Mick Hartley

The movement to criminalize Israel

Good piece from Yossi Klein Halevi in the LA Times, on BDS:

As the Middle East devours itself, leaving behind the worst human devastation since World War II, an international movement seeks to delegitimize Israel, the region's only intact society. Israel alone in the Mideast has an independent judiciary, a free press, universal healthcare and religious freedom. Yet the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, or BDS, has singled out the Jewish state as the world's most pressing problem in the early 21st century.

BDS is at once immoral and a threat to peace. Immoral, because it perpetuates the lie that Israel is solely or even primarily to blame for the absence of a Palestinian state — rather than the repeated rejection by Palestinian leaders of peace plans presented over the decades. Immoral, too, because it ignores the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate education on which generations of Palestinians have been raised, an education that denies any place for a Jewish state in any borders....

BDS activists brand Israel as an illegitimate colonialist state, a European transplant in the Middle East. This historical distortion erases 4,000 years of intimate connection between the Jewish people and the land. It ignores another factor of demography: A majority of Israel’s Jews don’t come from Europe, but from the Arab world, descendants of the nearly 1 million Jews effectively expelled from Arab countries where Jews lived for millenniums. Israelis call them the forgotten refugees.

As a means of applying economic pressure on Israel, BDS has failed. Despite the boycott, investments in Israel haven't diminished. Israel is far too integrated into the global economy and the high-tech sector to be isolated.

The attempt to turn Israel into a version of the old, apartheid South Africa will also fail because there are too many people around the world who admire Israel. Israel-lovers are no less passionate in defending the Jewish state than Israel-haters are in seeking to harm it.

The real threat of BDS, though, is more subtle than economic pressure. BDS creates an atmosphere in which Israel is solely to blame for the failure of peace between Jews and Arabs, and it negates the very idea of a nation-state for the Jewish people. BDS takes one of the world’s most complex and heartbreaking conflicts — between two traumatized peoples — and turns it into a morality play between darkness and light. The movement to criminalize Israel is itself a crime. Rather than Israel, it is the BDS movement that must be exposed and ostracized for its bigotry and hatred.

The Corbyn touch

It gets worse...

[Yes, in the current situation that could apply to any number of ongoing disasters. I refer to Corbyn.]

It's the day of the Chakrabarti report into Labour anti-Semitism. What could possibly go wrong?

A Jewish Labour MP has left Jeremy Corbyn’s launch of an antisemitism report in tears after being accused of colluding with the right-wing press.

The embattled Labour leader made a speech outlining the results of a report by the former director of Liberty saying that claiming Jewish people were “part of some kind of media conspiracy…is just wrong”.

But a man handing out leaflets linked to Momentum, an activist group that supports Mr Corbyn, then verbally attacked Ruth Smeeth.

Witnesses said the campaigner accused the Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent North and Kidsgrove of “colluding” with the right-wing media, after refusing to hand a leaflet to Ms Smeeth and taking down her name.

A statement from Ruth Smeeth:

"This morning, at the launch of the Chakrabarti Inquiry into antisemitism, I was verbally attacked by a Momentum activist and Jeremy Corbyn supporter who used traditional antisemitic slurs to attack me for being part of a 'media conspiracy'. It is beyond belief that someone could come to the launch of a report on antisemitism in the Labour Party and espouse such vile conspiracy theories about Jewish people, which were ironically highlighted as such in Ms Chakrabarti's report, while the leader of my own party stood by and did absolutely nothing."

"People like this have no place in our party or our movement and must be opposed. Until today I had made no public comment about Jeremy’s ability to lead our party, but the fact that he failed to intervene is final proof for me that he is unfit to lead, and that a Labour Party under his stewardship cannot be a safe space for British Jews.  I have written to the General Secretary of the Labour Party and the Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party to formally complain about this morning’s events."

