Last Wednesday, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, Theresa May, informed European Union leaders that she would invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which begins the two-year process of the U.K.’s withdrawal from the EU.
This follows the results of the June 2016 referendum when 52 percent of British people voted to leave the EU.
This historical event should be celebrated by all Democrats around the world.
It is rare in politics that a government delivers on the will of its people particularly when the majority of political elites disagree with the majority of the people.
The EU must now come to grips with the loss of its second-largest net contributor while facing populist parties, many of an unsavory nature. European political elites now face a choice.
For decades many believed that membership in the EU was indefinite and that no country could realistically leave the club once it joined.
The British people, despite threats of “emergency budgets” and “massive austerity” in the wake of voting to leave, voted to unshackle themselves from a political union that has failed to address adequately some of the greatest challenges it has faced in the past decade.
For years the British people watched helplessly as the EU failed to address adequately Greece's debt crisis, which has precipitated youth unemployment of 46 percent in that country, and watched the EU’s failure to handle the refugee crisis.
The story of the Brexit vote is one of a free people reasserting their sovereignty and deciding they know better how to control their destiny and borders than do the unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels.
Some senior political figures, such as the former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair have called for a second referendum after the negotiations have concluded in 2019.
This would be par for the course when it comes to countries bucking the will of EU elites.
In 2005 the French and Dutch people voted by large majorities to reject the EU constitution, only to have many of the same provisions imposed on them just four years later in the form of the Lisbon Treaty, which allowed neither the French nor the Dutch to have a referendum.
That same Lisbon Treaty was put to a vote in Ireland, and when the sovereign Irish people voted against the treaty, the EU made them vote again without receiving many concessions from Brussels.
Luckily for the U.K., the Conservative government, under the competent leadership of May, appears to have an iron determination to execute the will of the people despite a majority of conservative members of parliament, including former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, campaigning to stay in the EU during last year’s referendum.
The EU must allow for more democratic reforms in its institutions and return powers back to the member states or it will certainly face a grim future.
jusexton@umail.iu.edu
