Brexit has happened and nobody knows how it came about. The bureaucrats on both sides of the English Channel had everything under control – except the ballot boxes. The trouble is that a «madman» called Cameron decided to bet the farm on black again, just as he did with the Scottish referendum, only this time red came up. And of course, when a leader wins a referendum, he becomes the hero of democracy in the eyes of the whole world. But when he loses – and the result of the vote harms many, as seems to be the case with Brexit – he becomes a villain who has put others at a risk that is as unnecessary as it is reckless, all because of his gambling-addicted ego. In such cases, democracy takes a back seat and no one remembers that this result reflects the will of the majority of the people, nor that this is the very essence of our political system.
Although for many the line between the two may be blurred, the economic interests of the financial system should not take precedence over the political system – that is to say, over democratic decisions – even if those decisions are unfortunate or reckless. Europe should not succumb to the temptation to govern the EU according to economic rather than political guidelines, determined democratically. But the reality is that we have an EU whose president is not the result of an electoral process such as that in, for example, the US. And there are extremely powerful lobbies (the Troika) which exert unbearable pressure and which, in practice, wield more power than the unelected president (Juncker). We have a bureaucratic and mammoth organisation whose influence is far removed from the ballot box when it comes to the institutions. And given this structure and the multi-national complexity facing the Union, there are many temptations for bureaucrats to follow the directives of economic powers rather than the will of the electorate. To give one example, Greece voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to reject the conditions imposed by the Troika, and yet the Eurocrats, Draghi and the IMF have forced them to prioritise the economy over democracy.
What we are trying to say is that, at least for the time being, the will of the British people seems to be taking precedence over the EU’s economic interests. It remains to be seen whether or not the withdrawal will ultimately harm the British economy as well – which, let us not forget, is the world’s fifth-largest economy. In the same way, the German economy could certainly survive outside the EU, provided there are appropriate multilateral agreements with the rest of this globalised world. However, based on past experience, we cannot be certain at this stage that the UK’s withdrawal will actually take place, or at least that it will be fully implemented. It would be plausible to imagine that the UK might end up with an intermediate status similar to that enjoyed by countries in the so-called EFTA or European Free Trade Association, of which 3 belong to the European Economic Area (EEA) (Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein), or the fourth (Switzerland), which has signed a multitude of bilateral agreements with the EU. Therefore, leaving the EU does not mean being excluded from Europe or the economic community – far from it. And there are other ways to continue enjoying the benefits of cooperating with the EU without the drawbacks of its border and monetary policies and its multinational chaos.
However, for the time being, the EU’s interpretation of Brexit appears to be that of a spurned, angry and vengeful party. This is not so much because the EU as such feels belittled, but because of the danger that the way has been paved for a gradual but inexorable disintegration of the EU as we have known it until now. That is the future we were already predicting more than three years ago, at a time when Cyprus was under capital controls and sovereign debt was being offloaded onto domestic banks. And the worst thing is that the UK, even whilst regaining a large part of the agreements with the EU via EFTA/EEA, will be in a worse position than the one the EU had granted it in its latest negotiations last February. In other words, ‘Democraciale’ will have done the UK a disservice economically. But let us not forget that, for its part, the economy also did democracy a disservice in Greece. One day we would do well to decide once and for all whether, in the so-called developed world, we wish to prioritise the economy or democracy.