"No-one from the Leader’s office has contacted me since the event, which is itself a catastrophic failure of leadership. I call on Jeremy Corbyn to resign immediately and make way for someone with the backbone to confront racism and antisemitism in our party and in the country."

Oh dear.

Then there's this:

Jeremy Corbyn has been criticised for appearing to compare the Israeli state and terrorist groups including Isis in a speech on combating antisemitism in the Labour Party.

The embattled Labour leader was speaking after the launch of a report by the former director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti.

“Modern antisemitism may not always be about overt violence and persecution, though there is too much of that even to this day. We must also be vigilant against subtler and invidious manifestations of this nasty ancient hatred and avoid slipping into its traps by accident or intent,” Mr Corbyn said.

“Our Jewish friends are no more responsible for the actions of Israel or the Netanyahu government than our Muslim friends are for those of various self-styled Islamic states or organisations.”

See what he did there?

Many listeners equated Mr Corbyn’s comments with a direct comparison between the Israeli government and Isis, which calls itself the “Islamic State”.

The Afghan Taliban also styles itself as the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” and countless other Islamist terror groups are waging insurgencies to build their own states governed under a fundamentalist interpretation of Sharia law, including Boko Haram in Nigeria and al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Sam Stopp, a Labour councillor in Wembley, said Mr Corbyn had compared Israel to Isis, writing on Twitter: "For that alone, he should resign. I am red with fury.”

It's the opposite of Midas. Everything Corbyn touches turns to shit.

Update: Stephen Pollard is worth reading:

This morning’s meeting was one of the most extraordinarily appalling events in the history of the Labour Party. It not only shamed Jeremy Corbyn; it shamed anyone who supports his leadership....

Think about what happened for a moment. At an event to launch a report into Labour’s attitude to anti-Semitism, the leader of the Labour Party – in a prepared script – thought the most appropriate thing he could say was: “Our Jewish friends are no more responsible for the actions of Israel or the Netanyahu Government than our Muslim friends are for those of various self-styled Islamic states or organisations."

One might say that the irony that he was launching a report condemning inappropriate comparisons with Israel was lost on him. But, as I will explain, it wasn’t lost at all; it was deliberate....

Death threats

The bright new world of Jeremy Corbyn and his "kinder, gentler" politics:

Labour MPs have been forced to call in the police over death threats in the last 48 hours after they refused to back Jeremy Corbyn, The Telegraph has learnt.

Vicky Foxcroft, a Labour whip, received a call to her constituency office which said: “If she doesn’t support Corbyn I will come down to the office and kick the f*** out of you.”

Police officers had to rush her office, close the shutters and attempt to trace the call after the man said he was on his way and hung up. 

Another MP who resigned over Mr Corbyn’s leadership has received an email naming their child and threatening to kill them. Police have been passed the message and are now investigating. 

Lucy Powell, the former shadow education secretary, received a message telling her to kill herself after announcing she would leave the frontbench over frustrations with the leadership. 

It was among a string of messages laden with expletives and personal abuse which have been passed onto police. 

A fourth Labour MP said they had become so concerned with the torrent of online abuse that they have forwarded the messages to police, while scores of others raised concerns...

Politicians and staff were said to be in tears over the abuse as it comes just weeks after the brutal murder of Jo Cox, the Labour MP for Batley and Spen who was shot and stabbed in her constituency. 

A Labour source said: “Women MPs have been subjected to the most vile stuff – we’re going to rape you, kill you. There have been people in tears today.” 

And, of course, accusations of a Zionist plot to get rid of their man are already comm0n currency among Corbynistas. 

Scotty Moore 1931 - 2016

The legendary guitarist who helped make those early Elvis Sun records such distinctive classics died yesterday at the age of 84. 

He was never much of a showman - but then why even try when you have Elvis up front? Hound Dog, from 1956:

If you're wondering where the Jordanaires are, with all those oohs and aahs, well, it's the recorded version you're actually listening too. But Scotty's guitar fits pretty well with what you see.

