re: #255 Jay C

In short, the Brexit crowd “assumed” that the EU needed them more than they needed the EU.

But you’re right about that sense of scale: the British (well, the English in particular) have always had a superior , and very (literally) insular attitude towards “the Continent”. They seem to think that post-Brexit Britain is going to be something like it was in the Edwardian heyday: when it’s far more likely that it will revert to it’s really old (say, pre-Jacobean) status: i.e. a second-tier power on the geographic and political fringes of Europe. Too big to be ignored, but not powerful enough to be a Major Player.

What the Brexit crowd assumed (and the Tories discovered was bullshit) was that they didn’t need to deal with the “elites” in Brussels, they could just bypass them and go straight to Berlin, to Paris, to Rome, and pressure the individual states of the EU to give them beneficial deals or at least keep things consistent with the existing status quo. What they found was a very unreceptive audience, as most of continental Europe already thinks the Brits received special treatment in the EU (ex: Keeping the pound rather than converting to the Euro) and so see their bellyaching now about losing “sovereignty” as the squalling of a spoiled child rather than an oppressed state. It would be like Merkel exclaiming tomorrow that the German people feel as though they’re not getting a fair shake from Brussels and they’re thinking about leaving.