As the official deadline for Britain to leave the European Union approaches, Parliament seems determined to override the will of the people and sound the death knell of freedom. Each week, Liberty Nation shines a light on the dark rumblings in the British Isles that portend the betrayal of Brexit.
Beginning May 23, European nations go to the polls to decide which party they most trust to represent them with the European Union. Elections are held every five years to fill the 751-seat Parliament; this year, things might be somewhat different.
The E.U. faces not the usual compliant population that sees the Brussels behemoth as little more than a customs union regulatory board but a population that realizes the bureaucrats hold sway over each member state’s government, sovereignty, and right to self-determination. This paradigm shift has been a long time building, and this week’s election may well be the harbinger of the demise of the European Union.
Brexit, Naturally
While many suppose that the Brexit debate is a purely British issue, and one that must be dealt with on its shores alone, the reality is somewhat different.
Member states across Europe have been sold the idea that the E.U. is a club that seeks to enhance trade and smooth pathways for doing business across the continent, and this is true to some degree. There is no denying that many nations who joined the project have received financial and framework benefits for doing so. But it is so much more than just this.
Since Britain voted to leave the union, European voters have witnessed that it is not quite so easy. The fun analogy of this being a nonpartisan club has been dashed as E.U. leaders have chastised, obstructed, and threatened the U.K. for its audacity in trying to break free. Where is the fun in being a member of a club that refuses to let you leave?
Leader of the Brexit Party Nigel Farage, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, and even The Who frontman Roger Daltrey have all described the E.U. as being like the Mafia. As Michael Corleone once said: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”
Anti-EU Coalition
Yet it is not from Britain alone that the E.U. faces reluctance. Italy’s deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has announced that, with the upcoming election, he will turn the populist surge into a broad coalition of right-leaning parties with the sole intention of complete unilateral reform of the institution.
A few days ago in Milan, Salvini took to the stage, with 11 other populist European parties, to rally the crowds for the May 23-26 vote. Sharing his platform were Dutch Party of Freedom leader Geert Wilders and the leader of France’s National Rally, Marine Le Pen. Salvini said:
”People gathered here are not the far right. The extremists are those who have governed Europe for the last 20 years. Who betrayed Europe, the dream of our founding fathers De Gaulle and De Gasperi? It was the Merkels, the Macrons, the Soros(es), the Junckers, who built the Europe of big finance and uncontrolled immigration.”
It appears that the broad coalition intends not merely to oppose the European Union, but to destroy it and re-create it in its own image.
No Euro, No Future
When the dust settles, it seems likely that the populist parties will still be in the minority. Yet they will be a sizeable minority capable of disrupting any and all legislation that the E.U. Commission tries to put forward.
With such an obtrusive spanner in the works, the E.U.’s stated aims of “ever closer political and fiscal unity” will, at the very least, be delayed. Le Pen, Salvini, and other leaders have expressed concern at being members of the single currency and will be pushing to restore their own national currencies as both a signal to the world that they are an individual nation-state and ever closer unity is no longer on the table.
The E.U. is a struggling Goliath that requires its subjects to accept its authority, and to date member states have acquiesced and followed the union’s aims. Now it faces not a single nation daring to leave the giant’s embrace but an army of Davids, ready and willing to step into the arena.
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