That's All Right, of course, was the first: just Elvis, Scotty Moore, and Bill Black on double bass. 

A stylist who was always modest about his achievements:

Moore is given credit as a pioneer rock 'n' roll lead guitarist, though he characteristically downplayed his own innovative role in the development of the style. "It had been there for quite a while", recalled Moore. "Carl Perkins was doing basically the same sort of thing up around Jackson, and I know for a fact Jerry Lee Lewis had been playing that kind of music ever since he was ten years old." Paul Friedlander describes the defining elements of rockabilly, which he similarly characterizes as "essentially ... an Elvis Presley construction": "the raw, emotive, and slurred vocal style and emphasis on rhythmic feeling [of] the blues with the string band and strummed rhythm guitar [of] country". In "That's All Right", the Presley trio's first record, Scotty Moore's guitar solo, "a combination of Merle Travis–style country finger-picking, double-stop slides from acoustic boogie, and blues-based bent-note, single-string work, is a microcosm of this fusion."

Many popular guitarists cite Moore as the performer that brought the lead guitarist to a dominant role in a rock 'n' roll band. Although some lead guitarists/vocalists, such as Chuck Berry and blues legend BB King, had gained popularity by the 1950s, Presley rarely played his own lead while performing, instead providing rhythm guitar and leaving the lead duties to Moore. As a guitarist, Moore was a noticeable presence in Presley's performances, despite his introverted demeanor. He became an inspiration to many subsequent popular guitarists, including Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Page, and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. While Moore was working on his memoir with co-author James L. Dickerson, Richards told Dickerson, "Everyone else wanted to be Elvis—I wanted to be Scotty. Richards has stated many times (Rolling Stone magazine, Life autobiography) that he could never figure out how to play the "stop time" break and figure that Moore plays on "I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone" (Sun), and that he hopes it will remain a mystery.

Here it is: I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone. Though Blue Moon of Kentucky and Mystery Train  - the A side, with I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone the B side on the original Sun single - are, frankly, the better songs.

Here's an older Scotty performing Mystery Train with Eric Clapton.

Obituaries at Rolling Stone, the Independent.

Funny money

From philately to numismatics.

What would you do, in Kim Jong-un's shoes, if you were desperate for cash and your options were running out? Sanctions continue to bite and the issue of foreign labour - North Korean workers under slave labour conditions earning money for the regime - is coming under increasing scrutiny. Well, you might consider firing up those old counterfeiting machines again:

Following initial reports last week that a North Korean agent was arrested in the border city of Dandong in Liaoning Province, northeastern China, multiple sources confirmed Wednesday that the official had been involved in distributing counterfeit U.S. dollars.

After years of circulating counterfeit $100 banknotes, North Korea’s so-called supernotes seemed to have disappeared in recent years. Pyongyang’s forged $100 bills, considered nearly flawless, were a major source of slush funds for the regime and date back to the 1970s. But a major crackdown by U.S. authorities and new security features on banknotes led to a decline in the trade.

The recent arrest indicates their possible resurgence.

"So-called supernotes" because they were so well made.

One source familiar with Beijing-Pyongyang relations told the JoongAng Ilbo that the agent captured by Chinese officials earlier this month brought $5 million in cash into China from North Korea in order to make payments for household goods and home appliances.

These goods were supposedly distributed to the North Korean people during the April 15 celebration of the birthday of the country’s late founder, Kim Il Sung, as well as during its ruling Workers’ Party’s seventh congress held in early May, the first of its kind in nearly four decades.

Because of international sanctions on North Korea, including those in UN Security Council Resolution 2270 passed in March, Pyongyang is being blocked from financial transactions giving it access to U.S. cash.

“The $5 million was exchanged at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and the Agricultural Bank of China for some 30 million yuan [$4.6 million] and then deposited,” the source said.

