Why Brexit Still Matters

[An Article from Free Life]

Quite a lot has happened since the United Kingdom officially left the European Union on January 31st 2020. Barely two months had passed before we were subjected – with the mere stroke of a pen – to mass house arrest, compulsory mask wearing, absurd distancing rules and a general shutdown of the economy before being threatened with the possibility of mandatory or coerced vaccinations. While, touchwood, the COVID panic seems to have subsided for now, today the West is fighting a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, the global economy is in tatters, inflation is rising, and food and energy security have become a top priority in the rich world. The infliction of impoverishment and destitution in order to fulfil globalist, technocratic agendas has met the response of widespread protests on the continent (and even more notably in Sri Lanka, which has ousted its President).

Moreover, all of this has taken place against the backdrop of an accelerating culture war. Real and imagined divisions or fault lines based on gender, race, sexual orientation and religion have been exploited and exaggerated; Western values are denigrated as “imperialist” and “supremacist”; today, the definition of a “woman” seems to be a major political talking point, and yet even only five years ago it would have been laughed off the agenda.

In light of these cataclysmic developments, it is not unusual to see one or two commentators on the right stating that the now distant memory of Brexit no longer has much importance. Frequent among these is journalist James Delingpole, who has tweeted words to this effect on more than one occasion. In terms of magnitude, it is true that any victory achieved by Brexit seems dwarfed by these later events, together with the growth of state power they have enabled. Nevertheless, I think such a view is short-sighted, and at least the spirit, if not the act of Brexit, remains crucial to resisting the onslaught of tyranny.

It’s important to realise that none of the events described has occurred in isolation. Rather, Brexit was the first battle in what is likely to prove a long war against the consolidation and centralisation of power and decision making authority into an ever dwindling handful of supranational institutions. Such global governance is operated at the behest of elites and technocrats whose radical visions for the social and economic order are scarcely within the interests of the populations they rule.

Prior to 2016, it is likely that the political establishment believed that they could coast along to around the year 2050 (or farther), implementing their series of transformative visions in a piecemeal fashion without encountering any serious opposition. After all, any major ideological differences – such as that between “capitalism” and “socialism” – seem to have been killed off after the demise of Soviet Communism, subsumed by a liberal democratic consensus. It was difficult not to believe that we were destined for a “rules-based” world order of open borders, neo-liberal economic policies, managed trade, “decarbonised” industry, and a global monoculture based on openness and tolerance of all lifestyles, religions, and choices under the banner of “human rights”.

Brexit, and the election of Donald Trump on his “America First” platform shortly after, were the first indications that this cosy vision of the near future was, to put it politely, inaccurate. To anyone who bothered to peer outside of the M25 or the Washington beltway, neither of these two events was a tremendous surprise. But for those living in the bubble we just described – a cadre largely insulated from the negative economic and social consequences of the policies they championed – these elections were an earthquake. Such shock wasn’t manifest solely in what seemed to be the mere unlikelihood of the outcomes; rather, it was the apparent absurdity that bowled them over. How could any right thinking person possibly want to extract a tiny island from one of the world’s largest trading blocs to “go it alone”? How could anyone in their right mind want to hand the potty mouthed, oafish orange man the keys to the Oval Office? After seventy years of progress in the name of global peace and co-operation (under the West’s terms, of course), weren’t we now retrogressing to the dark days of the 1930s – back to fascism, nationalism, racism and war?