The Brexit Stakes
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

. . . Aaaaaand they’re into the stretch, with “Leave,” the high-spirited come-from-behind filly, now in the lead by a nose. That’s right, folks, a poll just in from YouGov finds that 45% now favor Britain opting for independence from the European Union, while only 41% want to stay. A separate, Obsever/Opinium poll, puts the “Leave” at 43% and “Remain” at 40%. There are still a lot of undecided, but at this point, all eyes are on “Leave.”
This horse, who is being ridden by Boris Johnson, is both running away from European socialism and toward classical British liberalism. “Leave” looked like a winner at the Clubhouse turn, but, earlier this spring, started fading in the backstretch. Then again, “Remain,” the aging thoroughbred who was fattened up on a diet of statism and lies, is being ridden by David Cameron, who has been going to the whip from the start.
There are those who reckon that “Remain” began to fall back after President Barack Obama fetched up at the track, warning Britons not to bet on “Leave.” Mr. Obama, a famed vendor of horse-pucky, threatened that if “Leave” won the Brexit Stakes, Britain would get no help on a trade deal from America, despite the special relationship ratified after America’s own revolution. If Britons were frightened, it failed to show in the polls.
Just this morning, “Remain”’s trainer, the Financial Times, is out with a late editorial importuning “business” to “speak up on the dangers of Brexit.” It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the FT that the reason that business hasn’t been speaking up so far could well have to do with the fact that the great era of British business came in the decades before the EU existed and Britain was independent.
And there on the rail is the Boston-based bookie Lawrence Summers, out with a column on the similarities between the Brexit Stakes and that other most gripping of horse races, the Trump Derby. “Both,” he writes, “could lead to outcomes that would have seemed inconceivable not long ago.” He doesn’t say to whom all this inconceivability was so apparent (certainly not to Mr. Trump or Nigel Farage).
Mr. Summers is carrying on about how Mr. Trump, the first businessman to head a party ticket in decades, would be bad for business. He says the “cheapest” form of stimulus is improving business confidence, but neglects to mention the fact that the aging socialist, Bernie Sanders, has been throwing socialism into the Hillary Clinton’s feed, or another sleek thoroughbred, Elizabeth Warren, is prancing in the barn, and the crowd at the Brexit Stakes is on its feet as “Leave” and “Remain” barrel down the stretch.