If Brexit Fails, So Does Britain

Hannah Mckay/Reuters

Charles Moore today ends his weekly Telegraph column, which has become required reading for both supporters and opponents of Brexit, with a gloomy forecast that the only way of saving Brexit from its betrayal by a Tory prime minister and government is her replacement by a new leader who then reforms the Tory party along lines that would allow local Tory associations to deselect Remain MPs and replace them with Leavers. His final paragraph reads:

It does not sound very likely, does it? The only reason to think that it might happen is the prospect of the alternative, which is annihilation.

Does “annihilation” sound a trifle over-dramatic? Well, I suspect Moore intends that it should have a shock effect on his readers — a metaphorical shaking of the shoulders to make them realize what’s at stake. What is at stake is not the physical annihilation of the Brits but the absorption of their self-governing democracy into an undemocratic European empire called the European Union. And that prospect justifies the gloomiest of forecasts.

Admittedly, Brexit (or rather, the deceitful betrayal of Brexit by a Remainer government) is a many-sided catastrophe. My NR colleagues, notably Madeline Kearns (to whose plangent op-eds set to music I would happily listen if she would sing them as beautifully as she sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the NRI Ideas Summit last week), have discussed almost all of them with a cousinly sympathy and regret. I hope myself to return next week with a full symphonic treatment of the tragedy. But here let me focus on two aspects of the Brexit story that won’t be transformed or rendered irrelevant by events in the next few days and that illustrate a larger political evolution in Europe and beyond.

Read the rest from John O'Sullivan HERE and follow links below to related opinions:

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