Brexit at Three

Brexit turned three this week, enough time to ask what manner of toddler was born from the referendum that gained Britain its independence. The date was cheered by Prime Minister Sunak, who announced that in the “three years since leaving the EU, we’ve made huge strides in harnessing the freedoms unlocked by Brexit to tackle generational challenges.” We supported Brexit then, and our faith in the rightness of that course is undimmed. Our campaign was for a “hard, complete, unambiguous, permanent, irreversible exit from Europe and a stronger relationship with the pro-liberty democracies.” We favor, as we’ve put it, a “countervailing future” — now present— for Britain that does not include spending the “next century trying to protect the few shreds of sovereignty” that would “be left to it by a decision to stick with the European Union.” Even Brexit’s enemies appear to have made peace with it. The leader of Labor, Sir Keir Starmer, runs under the banner of “Making Brexit Work.” Once Prime Minister Johnson “got Brexit done,” those calling for a return to Brussels generally came to accept that the argument was lost. There will always be those, like those Israelites who missed the cucumbers of Egypt, who seek a return to the way things were. Freedom can be rocky. Independence, too. The National Health Services is a shambles. Bloomberg Economics claims that “Brexit is costing the UK economy 100 billion pounds a year ($124 billion), with the effects spanning everything from business investment to the ability of companies to hire workers.” The usually stalwart Sunday Telegraph observed a “growing sense of ‘Bregret’ taking hold in Britain.” The International Monetary Fund predicts contraction. Even the New York Times, though, admits that “not all these problems” — and we can add runaway inflation to the list — “are wholly, or even principally, a result of Brexit.” Prime Minister Johnson’s 2019 triumph curdled not because of Brexit, but because of partying ways and, more substantively, the embrace by Tories of big government. Or what the Wall Street Journal calls a “high-tax, high-price policy mix.” In addition to pocketbook issues, there are still questions of sovereignty to sort out. Mr. Johnson cut a Brexit-adjacent deal called the Northern Ireland Protocol, which has frayed, with unionists bristling at vestiges of continental control. Meaning, they want more Brexit. They have boycotted the government pending renegotiation, while the EU, full of resentment, fumes that that renegotiation would be illegal.When Brexit won at the polls, we marked the threat to all Europe of a “revanchist Russia” and the importance of unity of the West. That unity, however, could not “be imposed on Europe by a socialist camarilla sitting in Brussels.” What was true then is true now. Feature the pudding. While Germany vacillates and France dithers, independent Britain, with America, has stood firm for Kyiv. Bureaucrats cannot be counted on. In a video posted to Twitter this week, Mr. Johnson wished a “Happy Brexit Day” and urged his countrymen to “shrug off all this negativity and gloom mongering” that has attached itself to Brexit. “Let’s remember,” he urges, the “opportunities that lie ahead.” He cites his country’s vaccine rollout as proof positive that an unshackled Britain can yet reach the broad, sunlit uplands of liberty. May he campaign to secure the independence he won.________This editorial was updated from the bulldog to include a particularly trenchant phrase from the Wall Street Journal.

Brexit at Three

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