On the Record | Brexit Success Will Inspire Envy for EU

Please see my February 10^th wire for The American Spectator, ‘Brexit Success Will Inspire Envy for EU’:

There is a dayspring in the history of this nation, which perhaps those only who are on the mountaintops can as yet recognize,” Benjamin Disraeli wrote of England. “You deem you are in darkness, and I see a dawn.”

Since January 31, when Britain regained political independence from the European Union, Brexiteers occupy those “dizzying” heights as they contemplate the potential before them. Opponents of breaking free from the bonds of Brussels, meanwhile, remain very much in the dark. For them, it is not the dawn of a new day but the sunset of their hopes to partake of a Euro superstate.

Premier Boris Johnson rallied the nation from 10 Downing Street. “This is not the end, but a beginning,” he said. (Who now denies that Johnson is the heir to Disraeli?) “This is the moment that the dawn breaks and the curtain goes up on a new act in our great national drama,” Johnson enthused, “a moment of real national renewal and change.” Echoing Disraeli, the prime minister promised, “This is the dawn of a new era.”

The work of Brexit is only just begun. Britain remains in a “transition” period, still under EU partial jurisdiction until the end of the year, when it successfully negotiates a trade agreement with its former EU colleagues or strikes forth on a “clean break” Brexit and trades with the EU on World Trade Organization rules.

For all Johnson’s optimism, the prospects of arriving at amiable terms with the EU are grim. Its leaders are demanding “alignment” on matters of trade and regulations, and a “level playing field” with respect to UK’s future taxation and welfare policies. Brussels’ aim is to curtail any economic advantages that cutting taxes and regulations may give to Britain, while simultaneously slipping in a “poison pill” to kill off UK trade agreements on the global stage, principally with America.

Britain, regardless, should consider itself lucky. EU leaders are planning worse to come for the remaining EU-27 member countries.

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My thanks to editor Wlady Pleszczynski of The American Spectator.