Brexit and the future

Jason MoorePalma13/01/2019 19:24

Sometimes it is difficult to judge the mood of Britain when you are living on a small island in the Mediterranean, but what I see on the TV news and hear from comments by friends and relatives I would say that the country is deeply split and that healing the rift will take many years. To be honest I have never really understood why Britain has such an issue with the European Union. During its membership of the European bloc the British economy has prospered and Britain has the fifth biggest economy in the world; not bad for a country which lost its industrial base in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Brexit dream or nightmare, depending which side you stand on the debate, was meant to have been a complete role reversal for the country. Leave the EU and concentrate on markets and countries which were abandoned in the 1960s and 1970s. The theory sounds good, but in practice most of the countries which were named as Britain´s major trading partners post-Brexit have now moved on and found their own place in the world. Of course they will trade with Britain and yes there are opportunities out there. But surely isn't it a question of too little too late? Reviving the Commonweath as a major trading bloc would have been a good idea in the 1970s, but now? Even on the military front the British government is talking about opening military bases in the Far East and Caribbean, another complete role reversal.

Times have changed and so has Britain. Britain does have a role to play both on the world stage and in Europe but what concerns me is the damage that Brexit has done.