“But a number of the notes were found to be counterfeit $100 bills when they were run through the banknote counter by a bank employee, so Chinese authorities ordered the relevant account be frozen and arrested the North Korean agent.”

Some banks have note counters that detect counterfeits.

At the time of the agent’s arrest at his home in Dandong earlier this month, Chinese authorities were reported to have confiscated some 30 million yuan and gold bars. This seizure of the cash was actually misrepresented and that was the amount frozen in his bank account.

“There has been talk about the circulation of counterfeit money among businessmen in Dandong who deal with North Korea,” another intelligence source said. “The distribution of counterfeit dollars is a serious crime that damages the financial payment system, so China, taking into account that this may spread internationally, is said to be keeping silent on the case.”

“North Korea’s economy is entering a state of paralysis because of a shortage of dollars, and there is a high likelihood that it is systematically counterfeiting notes and in the process of wide-scale distribution,” the source added.

And, from Yonhap:

High quality U.S. counterfeit notes are circulating in North Korea, raising speculation that the reclusive country may be manufacturing them and handing them off to unsuspecting visitors, sources in Hong Kong said Sunday.

Sources who are familiar with the North said a Hong Kong businessmen who visited Pyongyang recently tried to deposit a US$100 note with a local bank but was told that it was a counterfeit bill.

The entrepreneur, who was not identified, claimed he got the bill just as he was checking out of the hotel he stayed in while in the North Korean capital....

Related to the discovery, a North Korean watcher said there has been speculation that counterfeit notes are circulating in the North without people knowing about it. He said with no usable sensors available in the country, there is no way for ordinary North Koreans to know that the money they have is real or fake. He added that with North Koreans not having access to good color scanners or copy machines, it may be North Korean authorities that are making such notes.

Reflecting this, authorities that checked the bill said that it was a very well-made fake. North Korea's ruling party is known to have operated a special bureau that made counterfeit currency, and in the past, the country was accused of making so-called superdollars.

Chinese media, meanwhile, said that counterfeit Chinese yuan have been found, with some authorities suspecting North Korea of making such notes.

China will be pleased.

Joshua Stanton has more detail.

Stamp collecting

From North Korea's official Rodong Simmun news agency:

The State Stamp Bureau of the DPRK issued two new kinds of individual stamps on the occasion of the June 25-July 27 month of anti-U.S. joint struggle.

Written on the upper parts of the stamps are letters "The June 25-July 27 month of anti-U.S. joint struggle".

One of the stamps deals with the poster "Don't forget, the U.S. imperialist wolves!" condemning the horrible massacres committed by the U.S. imperialists on the land of Korea during the Korean war and calling for a thousand-fold revenge upon them.

Another stamp which deals with the poster "Wipe out the U.S. imperialist aggressors, the sworn enemy of the Korean people!" reflects the mettle of the service personnel of the People's Army to wipe out the aggressors to the last one so that there would be no one left to sign a document of surrender once Supreme Commander Kim Jong Un issues an order and accomplish the historic cause of national reunification without fail.

File under "political philately".

Time for a rethink

John Cassidy, in the New Yorker, is another who doubts that Brexit is going to happen any time soon:

If Cameron had invoked Article 50 on Friday morning, Britain would now be on its way out: the exit process is irreversible. But thanks to the Prime Minister’s clever maneuver—which is surely what it was—the country has some time to reflect on the consequences of Brexit, which are already turning out to be far more serious than many of the people who voted Leave realized. In addition to plunging the country’s political system into chaos, the referendum result has prompted a big fall in the stock market and the value of the pound sterling, and it has raised questions about Britain’s creditworthiness. On Monday night, news came out that Standard & Poor’s had stripped Britain of its triple-A credit rating, another blow to investors. Ordinary people may be more concerned that, with the school holidays coming up, the cost of taking a European vacation, which many Brits of all social classes do every year, has jumped by about twelve per cent.

