For once, a nation has stood for its pride and honour defying bullying pundits and politicians. It said enough is enough; the worm has turned; on June 23, United Kingdom voted to get out of the European Union, rather unexpectedly, dropping a bombshell on world markets. If as some ill-informed critics claim, it is the end of Great Britain and the beginning of a Little England, then why should markets around the globe worry? True, having once being the largest empire the world has ever seen, Britain is a shadow of what it oncewas but, still, it is a force to reckon with, being the fifth largest economy in the world and has always batted far beyond its\u2019 size.<\/p>\n
Like all empires, the British Empire also would have come to an end but the decline was hastened by a war it fought to end the Nazi terror. At the end of the Second World War, it was bankrupt but still went ahead with far reaching social changes like the introduction of the National Health Service which, in spite of the problems it faces at the moment, is the envy of the world. Belated American support, no doubt, helped end the war but UK, in the process, got indebted to USA and the final instalment of that debt was paid during Tony Blair\u2019s time.<\/p>\n
European Union<\/strong><\/p>\n European integration was considered an antidote to the extreme nationalism which led to the devastation of the continent during the Second World War. With this in mind, the European Coal and Steel Community was formed in 1952, which was thought to be “a first step in the federation of Europe.” In 1957, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany signed the Treaty of Rome creating the European Economic Community (EEC). Britain tried to join the EEC in 1963 and 1967 but French President De Gaulle vetoed both times, perhaps forgetting the key role Britain played in liberating France from Nazi German occupation. After De Gaulle\u2019s departure, Edward Heath was able to negotiate British entry to EEC in 1973, which was approved by the British voter in a referendum held in June 1975 during Harold Wilson\u2019s premiership. The European Union was formed with the signing of the Maastricht treaty in November 1993 which gradually enlarged to 28 countries, a number of them being former Soviet Republics.<\/p>\n EURO<\/strong><\/p>\n Germany and France were keen on a monetary union and as a prelude an Exchange Rate Mechanism was established, to which UK joined in October 1990. However, on 16 September 1992, the so-called \u2018Black Wednesday\u2019, UK was forced to withdraw due to pressure on the British Pound by currency speculators like George Soros. The Bank of England spent 6 billion Pounds to stabilize the currency and George Soros is supposed to have made a profit of one billion, earning him the title “the man who broke the Bank of England.<\/p>\n When the common currency, Euro, was finally launched in 1999, UK did not join in spite of grave warnings by all international financial institutions including IMF that UK will lose heavily by this move; well, they were all proved wrong and the UK economy thrived with the British Pound. Further, fortunately, Britain did not have to shoulder the bail-out created by the Euro quagmire of the union of disparate economies.<\/p>\n Political Union<\/strong><\/p>\n The next stage of the union, for enthusiasts, was political, ultimately leading to a United States of Europe. Though this may be the logical conclusion, if true economic union is to be achieved, this was a step too far for the Brits. Thus, in the eyes of most EU members, UK has always been a reluctant partner.<\/p>\n Free movement of labour and threat of mass immigration<\/strong><\/p>\n With the joining of East European countries like Poland in 2004 and vast numbers of their citizens exercising the right of free movement meant UK had a flood of immigrants. Partly due to bad handling by the central government, not providing support for local bodies to provide school places etc., it was natural that resentment grew. Most towns changed character, East-European mini-supermarkets cropping, not one but many, while local shops were closing due to the ripple-effect of the 2008 banking crisis.<\/p>\n EU was hell bent on expanding further. Turkey had been keen on entry for a long time and though the EU and British Government policy is to facilitate entry, there was increasing concern in the public minds because of Turkey\u2019s shift from a secular state, which was the stated aim of the founder Kemal Ataturk, to an Islamic state under the present president.<\/p>\n Angela Merkel\u2019s open invitation to refugees, though not all were genuine, made a bad situation even worse. Though she got plaudits from some quarters there was increasing hostility to immigrants in Germany. Quickly, she had to back-track and called it an EU problem!<\/p>\n Referendum<\/strong><\/p>\n UK Independence Party, more right wing than the right-wing of the Conservative Party was demanding exit from EU and the Conservative Party was heavily divided, forcing Cameron to make the Referendum one of the pledges in the last election manifesto. Again, rather unexpectedly, he won and had no choice but to go for the referendum, which was not a necessity.<\/p>\n He led the \u2018Remain\u2019 campaign and fellow Conservatives Boris Johnson, former Mayor of London, and Michael Gove, Justice Secretary, led the \u2018Brexit\u2019 campaign. Both campaigns used fear as the main tactic; \u2018Remain\u2019 predicting economic disaster on exit and \u2018Brexit\u2019 predicting mass-migration if UK remained in EU.<\/p>\n Cameron\u2019s supporters<\/strong><\/p>\n IMF and all national and international financial institutions lined behind Cameron, more on speculation than facts; after all, they got it badly wrong about the Euro. In the Queen\u2019s Birthday-honours list all who supported him got their due, in advance, but now it turns out to be rewards for failure!<\/p>\n He used the biggest gun, Obama, who went to the extent of saying that if UK decided to leave the EU, it cannot expect any favours and, for any trade deals, will have go to the back of the queue, not \u2018line\u2019 as an American would say raising speculation that the script was written by Downing Street. The very same Obama, the day after the referendum, said whatever relationship UK does not have, the special relationship with US will always be there. What hypocrisy!<\/p>\n Sri Lanka sent a contingent including the \u2018great converter\u2019 to covert SL ex-pats and wonder who footed the bill for a failed venture. Have we started meddling in UK affairs because UK is meddling (or allowed to meddle) in ours!<\/p>\n Result<\/strong><\/p>\n Apparently, Cameron expected to win by 10 points. In fact, just after polls closed Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, conceded that \u2018Remain\u2019 is likely to win but as results poured in, it showed the unexpected and unpredicted. Perhaps, pollsters got it wrong, again, because voters feared they would be branded racist had they stated they would vote to leave.The majority of Brits did not mind facing even an economic downturn to safeguard their sovereignty. That is the greatness of Great Britain!<\/p>\n The Pound may drop, FTSE may drop but they will recover; they have already done so. Britain will enhance the traditional ties with China and India. Professionals from Commonwealth countries will have easier access to the UK, hitherto blocked by unqualified migrants from EU. Britain still has leading inventors like James Dyson and on population basis has more inventors than any other country. British business will find new ties. Even if there is a slump, in the long term, it will at least be what it is today. Other than Germany, UK was the only other net contributor (total contribution minus rebates and grants) to the EU budget. Therefore, the big question is what will happen to the EU?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Dr Upul Wijayawardhana\u00a0Courtesy The Island For once, a nation has stood for its pride and honour defying bullying pundits and politicians. It said enough is enough; the worm has turned; on June 23, United Kingdom voted to get out of the European Union, rather unexpectedly, dropping a bombshell on world markets. If as some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56032\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}