The bright side of Brexit: Leaving the European Union could create a more just Britain [View all]

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The bright side of Brexit: Leaving the European Union could create a more just Britain


GEORGE LAKEY, WAGING NONVIOLENCE, Salon

http://www.salon.com/2016/07/13/the_bright_side_of_brexit_leaving_the_european_union_could_create_a_more_just_britain_partner/

"SNIP...............



I know British voters who likewise want the chance for a foreign policy more peaceful than the European Union’s. When their peace campaigns bear fruit, they want Britain to be free to implement fresh policies rather than toe the line of the European Union (or, of course, the line of a militarist United States).

Just as important, Brits who have suffered from the post-2008 austerity program of massive cutbacks in health, education and other needs have an excellent reason to want freedom from the E.U.’s rule by the 1 percent. Their fight is with Britain’s own economic elite, and when they start winning again — as they did in the first half of the 20th century — they likewise want the freedom Norwegians have to implement social democracy.

For my book, I checked the international ratings that compare countries by measures of well-being like equality, poverty-prevention, health care, parental leave, elder care, individual freedom, etc. Typically, the ratings put the Nordic countries at the top. In the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development list of the richest countries in the world, the United States is typically at or near the bottom of the ratings, and the United Kingdom somewhere in the middle. Within living memory of older people, the United Kingdom placed higher. Their struggles had achieved more equality and shared prosperity. But the longer they stayed in the European Union, the farther down in the ratings they went.

In the light of that track record for E.U. membership, who can say it was irrational to vote for Brexit? And who can fail to notice that so much of the working class, which has fared the worst in this downward trend, rejected the advice of its Labor Party leadership and voted to get out?


.................SNIP"