Friday, June 24, 2016

U.K's Guardian After #Brexit — A Roundup

I was wondering (out loud, on Twitter last night) how the Guardian (the repository of correct-thinking U.K. progressivism) was going to take Brexit?

Well, now we know.

See, "The Guardian view on the EU referendum: the vote is in, now we must face the consequences":

A prime minister is gone, but that is of nothing compared to the fallout for the economy, our union and Europe. It will all have to be grappled with, and so too will the economic neglect and the social alienation which have driven Britain to the exit door.

The British people have spoken. The prime minister has resigned. Already, the consequences of what the voters said and why they said it have begun to reshape Britain’s future in profound and potentially dangerous ways. The country has embarked on a perilous journey in which our politics and our economy must be transformed. The vote to leave the EU will challenge not only the government and politicians but all of us whose opinions have been rejected.

Britain’s place in the world must now be rethought. That will demand the kind of debate about our alliances that we have not had since the Suez crisis forced a post-imperial reality on Britain. Once again, the country’s very idea of itself will have to be reimagined too. The deep strains on the nation’s fabric that are partly expressed as a pro-European Scotland, Northern Ireland – and London – and an anti-European England and Wales must be urgently addressed. And a new relationship with a Europe that is in no mood to be generous must be negotiated. As a gleeful Nigel Farage pointed out early on Friday, there are also already voices from the populist right in Denmark, France and the Netherlands arguing for their own definitive vote. And while the Bank of England successfully steadied the City after dramatic early falls in the value of shares and a tumbling pound, these things will take careful management if they are not to translate into a new crunch on the banks, a recession or even – as George Soros warned earlier in the week – a sudden inability to finance the balance of payments.

David Cameron – instantly, utterly and forever broken by his defeat on Thursday – grasped that he could not lead the country through the coming turmoil. In a graceful little speech in Downing Street he accepted failure and announced that his successor would be in place by the time of the party conference in October. No speech, however, could have salvaged his standing in the history books. Mr Cameron will go down as the man who gambled the country’s future as a way out of a party difficulty. His original folly was compounded by his refusal to stand firm against his internal enemies on the detailed plans for the plebiscite, despite the authority of last year’s newly won mandate. And then the campaign itself, on which he kept tight control, failed. Project Fear’s fundamental mistake was that it did not understand that far too many Britons, already living insecure and uncertain lives, felt they had little to lose. By focusing on the City and big business, the campaign had nothing to say about the victims of the myriad failures of so many local economies. Mr Cameron won the party leadership by outflanking his rival on Euroscepticism, and in his decade at the top he did nothing to promote a positive vision of the EU. He followed rather than led; and in this sour atmosphere he bet his shirt on the notoriously fickle vehicle of a referendum, and lost.

Now the vote is in, the overriding sense is of surprise and uncertainty. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, the two generals of the leave campaign, tried to instil some authority. There was “no haste” to start exit negotiations, they declared. But within the hour, the Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon declared that in these “materially different” circumstances she would set in process the machinery for a second independence referendum. She and the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, are demanding that they be treated as parties to any negotiations. Moves for a Scottish independence vote will add to the demand for a border poll in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin has already called for such a vote. As campaigners, the leave politicians were sometimes shambolic and often contradictory; now they have been handed victory, they have unleashed forces well beyond their control.

The immediate outlook for progressive and even humanitarian values in the UK is not encouraging...
Oh brother.

The "outlook for progressive and even humanitarian values"?

It's like the world is coming to an end.

And well, frankly, it is for the global left, for which the E.U. is the Promised Land of the Marxist collectivist ideological project. The absolute shock among the Guardianistas that their vision of Utopia was decisively repudiated at the polls recalls nothing short of the horror at the realization of one's imminent if not immediate mortality. It's hard to take, so cognitive coping seeks to blame and ridicule the reactionary, racist, and so-called xenophobic people who're allegedly taking Britain back to the Stone Age.

It's so freakin' glorious to watch I'm beside myself with glee.

Trolling through the Guardian's Twitter feed is like a crystal ball Rorschach test into the global left's psychological torment. There's so much contempt and hatred, combined with lingering disbelief at the audacity of the rubes, that it's too much to link up here at the post. But here's a taste of this deep, dark leftist hate and recimination:
* "Michael Morpurgo: the EU was the most positive political project in my lifetime - Few talked about the huge achievement it was to create such a union once this awful tissue of propaganda, falsehoods and hate began. But at the time of its creation, memories of war made its importance very real."

*  "Arts hit back at Brexit: 'I feel nothing but rage' - Leading figures from the arts – including Lucy Prebble, Anish Kapoor, Ivo van Hove and Barrie Rutter – reveal their shock, anger and revulsion at the vote to leave the EU."

* "The Britain I knew is gone: what Brexit feels like from abroad: David Shariatmadari - I turn my back for what seems like a minute and the country I grew up in no longer exists. And worst of all, it need never have happened."

* "Martin Rowson on the Brexit vote – cartoon: During the campaign the very worst impulses were given free rein and voice - Britain is now not greater but smaller, weaker and more vulnerable."

* "As a lifelong English European, this is the biggest defeat of my political life - Timothy Garton Ash: Britain voting to leave the EU feels as bad as the fall of the Berlin Wall felt good. It will likely spell the end of the United Kingdom, and the impact on Europe itself could be even worse."

* "I’m an Austrian in the UK – I don’t want to live in this increasingly racist country: An Austrian living in the UK and a Briton living in the Netherlands are united in their dismay at the attitudes that the EU referendum result reveals."
There's lots more like this, but you get the picture.

Somehow, considering the country's history, I think Britain will survive.

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