As you are probably aware by now, there was a historic vote yesterday in the U.K. in which the people of Great Britain decided to leave the European Union in order to reclaim their national sovereignty. In watching the election returns last night I have to say that the spread between the leave vote and the remain vote was not as close as I thought it was going to be. Indeed, the pollsters were way off the mark in predicting the outcome. Many of them thought that the U.K. would remain or that the margin would be razor-thin. In fact the margin of victory for the leave vote was nearly 4%. The BBC reports the results here with regional breakdowns of the vote totals. As we can see, the final total was 51.9% for the leave camp vs. 48.1% for the remain camp.
Many commentators have been pointing out that this vote demonstrates the reality of a world-wide movement that goes against establishment politicians and the status quo. In the US and in the UK we are seeing more and more citizens dissatisfied with the rule of un-elected bureaucrats who are un-accountable to the people over whom they have power. In the case of this vote we see the British people rejecting the elites in Brussels and reclaiming control over their own country. In the U.S. the rise of an anti-establishment candidate like Donald Trump has been fueled by poor economic performance, loss of jobs to foreign countries, a flood of illegal immigration, an out-of-touch political class and the rise of crony capitalism in which only the well-connected can expect an increasing standard of living while the rest of us are caught in a 1970s style malaise.
This vote is an important step on the road back to national sanity. The self-congratulatory elites have had their chance and have been found wanting. Yet again we see that top-down socialist control, in whatever form it may appear, is a recipe for economic and social disaster. The damage that the elites have done is significant both across the pond as well as here. But real change is possible as we have seen in the U.K. this week. Now it’s up to us here in America to take the next step and clean our own house starting in November.
