Brexit.

[Don Giovanni]

... I am a European. I am not a stupid, colonial, imperialist English idiot.

So says Elton John, who also happens to have a biopic/fantasy film being released today in theaters.

With respect to Mr. John, one could also conversely and just as ignorantly declare that they are not stupid, colonial, imperialist European idiots who voted to remain and that they are English, something that makes them distinct from, say, Luxembourgers who are also Europeans. In any case, all could agree that they are sick to death of Brexit; however, they differ in where they lay blame for this debacle. Rather than blame the voters, they ought to blame the EU.

The people who voted Brexit are by and large working, middle class people who rightly feel their national elites have ignored them in favor of corporate interests. They are not Nazis nor whatever other derogatory slur used against their patriotic character. They weren't misled into it like idiots either. They heard the fear mongering, how Britain would suffer financial ruin. They heard Obama when he declared that if Britain left, they would be forced to go to the "back of the queue" on trade talks. This came from the same man who negotiated TPP, which by any measure was an awful trade agreement, unless you owned a factory in Indonesia. He even just about admitted that it wasn't a good trade deal, but was needed to limit China's growing influence. Trump, far from suggesting Britain would be placed at the back of the line, was supportive of Brits who wanted to determine their destiny. He, unlike Obama, denounced TPP. He promised to kill that "partnership" and was good to his word: it was essentially his first act as President. Trump later put tariffs on China instead to limit their influence, but also to bring back economic growth and jobs to the US. He forced American corporations to look for more American laborers rather than cheap, and in many cases forced, labor in countries neighboring China. Judging by their actions, Trump did a better job of looking out for the interests of the American worker who had been neglected in the age of globalization. He didn't act almost exclusively to the benefit of corporate nor foreign interests, like Obama would have done. For these very similar reasons, British voters popularly decided to stop listening to politicians like Obama and began turning to politicians like Trump. And despite the cries of bigotry and ignorance, they decided the EU was, like the TPP, not acting in their best interests.

Ironically, if we are to blame anyone for Brexit, we should blame someone named Junker, president of the EU, who is in fact an heir to Nazi-era German wealth and has idiotically mismanaged a crisis that has resulted in near unmitigated migration that threatens the very fabric of Europe. Who can be bigger idiots then the very leaders who sent billions of dollars to Turkey's Erdogan, an Islamist sympathetic to the cause of Muslim Brotherhood and who has jailed his opponents--including fellow politicians--by the thousands, in order to curb illegal migrant crossings into Europe? These same idiots then threaten fines, in the billions of dollars, against any European country that by sovereign right refuses to accept people how entered another European country by illegal means. Given that consideration, can one blame the average Brexit voter for thinking there was something wrong with that picture and felt that they had enough?

In fact, the migrant crisis is no accident, despite being an act of pure stupidity. It is an act of subterfuge meant to change the social makeup of Europe. To bring in would-be voters who would vote in such a manner as to undermine if not outright deny native populations their political voice.

And to be clear, the issue of migration isn't in and of itself the central matter. Brexit is about the people of Britain taking back their right to determine their own destiny. As actor Michael Caine said, "it was about freedom." The migrant crisis, as problematic as it was, was more a symptom of people in power who were not fulfilling their responsibility, in fact they were acting against their duty, and then not being held accountable for those failures.

Those who favor to remain ought to explain why Junker and his fellow bureaucrats should be permitted make decisions in a deliberately opaque and byzantine fashion meant to stifle popular sentiment. They ought to explain why it's correct for the EU to intimidate countries with billion dollar fines if they refuse migrants who crossed another nation's borders illegally, but then lets Turkey blackmail the whole of Europe with the threat of inundating their countries with further migrant invasions. They need to explain why the EU can force excessive tax and austere spending measures on countries like Greece and then force it's other members to pay out bank bailouts, yet all the while condemning the Greeks for their profligacy, but then safeguarding the greed and moral hazard entitled to the banks. They need to explain why the EU is sabotaging the social makeup of European countries in order to have voting blocks that would permit them to consolidate more power.

As for me, I'd love for there to be a European Union, but not in this way. An EU that submits so avidly to political Islam, as practiced by Erdogan, that submits to the banks that are rewarded for their failures with bailouts, that seeks to empower itself rather than its constituents, and that so recklessly regards borders as an anachronism is an EU that cannot be permitted to exist. It can well be said that Gorbachev's Soviet Union was a lesser evil than the current manifestation of the EU.

[Filikieteria1821]

IMO, I genuinely believe that a lot of people who voted remain do it because it's the popular thing to do. There is a huge drive on social media and in popular culture to push these behemoth globalist entities. The EU could be good thing, but its been soured by a lack of cohesion. It's filled to the brim with bureaucrats and not actual representatives of European peoples. Greece got bullied, cyprus gets bullied, other EU members like portugal, spain and italy have and are being bullied. If you're not making them money, then you become a problem.

This is not to excuse Greece or any other country for spending beyond their means, or implementing a socialist economic system when you don't produce anything to back it up. But there's a better way of doing things and people pay attention to how they're treated.

Juncker prances around drunk in public, all the time, but yea let's stay in the EU because if we don't we'll have no friends and no one to back us up.

[Don Giovanni]

Britain's Supreme Court, which only came into existence in 2009, has overruled the Queen's prorogation of parliament, which came at the PM's request, because the suspension of parliament was the result of a political rather than a legal nature.

That's all fine with me and I think at this point Boris is finished, but I get the distinct impression that Brexit will never actually happen and if that's the case, a good many Brits will feel that the political process is broken and fundamentally flawed. That their democracy is largely illusory and that a political class of technocrats rule the roost.

Similarly, as we speak, impeachment proceedings are moving forward in the US. If impeached, the feeling will be that the Democrats and establishment Republicans, like Bill Weld, had no viable way to beat President Trump in a fair and open election. Moreover, one rule applies to them and another to Trump.

I think if there is a reversal of Brexit and a reversal of Trump's election, we will see secessionists and civil disobedience movements in both the US and Britain, but also in other Western countries where the populations feel similarly aggrieved, as we had already seen in France with the yellow vest movement.

[Don Giovanni]

Boris' Tories won a majority seats yesterday: 86 over his closest opposition, Corbyn's Labour party. The Tories haven't had a majority like this since 1987!

They were expected to win, but not by this much. In fact, the expectation was he would win less than 30 seats, which had raised the prospects of a hung parliament.

It turns out that a lot of people really want to leave the EU and are fed up with waiting for it. The Economists claims this reason for Boris' success:

The secret of his success lies in the simple slogan he adopted from the start: Get Brexit Done. After three-and-a-half years of argument since Britons voted to leave the European Union, the promise to do it has proved alluring. It was also tactically astute, as it enabled Mr Johnson to unite Leave voters behind the Tories. The key moment in the campaign was the decision by Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit Party, not to run candidates in Tory-held seats. This signalled to many hard Brexiteers that they could vote for the Tories instead. The climb in the Conservatives’ poll share from just above 30% to over 40% precisely mirrors the collapse in the Brexit Party vote.

[Reaper]

[Reaper]

Official: UK signs a Free Trade Deal with Japan

This was supposed to take years, be fraught and near impossible. Not only have the UK managed this in less than 3 months, the free trade deal is superior to the EU trade deal with Japan which took over a decade to negotiate, meaning the UK is now in a stronger position than if it had stayed in the EU: