equilibrium’ Evans-Pritchard talks about happens in part because of democracy. The lesson I would draw is that union governments should not lend money directly to other union governments, precisely because governments are democratic and so find it hard to accept write-offs."

"Dani Rodrik talks about an impossible trilemma: how you cannot have all three of ‘hyper globalisation’, national sovereignty and democracy. The key question is whether you can find acceptable arrangements that partially limit each of these rather than abandoning one altogether. That is a tricky issue of design, and it is clear that the Eurozone has not succeeded so far. Too many assume that this failure condemns all attempts at monetary union, and that the only way forward is full political union. If that is what is meant by saying there is no chance of a democratic Europe anytime soon I agree, but I think that form of democracy was always a step too far too soon."

"There is no shortage of ideas of how the Eurozone could be improved that fall well short of political union. It is simply not the case that you can only have one monetary union design, so you cannot reject the whole concept based on one failed experiment. It is quite possible that in the short term Germany or others may block reform, but it is far from obvious why Germany or others should prevent reform in the longer term. Germany does not want to repeat what happened in Greece."

"Above all this, there is a fundamental point. The Eurozone as it currently stands is not immutable, or inevitably dying, or some kind of monster that is bound to ensnare the UK or bring it down. If the Eurozone did become one of these things, we can always exercise our option to leave. In contrast, once we leave, it will be a long time before we can change our minds."

Again, two different issues. The euro-which has been disastrous and which Britain can be proud of refusing to join.

I'm not sure if WL is right that there is a solution short of political union. It is true, that if there weren't the check of democracy in Germany there would never have been the treacherous austerity that has dogged the EU and stunted its recovery.

But I don't see what Britain actually gains in leaving-Obama has already told them there is no waiting trans Atlantic trading bloc waiting for them if they leave.

Beyond that, Britain's own political union may be in danger with Brexit.