Skip to main content

Leadership vacuum

In the three days since the UK's referendum it has become clear that the Leave campaign were not merely lying about the impact of the EU, they literally had no idea about what would happen if they won.

The backlash has been enormous- I think the level of "buyers remorse" is now so severe that if the referendum was now re-run, that Remain would utterly crush the Leavers.

The problem is that even if the referendum could be re-run, the damage is already done. The differential vote, with Scotland strongly supporting the EU, and England voting to leave has restarted the divisive and difficult argument over Scottish independence. The economic damage is already in the billions, and the next week will see further carnage in the markets.

From the point of view of the EU, there is a clear temptation to push the UK out and try to reconfigure the Union without the uncertainty. In my view this would be a disaster, not just for the UK, but the EU itself. I have never been impressed by the leadership of Mr. Juncker, but I had hoped better of Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council.

The problem now is the total leadership vacuum in the UK. The political system is going to be shaken to the core, and it is entirely possible that the Conservatives and Labour could both face existential challenges. London is in no position to trigger article 50, and will not be able to do so for some time.

Previous referendums in the EU, in France, Ireland, the Netherlands and Denmark have been rerun, and there is now significant pressure inside the UK, that this happens in Britain too. This is something that the EU leadership should welcome and tacitly support.

If they do not, and Brexit actually happens then, as George Soros forecasts today, we could be looking at the total breakdown of the EU. 

The leadership vacuum in London must be met with understanding in Brussels, otherwise the crisis in the markets in the coming week could finally destroy not just the UK, but the EU too.  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Liberal Democrats v Conservatives: the battle in the blogosphere

It is probably fair to say that the advent of Nick Clegg, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, has not been greeted with unalloyed joy by our Conservative opponents. Indeed, it would hardly be wrong to say that the past few weeks has seen some "pretty robust" debate between Conservative and Liberal Democrat bloggers. Even the Queen Mum of blogging, the generally genial Iain Dale seems to have been featuring as many stories as he can to try to show Liberal Democrats in as poor a light as possible. Neither, to be fair, has the traffic been all one way: I have "fisked' Mr. Cameron's rather half-baked proposals on health, and attacked several of the Conservative positions that have emerged from the fog of their policy making process. Most Liberal Democrats have attacked the Conservatives probably with more vigour even than the distrusted, discredited Labour government. So what lies behind this sharper debate, this emerging war in the blogosphere? Partly- in my ...

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop...

The past and the future of Kosova

The declaration of independence that the Parliament of Kosova approved on February 16 th has been greeted by the international community with a certain weary resignation. The seventh country to have been carved out of the wreckage of Yugoslavia now takes its first toddler steps in the face of a certain amount of international dismay. We are told that Serbia has lost the core of its history- yet, how true is this? The province is named after the word for a blackbird in Serbian- Kos - in fact it is named after one particular battlefield: Kosovo Polje -the field of the Blackbirds. The battle took place on June 28 th 1389. The battle took place at a key time for South East Europe, with the Ottoman Sultan Murad seeking to surround the declining Byzantine State and advancing into Europe. The army that faced the Ottomans was led by a Serbian princling , Lazar Hrebljanovic , and the various rulers of the petty states that emerged from the Serbian Empire of Stefan Dusan who had died in 1...