Ah, Brexit. You promised so much disruption, but teaming up with a global pandemic was a stroke of genius. A way to cap off 2020 as one of the worst years in my lifetime (I’m in my early forties, for reference). I live in the US, have done so since Obama was inaugurated. So my view of Brexit is different than it would be if I lived there. Different, but no happier. Yeah, there’s a “deal”. It’s bobbins.
I voted in the referendum, even though I had no intent to return to the UK. I made sure that I got registered for a postal ballot and returned it as soon as I could. I cast my vote to Remain. The reasons why would make a blog post of its own so I shall only say that I thought it was a terrible idea, because from a purely pragmatic view, our economy was too interwoven with the EU to make a split painless or in the long-term, advantageous.
Yes, I am being stripped of citizenship against my will for no other crime than being born in a country that cannot discard its delusions of greatness or its fear of foreigners. A fear that is only one facet of an underlying racism I had thought was on its way out. I have been as proud of my European citizenship as my British one, and it was jolly useful too, not having to mess around with passports at the borders or worry about visas if I wanted to work in another EU country. A little self-centered perhaps, but no worse than the hordes of Brits who retired to the Spanish costas, the Italian countryside or the French Riviera.
A lot of those retirees voted for Brexit. I still can’t understand their thinking. It’s the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party, UK style. Badgers Pushing In In Front of You Party? Kestrels Knocking Your Pint Over and Refusing to Buy You Another? A Hedgehog Giving You a Funny Look? Something like that. But I digress.
I wanted to talk briefly about a comparison between Brexit and those people on the left and right who call for their state, or even a collective of states, seceding from the union and making their own country. Because some of the issues seem to overlap, not in content but in intent. An alliance of Democratic-leaning states might not work out the way you expect to bring on a new Utopia. There are, of course, all the Democrats, many of them black, whom you would happily discard to the vagaries of whatever rump US states remained. The same Democrats who have delivered the states Biden needed to win the presidency, states that may not join that alliance. Georgia? Arizona? Nevada? Sorry folks but we’re sick of the shenanigans of the Republicans in your state so either move or sucks to be you. Really. Pretty shitty way to treat someone who has worked tirelessly for you despite being in the minority. And don’t you think people have friends and family on both sides of this new international border?
Britain is doing this, for real. Having decided that the EU was going in a different political direction, we are discarding that relationship for the deceptively warm, clear waters of a sovereignty that has never been threatened. We always were in charge of our own destiny. Getting pissed off that we had to (sort-of) switch to metric or make changes to how our meat was produced is no different than the kinds of concessions that any country trading with another might make. But we had to change the color of our passports! Oh yeah, and the biggest point of contention, fish. Yes, you read that correctly.
But the costs are already outweighing any benefits; what those benefits are or will be, I don’t know. Possibly nothing but a blue passport, and a smaller United Kingdom if Scotland decides to ditch us.
Any kind of secession from the Union certainly would raise a lot of the same problems Britain is having with Europe. People claim that discussion of an independent California or some Axis of Blue States is merely talk. Maybe it is. But you know what? If you’re not serious about it, why talk about it? Why subliminally signal to Dems in red states that they don’t matter?
This post is a bit rambly, but it’s a venting session for me. But at the end, here's a plea. Don’t be as stupid as Britain was. We had rumblings about splitting from the EU and demanding a referendum on Europe since forever. But everyone said it was just idle talk, old men in pubs reminiscing about the “good old days” when everything was sold in pounds and pints (Some of them still want to roll back decimalization). And it might have remained as idle talk if David Cameron had shown a bit of backbone — the anti-Europe people were a paper tiger and dwindling in number. Secession from the union is, in my opinion, just as stupid as Brexit, no matter how you slice it. It hurts everyone except the very rich, the poorest are hit the hardest and the benefits are far from clear.
The real lesson I suppose is this: Be careful what you wish for. And don’t hold simple referenda on things as consequential as a complete reordering of your entire society just because you don’t like those people over there.