Quote of the Day: On Brexit: Will the British Choose to be with the World or with the Continent?

Author and businessman Matt Ridley  exhorts the Brits to go for Brexit:

The EU has created an ancien régime ruled by unelected commissioners with the sole power to initiate legislation, with a court able to overrule the elected parliaments of member states.

A regime whose corridors of power are swarming with lobbyists for big business, banks and pressure groups, all intent on getting bureaucrats to stifle innovation to protect their monopolies — and to harmonise the hell out of regional diversity.

This flies in the face of all that we have striven for and shed blood for over centuries, especially in Britain: that laws cannot be passed and taxes cannot be raised except with the consent of the people through their elected representatives. I say again: is this worth it? What is so fearful about the world today that we feel it necessary to be absorbed into such a risky project?

Now that the World Trade Organisation has brought tariffs to an all-time low, the decline of violence has brought deaths in warfare to low levels and the internet and budget airlines and container shipping mean that geographical proximity has never mattered less, we can all feel citizens of the world.

Islands that freely trade with the world, enthusiastically elect their own governments and willingly join alliances are thriving as never before: Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Mauritius (one of Africa’s countries with the highest GDP per capita). They see no need to be enmeshed in the top-down unification of their nearest continents.

In the 1840s at a time when war was common and slavery and autocracy were everywhere, Britain felt confident enough to try an ambitious bottom-up experiment: unilateral free trade. Richard Cobden finally persuaded a Tory prime minister to repeal the corn laws (170 years ago this Saturday) and he would shortly persuade a Liberal one to dismantle tariffs of all kinds.

France followed suit and the world began a race to the top, embarking on a period of unprecedented prosperity.

It was Bismarck’s punitive reparations demands in the wake of the Franco-Prussian war in the 1870s, leading to the “iron and rye” tariffs to protect German industry from the effects of an overvalued exchange rate, that began the 60-year race back to the bottom of protectionism, contributing eventually to the fatal calculation of 20th-century dictators that conquest could trump trade.

The best way to unite the nation is for the British people to turn out on Thursday in large numbers and express the wisdom of their crowd and for us all to embrace that decision. I hope we choose the world, not just a continent.

Like Mr Ridley, I am for Brexit. But Brexit would need to lead by a big margin to win. Otherwise, given the recent British referendum vote on Scotland's independence experience, where the establishment may have cheated, I think Bremain will emerge winner for the same reason. 

And because Brexit could likely spur a domino effect, that may lead to the eventual dismemberment of the EU, this means that the stakes for the June 23 referendum are alot critical especially for the establishment.

As analyst Martin Armstrong rightly pointed out, "What is clear is that the EU will collapse if BREXIT is allowed. There is far too much at stake to allow this vote to be real." 

Nevertheless, it is popcorn time!

Updated to add: Recommended read on Brexit from former US presidential adviser and author Dr. Pippa Malmgren, who says that real governance issues will come into light after the Brexit vote.