So far, then, the Leave vote has made people poorer, confirming some of the warnings that the British Treasury and other supporters of the Remain side had issued. Going through with Brexit would also have more lasting implications for British businesses, particularly those in the country’s enormous financial sector. Talk of big European and American banks quitting the City of London, which by many measures is the world’s largest financial hub, are exaggerated. But there is no doubt that some jobs would be relocated to places like Dublin, Frankfurt, and Paris. “The financial center won’t die, but it will get weaker,” John Cryan, the chief executive of Deutsche Bank, which employs about eleven thousand people in London, said on Monday.

Some respected economists are now predicting an economy-wide recession, and then there is the future of the British Union, which is much more ancient than the European Union. As the pro-Brexit writer Fraser Nelson pointed out atThe Spectator on Monday, it is an exaggeration to say that a British departure from the E.U. would inevitably lead Scotland to declare independence from the U.K.—data from opinion polls doesn’t point in only one direction. It can’t be denied, though, that Brexit would create the biggest crisis in the relationship between England and Scotland since the 1707 Acts of Union, and it would also raise serious questions about the future of Northern Ireland, which receives a lot of funding from Brussels, and which, like Scotland, voted to Remain.

If Leave supporters could have foreseen the result of their votes, how many would have changed sides? Vox-pop interviews conducted in the course of the weekend indicated that at least some of them were having second thoughts. And one prominent Brexit campaigner has wavered, as well. “When I put my cross against leave I felt a surge as though for the first time in my life my vote did count. I had power,” Kelvin MacKenzie, the former editor of the Sun, Britain’s biggest-selling newspaper, wrote on Monday. “Four days later, I don’t feel quite the same. I have buyer’s remorse. A sense of be careful what you wish for. To be truthful I am fearful of what lies ahead.”

As reality sets in, E.U. leaders may well be content to let the Brits stew in their own juices for a while. Initial talk of forcing the U.K. to begin the process of leaving straight away has been replaced by calls for patience. Monday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal quoted Angela Merkel’s chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, as saying, “Politicians in London should have the possibility to think again about the fallout from an exit.” To leave now, he added, “would be a deep cut with far-reaching consequences.” A majority of the politicians at Westminster probably agree with Altmaier’s analysis. But what, if anything, can they do to reverse the march toward Brexit?

One possibility being floated by some pro-E.U. campaigners is a vote in the House of Commons against invoking Article 50. During the weekend, a number of constitutional experts pointed out that, under the British system, sovereignty rests in Parliament, and so the Leave vote was purely advisory. “MPs are entitled to vote against it, and are bound to vote against it, if they think it’s in Britain’s best interest,” Geoffrey Robertson, a prominent British barrister, told the Independent. “It’s not over yet.”

To be sure, it’s not. But Parliament simply overriding the result of the referendum may not be a realistic option. More than seventeen million people voted Leave. If their preferences were to be ignored, civil unrest could well result. As Cameron said in announcing his intention to resign, “The British people have voted to leave the European Union, and their will must be respected.”

A more likely outcome is a general election, a second referendum, or both....

All indications are that Cameron’s resignation caught Johnson unprepared. Should he move into 10 Downing Street, he would face dissident backbenchers in his own party, and cries for an early election would be hard to resist. If one were called, the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party, which by then may well have a new and more credible leader to replace Jeremy Corbyn, would probably campaign on a platform that promised another referendum. The opposition parties would get a good deal of support in this from the U.K. business community, and from the dissident Tories.

At this stage, it is impossible to say how all of this will play out: there are too many variables. When I started working on this post, my guess was that the odds of Brexit ultimately happening were about fifty-fifty, and possibly less. In the course of writing, I spoke to a couple of pro-E.U. people in London whose opinions I respect, and both of them said that I was being too optimistic. Passions have been inflamed, they pointed out, and many of the players have staked out positions that limit their flexibility.

