The sky did not fall. Brexit happened and, ho-hum, life continued apace.
The flocks of “Chicken Littles” needed something new to cluck about. This came on March 29 when UK Prime Minister Theresa May gave formal notice to the EU that Britain was invoking Article 50 and would withdraw from the organization.
Now those who “view with alarm” for a living (and probably even have “alarming” visions when asleep) can imagine a new panoply of disasters for the UK, Europe, the world—and perhaps the universe:
- Scotland will hold another referendum and split from the UK (PM May said the equivalent of “fat chance” in a meeting with Scotland’s prime minister primarily covered by media for the length of leg each woman showed when seated);
- The breakup of the UK would be followed by a union of northern and southern Ireland into one country;
- The election of far right French leader Marine Le Pen would prompt a “Frexit” (and with it the collapse of the EU and the castration of NATO). Some observers describe French contribution to NATO as the need for a banjo when going swimming;
- And who knows what will happen in Germany as Chancellor Angela Merkel wrestles with a rising right wing and continued popular discontent over the million refugees now burrowing into German social services.
What has happened with the official Brexit announcement is not the “beginning of the end” or even “the end of the beginning,” but rather akin to the “beginning of the beginning” so far as revised UK relations with the EU is concerned.
For the UK, Brexit was prompted by frustration: unimpeded immigration (“foreigners taking our jobs”); nanny-state Brussels bureaucrats with nit-picking regulations over British economics; subordination of British law to the European Court of Justice; etc. And an unanticipated global economic improvement has obfuscated potential financial/economic downsides.
At least technically, the negotiations face a real deadline—two years (March 2019), but with both French and German elections in the offing, predictions are both for a slow start to the negotiations but a need to finish them rapidly to permit all EU members to approve a new agreement.
