The Brexit is a microcosm of everything wrong with Western democracy [sic].
First, there was no burning desire for a referendum. About 6 million strongly wanted it to begin with. Less than 10% - I won't call it an insignificant minority but no real momentum at all.
This was all about a power play with the Tory party where the Brit equivalent of Donald Trump has come out the victor. It's faux-democracy at its finest.
Those who voted to Leave were found Googling "What is the EU?" Cornwall voted strongly to Leave and then immediately begged to keep their £60M investment grant from Europe. What actually happened was a vote against the status quo from people who have long been disenfranchised with the political system and rightly so. Once again - INEQUALITY is the only politics that matter in the world right now (well, really since the Agricultural Revolution).
Which brings us to the Left [sic] and Europe itself. Despite a broad coalition of the young, what people call the Left, and half the Tory government no one was able to communicate successfully to the disenfranchised a message of why the EU was important. Which is because the EU is, in the main, an unequal alliance whose only real mission is to privilege German and French bankers and investor classes. Who, by the way, had short-term windfalls betting on the predictable decline in a fiat currency (a practice that would be illegal in any sensible and fair and merit-based government in the world).
Western democracy [sic] is broken (see Trump, Clinton for more details). Inequality is the only politics worth talking about in the world. The Brexit started as an internal power struggle amongst a party that, really, represents no more than 10% of Britain. Nobody actually has any idea what will happen.
The most likely outcome is at least a partial privatization of the NHS - which will be a disaster for Britain. History will trace back to the Brexit and the upcoming Trump victory as the final discrediting of the 1% parties in Western democracies which have ruled since the mid-1970s - much like Russian tanks rolling through Prague discredited the Left to this day.
And then Britain, as it was the center of the Industrial Revolution, will find itself the center of the New Left. Brexit / Trump victory / 50 years of neoliberalism will revitalise and reinvigorate Leftist movements everywhere. The yoke of Stalinism will be gone and forgotten, and the new Left with new ideas will rise. Although the Latin American Leftist movements will actually be the movers and shakers, Britain will find itself once again at the center of a Western revolution.
Of course, it will be too late as we will be beyond 450ppm CO2 - well beyond the point of no return for human timescales - and the world will be doomed to be much poorer, much more crowded, much more brutish, nasty, and short.