Maybe I’ve fallen victim to wishful thinking; I hope not. The Britain I grew up in took pride in its common sense and pragmatism. Affinities for ideology and political extremism were regarded as suspect, European qualities. For the sake of Britain, and also of Europe, I hope that my countrymen and countrywomen rediscover their modest virtues before it’s too late. Watching from afar, it’s clear that a mistake has been made, and that it’s time for a rethink.

I still believe that a move to invoke Article 50 could be thrown out by the House of Commons, on the grounds that the referendum was purely advisory, and sovereignty still resides with parliament. I'm sure that's what a lot of MPs are thinking. But, yes, that's taking a big risk, and UKIP would undoubtedly capitalise on what they'd characterise as a betrayal of the people, and a betrayal of democracy - not that referendums form a part of British democracy anyway. So yes, a general election could, as it were, provide a constitutional cover for parliament to realign and allow itself to vote Remain with a degree of legitimacy.

We'll see.

Funny T-Shirt

It's the Mail, but nevertheless:

Jeremy Corbyn was condemned today for addressing a rally as 'friends' when it was attended by hard-left activists wearing shirts branded with the slogan 'eradicate the right wing Blairite vermin'. 

Harry Potter author JK Rowling highlighted the image on Twitter and it was immediately condemned by Labour MPs.

Islwyn MP Chris Evans joined a chorus of calls for Mr Corbyn to resign immediately as Labour leader as a coup is mounted by almost every one of the party's MPs.

Mr Corbyn addressed the angry and noisy rally in Parliament Square last night, minutes after coming under heavy fire from his colleagues at the regular meeting of Labour MPs. 

Ms Rowling said: '11 days ago, a Labour MP was killed in the street leaving her surgery.

'This T-shirt strike you as funny?'

In a letter to the leader, Mr Evans said: 'Over the past months since you have been elected, the unity of the Labour Party has been threatened.

'Your supporters – particularly those in Momentum – have tried to drive a deep wedge between Labour MPs and the grassroots, fuelled by John McDonnell who, I believe, relishes seeing the party in disarray.

'The hypocrisy of being threatened with de-selection every time myself, or one of my colleagues, has disagreed with you is beyond belief given your and John's past record in the House.

'But this nastiness has come to surround and define your tenure and we witnessed just recently your active encouragement of it.'

Mr Evans recounted the remarks of former shadow Scotland secretary Ian Murray to last night's PLP, in which he raised security fears about MPs.

He added: 'Your response? You went straight from the PLP to address a rally of extreme left who were intimidating individuals leaving Parliament. 

'You addressed them as friends - people who were wearing T-shirts saying 'eradicate the right wing Blairite vermin'.

'This, just days after one of our colleagues was brutally murdered for her political views.' 

Copeland MP Jamie Reed was among other Labour MPs to slam the message, while Dame Margaret Hodge warned today most of the people at the Corbyn-supporting rally were not even Labour Party members. 

You can read the full text of Chris Evans' rather fine letter to Corbyn here.

Hidden angels

Abney Park Cemetery:

 

The outside view

More Brexit commentary worth reading - both from outside the UK. In the Tablet, Liel Leibovitz on the failure of the Remain campaign:

Labour, for long the occupants of 10 Downing, downplayed legitimate concerns shared by growing swaths of the population as being somehow inappropriate, as if only bigots watched the news and concluded that lax immigration policies deserved, at the very least, close scrutiny. Some members of the party have come to see this strategy as misguided: Jack Straw, Labour’s former Home Secretary, for example, recently admitted that setting no restrictions on migration in 2004 was “a spectacular mistake” as well as a “well-intentioned policy we messed up.”

That last sentence is more or less the motto of progressives around the world these days, applicable to everything from former Argentinian President Cristina Kirchner’s disastrous populist economic policies, which led her nation to the brink of ruin, to Obama’s Syria policy, which made the entire world exponentially less safe. Such bungling of basic policies is bad enough; but blaming it on the people who were wise enough to reject it is an insult which, when added to injury, does not go over well anywhere from West Midlands to Ma’alot.

