By Mark Rhoads -
Earth to Brussels, there are more unhappy campers in France, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland and Hungary who now say they would like the chance to vote on leaving your anti-democratic bureaucracy unless you wake up and smell the coffee now.
On Thursday, 72 percent of voters in the United Kingdom participated in the highest turnout for any national vote since 1992. UK voters cast 17,410,742 votes (51.9 percent) to Leave the European Union while 16,141,241 (48.1 percent) voted to remain in the EU. But even many leaders of different parties who argued for the remain vote were not enthusiastic about their own position and they publicly admitted that the EU needed to reform the bureaucracy in Brussels.
But UK Prime Minister David Cameron and his pro-remain allies were not able or could do nothing to bring about the EU reforms they claimed were needed. A few pro-EU pols are still in denial and claim that the Brexit camp was only motivated by mean-spirited anti-immigration fanatics. That is not true and the longer EU fans in the UK hold on to that myth the longer they will take to understand their neighbors who differ with them.
Most UK voters did not want to stop trading with European partners in the old common market. But they did want an end to political domination by bureaucrats and an EU president in Brussels who is not elected by the voters and who is barely accountable to the very remote European Parliament. The EU wants to be a super government for all of Europe and the EU elites hate real democracy and they constantly conspire to defeat any referendum on the Rube Goldberg-style EU Constitution that has no Bill of Rights or safeguards for personal freedom because it is only a rag- tag collection of ad hoc treaties.
Moreover the EU elites are prisoners of a socialist world view with heavy regulations that often harm free markets. This was a rejection against the foolish politics of Brussels, not against trade. The reaction of President Obama was typically childish. When he cannot get his way he usually blames the people for not being bright enough to understand what he thinks is his superior wisdom. The reaction of markets around the world was negative on Friday because investors hate change and uncertainty and do not value the freedom of others very highly.
But smart investors will soon get over their shock and start to realize this is a very good time to invest in the future of the United Kingdom with newly-found freedom of action to govern its own affairs without interference from Brussels.
