Mr. Quigley doesn’t quite write his essay, but stitches it together not with the aid of Mr. Stephens’ opinion pieces, but lets Mr. Stephens do the actual work. Stephens and his fellow pundits are following the Financial Times Party Line of The Rebellion Against the Elites, it has been the rallying cry of those respectable Neo-Liberals for sometime. It is endlessly repeated, in its various iterations, as if it were axiomatically true. That line of argument has become shopworn. Mr. Stephens does not represent a kind of political wisdom!
For an almost alternative view of the Brexiteers see Linda Colley’s essay at the FT:
https://next.ft.com/content/63de3610-07b0-11e6-9b51-0fb5e65703ce
The headline and sub-headline give the game away:
Brexiters are nostalgics in search of a lost empire.
It would be folly for Britain to leave the EU but national pride runs deep, writes Linda Colley
But read the well written and argued essay as another iteration of that Rebellion posed as a political irrationalism of ‘nostalgia for a lost Empire’ . Ms. Colley is a more adept and fluent writer of Capitalist Apologetics in its Neo-Liberal incarnation. In the political world inhabited by Stephens, Colley, and most assuredly Obama, there can be no credible critique of the EU, a cartel with the thinnest veneer of democracy, or the looming victory of the Corporatism of the TPP and TTIP. Another headline/sub-headline from the FT is exemplary of the Obama position:
Obama gives powerful warning against Brexit
Barack Obama has delivered a stinging rebuke to supporters of a British exit from the EU, saying that if the UK left the 28-member bloc it would go “to the back of the queue” in seeking a trade deal with Washington.
Standing alongside David Cameron in Downing Street, the US president delivered a clear warning that Britain would be less secure, less influential and less prosperous if it votes to leave the EU on June 23.
Challenging Brexit campaigners who had told the US president to stay out of the debate, Mr Obama said: “I’ve not come here to fix a vote, I’m offering my opinion. You should not be afraid to hear an argument being made.”
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ba4fd8a4-089c-11e6-b6d3-746f8e9cdd33.html#axzz46qhxs3TN
Or this bit of Neo-Liberal fear mongering from Obama:
Obama tells young British adults to reject isolationism and cynicism
Barack Obama has told an audience of young British adults to reject pessimism, isolationism and cynicism in what might be seen as a coded call to vote in the forthcoming EU referendum.
“I’m here to implore you to reject the instinct to pull back,” the US president told a town hall-style meeting in London.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4161d44a-093e-11e6-9456-444ab5211a2f.html#slide0
But read Mr. Johnson’s telling judgement of the EU, quoted at length by Quigley :
“This project is a million miles away from the Common Market that we signed up for in 1973,” Mr. Johnson wrote. “It is deeply anti-democratic—and much as I admire the United States, and much as I respect the President, I believe he must admit that his country would not dream of embroiling itself in anything of the kind. The U.S. guards its democracy with more hysterical jealousy than any other country on earth.” Mr. Johnson added: “For the United States to tell us in the U.K. that we must surrender control of so much of our democracy, it is a breathtaking example of the principle of do-as-I-say-but-not-as-I-do.”
Cameron lacked the political integrity and acuity to make the referendum about a reformation of the EU, by making ‘staying’ conditional on convening a democratically elected European Constitutional Convention. Whose charge would be to remake the EU into an actual democracy.
Could the ‘fresh thinking’ advocated by Mr. Quigley be a sub rosa advocacy for a Trump presidency?
Political Reporter
