Depth report

　　

Strictly viewed as a theoretical concept, Brexit may become a great idea. However, this idea was peddled by the Brexit camp to voters with a lie, and now it has been mishandled. Take, for example, what a few Brexit politicians have said: David Davis thought that reaching an agreement with the EU would only require a trip to Berlin; Daniel Hannan said that the UK clearly does not Will leave the European single market; Nigel Farage believes that other countries will follow Britain's exit from the European Union. But the result is far from the case. More than a year after the Brexit referendum, the cabinet still cannot agree on what kind of Brexit it wants and when. Following the Iraq war and the global financial crisis, Britain is sliding towards the third disaster in 15 years. Like the two previous disasters, Brexit has exposed three fundamental flaws in Britain's operation.

    The first major flaw is "eloquence governing the country." Brexit started about 30 years ago in the Oxford Union-Oxford University version of the "Children's Council", which regularly organizes witty debates. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove ) And other future Brexitists served as chairman of the debate club in the 1980s. In 1990, Hannan created the "Oxford Campaign for an Independent Britain" (Oxford Campaign for an Independent Britain) in Queen’s Lane Café on Oxford Street. This generation of private school graduates does not want Brussels to govern Britain. It is the prerogative of their class to rule Britain.

    The Brexit referendum was triumphed like an Oxford Debating Society debate: with the help of witty but almost insubstantial eloquence. Remember Johnson's "cake policy theory": He is in favor of owning cakes and eating them. In the UK, humor is used to interrupt conversations—before they become emotional, boring, or involve technical issues.

    They misled the voters. Whenever we stay in Europe say this, the Brexitists accuse us of slandering voters for being confused. I did not say that. On the contrary, most voters are not very interested in policy. They have their own busy lives. Therefore, when they are told that Brexit means saving 350 million pounds a week, and that this money can be invested in the British National Health Service (NHS), they tend to believe that it is true.

    As long as politicians limit their boring word games to the prime minister’s questioning time, while letting civil servants manage the country, they are relatively harmless. But after the referendum, the Brexitists took on the task of handling Brexit. It is like letting the winner of a debate to carry out the engineering design of a spaceship. The result can be imagined. Because the EU’s negotiators favor the rules, the Brexitists cannot impress Brussels with rhetoric. "This is a cultural difference," noted Catherine de Vries, a political science professor at Essex University.

    The real external news continues to shock the Brexitists. Because the canvassing stage before the referendum omitted boring policy discussions, even the ministerial officials in the cabinet have only now discovered that the UK has to pay a large amount of break-up fees to the EU. Who knows that all choices in the real world are sub-optimal choices? The tabloid had not figured it out before. Although always complaining about Britain being ruled by Brussels, few tabloids bother to send a full-time reporter in Brussels.

    The isolation of the ruling class is Britain’s second flaw, and related to it is the third flaw is self-esteem. The reason why Britain became a global power back then was because it was the pioneer of the fossil fuel economy in the 18th century, and because it had a natural barrier as an island country when countries still attacked each other. Now these two major advantages no longer exist. Britain today is like a cute little bonobo who thinks of himself as a gorilla.

    The ruling class does not really believe in making Britain great again. On the contrary, the new strategy they more or less agree with is: "America first, Britain second." This means not only obeying the United States (as reflected in the decision to invade Iraq), but also following the US model (which resulted in a financial crisis). Today, Brexitists are praying for Donald Trump to return Britain's loyalty with a preferential trade agreement.

    At the same time, Britain ignored its real advantages, such as the knowledge economy. On a recent day, I visited several places in central London in a whirlwind, from the barrister’s office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, through the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), the City of London, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (Foreign Office), and finally have a coffee near the Google office building at King's Cross. Almost all of these smart people (now known as unearthed elites) are just bystanders in the farce of Brexit.

    As Orwell said when he tried to use a phrase to describe England: "A family managed by the wrong members." Westminster's unfamiliarity with the knowledge economy created the conditions for the outbreak of the financial crisis. The eloquent ruling the country regarded the City of London as an incredible and magical money tree until 2007 when the tree fell and struck the country hard.

    The Brexitists have been accusing the Remains of "badging Britain"-as if words can shape reality. They also blamed Europeans who hated Britain for their failure to leave the European Union. This is not accurate. Recently, I have been asking European elites-from ministerial officials to bankers-what they think of Brexit. Most of these people are heavily influenced by representatives of British soft power, from Cardiff University to Arsenal and The Smiths. Today, Brexit speeches are damaging their goodwill towards the UK.