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By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Telegraph, London
Friday, June 24, 2016
It is time for Project Grit. We warned over the final weeks of the
campaign that a vote to leave the European Union would be traumatic, and that
is what the country now faces as markets shudder and Westminster is thrown
into turmoil. ...
The stunning upset last night marks a point of rupture for the post-war
European order. It will be a Herculean task to extract Britain from the EU
after 43 years enmeshed in a far-reaching legal and constitutional structure.
Scotland and Northern Ireland will now be ejected from the EU against their
will, a ghastly state of affairs that could all too easily lead to the
internal fragmentation of the Kingdom unless handled with extreme care. ...
Just how traumatic Brexit will be depends on whether Parliament can rise to
the challenge and fashion a credible trade policy -- so far glaringly absent
-- to safeguard access to European markets and ensure the viability of the
City, and it depends exactly how Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Madrid, and
Warsaw react once the dust settles. Both sides are handling nitroglycerin.
Angry reproaches are flying in all directions, but let us not forget
that the root cause of this unhappy divorce is the conduct of the EU elites
themselves. It is they who have pushed Utopian ventures, and mismanaged the
consequences disastrously. It is they who have laid siege to the historic
nation-states, and who fatally crossed the line of democratic legitimacy with
the Lisbon Treaty. This was bound to come to a head, and now it has. ...
Precisely because the political mood is so tense, my preference is for a
national unity government of all parties, especially the Scots and the Ulster
Catholics, to come up with a negotiating plan. Since David Cameron has
honourably offered to stay on as a caretaker, he should lead this emergency
administration. ...
This referendum was never a fight between Britain and Europe, as so widely
depicted. It was the first episode of a pan-Europe uprising against the
Caesaropapism of the EU project and its technocrat priesthood. It will not be
the last.
... For the complete commentary:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/06/2...ot-fallen-af...
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