BREXIT!

Come the three corners of the world in arms,
And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue,
If England to itself do rest but true.

Shakespeare King John, 1595

So, the hardly believable has come to pass.  I watched the TV News through the small hours on Friday morning as the BREXIT Referendum results came in.  Like most people I expected Remain to win by a margin of between 5 and 10%.  The final result, which had become increasingly obvious as the hours went by, came as a complete shock.  And I voted to Leave.  Like most people I spent Friday in a state of numb shock wondering what I and we had done.  But, as time has passed, and despite the scorn and criticism heaped on me by Britons and Germans alike, I am increasingly confident that the country has made the right call.

A difficult binary choice to be made.

Living in Germany I am often asked to comment on or explain British attitudes to current issues and affairs.  One of my stock answers about the EU has been to explain that the British attitude to it has always been essentially contractual, whereas for the Germans and especially the Germans, it is an emotional relationship developed as part of their post-war foreign and domestic policy construct.  Most Germans reacted to BREXIT with a mixture of incredulity, extreme sadness and anger.  I have seen some people close to tears.  Its like when a lover unexpectedly announces the end of a relationship held dear by the other half - emotions are running high.  My German wife is extremely upset.

Churchill statue, Parliament Square

But as I said earlier, I think that the British decision is the right one.  It carries significant risk internally and externally and needs to be managed extremely carefully by London and Brussels.  But I am clear that the EU has, through its intransigence and obduracy, just lost a country with the world’s third-largest military and fifth-largest economy and Europe's only global city. The UK vote is a calamity for Brussels and could have been avoided had David Cameron been given a proper renegotiation – or at least something he could plausibly describe to voters as “far-reaching reform”.  Then any reluctant Leave voters, myself included, would have voted Remain.

So where does this leave us all?  Whilst the decision was clear, the margin of victory was narrow.  Were the EU to properly embrace reform, as Mark Rutte, the Dutch Prime Minister recognises, then I and I sense many others, could be persuaded to Remain.  We have two years to work this out.  If we don't, Juncker's vision of Europe will ignobly die under a wave of popular revolt, whilst the UK will embrace the world and prosper.