Barry Meislin: That’s my take. Since the referendum, it’s all been kabuki. As Hamlet once said (I’m paraphrasing), “To crash or not to crash. That is the question.”

The problem for EUcrats is everyone has noticed the “Keep voting until you get it right” scam.

(One can agree or disagree with the whole idea of the referendum. I happen to believe—if California is any example—that it’s an awful way to decide anything politically, except maybe at the most local level, and that it’s basically antithetical to the American Constitution FWIW in that it’s the kind of “pure” democracy against which most of the Founders fought tooth and nail… But back to the UK…:)

The belief that the EU would in any way assist Britain in the disengagement process (and by so doing encourage others??!!) was/is sheer fantasy. In fact, the opposite.

If Brexit is going to happen, it will have to be the result of a “Gordian knot” decision.

(Whereupon, one will likely discover—dollars to doughnuts—that the UK is in far better shape than the EU….)

The problem is taking that plunge….

(Another problem, it seems, is that everyone “wants to be loved”….)

Furthermore, I have doubts concerning the prospects of the EU, what with mass immigration, the failing economies of Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain (PIGS) and the competence of EU elites to run the continent in an increasingly top-down fashion.

Leaving aside the issues of sovereignty parker rightly brings up, I wonder if long-term the UK is better off economically without the EU.

The situation is inded more complicated than we outside the EU can grok. But when in doubt hold to first principles. Freedom and national sovereignty. It is one thing to contend with the bureaucrats of the UK, it is a dangerous thing to contend with the bureaucrats of the EU. Neither have your best interests at heart, but the first is more controllable, the second is fascism.

At this point I’m in favor of the U.K. crashing out. If T. May were interested in getting out in the best possible fashion, and I suspect she isn’t, she should start lobbying Italy and France to crash out with the U.K. There’s nearly zero chance France would go, but a small chance that Italy might, and it would scare the crap out of the E.U. Then they could renegotiate the Brexit.

There are some complexities here that I wish I understood better. Part of Ireland is in the country of Ireland, and the other part is in the U.K. So that totally free flow of people, goods, and services throughout the E.U. would stop if the U.K. crashes out, and Ireland would thereby be seriously divided.

As a shareholder in Ford Motor Co. I understand they are having a bit of a heart attack. They spent a bundle over many years building production in the U.K. with the understanding that all of the vehicles would then flow freely across the E.U. Oops!