If you’ve listened to the Remainers these last few weeks, you’ve heard this unique and noxious form of condescension in play. “Nationalism is on the march across the Western world, feeding upon the terrors it seeks to inflame,” wrote Harry Potter’s creator, J.K. Rowling, in a spirited anti-Leave screed on her website. For a minute there, you might’ve thought she was writing about Death Eaters, not ordinary folks who feel proud of their country, a normal and fundamentally human sensation viewed by most enlightened progressives these days as just two or three steps above setting fire to a wooden cross while wearing loose-fitting white sheets.

“Finding the present scary?” Rowling continued, “We’ve got a golden past to sell you, a mythical age that will dawn again once we’ve got rid of the Mexicans/left the EU/annexed Ukraine! Now place your trust in our simplistic slogans and enjoy your rage against the Other!” Yup. No other reason to believe in tradition, no other way to connect with national identity: Look at the flag with anything but haughty contempt, and you’re practically on your way to a pogrom.

This vile line of argument was pulsating beneath most pro-Remain campaign efforts, whether self-consciously or not. To make their case, the Remainers marched a phalanx of experts, all of whom sternly warned that departure would be disastrous for this reason or that. They also dialed up the anti-Brexiter rhetoric, accusing EU opponents of being chauvinistic xenophobes and promoting the narrative that only the elderly, the unemployed, or those without formal education supported separation from the EU, an argument that wasn’t much helped by the fact that these demographic markers pretty accurately describe the queen herself.

Could it have been done differently? Imagine a Remainer going on TV and delivering the following speech: We know you’re proud of our country and its heritage; we are, too. We know you chafe at the kind of regulation that often stifles creativity and growth; you have every right to be, and we promise to work hard and push for further reform. And we know you’re concerned about safety; just looking at recent attacks in Brussels itself, you’d be crazy not to. Your fears are valid, as are your hopes, and there’s no reason to argue that pledging our collective allegiance to a customs union riddled with bureaucracy and inept at protecting the wellbeing of its citizens is somehow nobler than honoring the unique and particular glory of England’s storied civilization. But staying is in our best interest, and so let’s. We can have whatever discussion we need to have later, in the comfort of our economic stability.

No one, of course, gave such a speech....

And Michael Totten - :

The British decision to leave the European Union is the most momentous event across the Atlantic since NATO bombed Belgrade. 

If I lived in the United Kingdom, I would have voted to Remain in the EU, but it’s not hard to see why the majority voted to Leave. I wouldn’t want the United States to join the EU for the same reasons the Brexiters want out of it.

The EU is a brilliant idea. Unite splendidly diverse yet like-minded yet nations into a powerful bloc that’s greater than the sum of its parts. Provide minimum standards and guidelines for countries that aren’t as advanced (such as Greece and Romania). Pull down trade barriers and do business in a common market. Open up job opportunities and leg-stretching room for all. (I wouldn’t want to be confined to a place as cramped as Belgium for the rest of my life, but I’m one of those cosmopolitan “elites” everyone likes to complain about nowadays.)

The actually existing EU, though, isn’t so brilliant. It includes all the good stuff, yet it’s crushed by a staggering amount of centralized regulatory bureaucracy and a disregard for the wishes of its individual member states. It’s hardly a gulag empire, but it’s autocratic enough that Europe’s democracy deficit has its own Wikipedia page. And its internally borderless nature is bringing more immigrants than can be absorbed all at once without shocks to the system....

Every racist jackhole in Europe is whooping it up over the Brexit results and pining for more, but even the most welcoming people and nations can only take in so many strangers at any one time, and Europe has never been as good at assimilating immigrants as the US and Canada anyway. (We have a lot more experience on this side of the Atlantic.)

I’ve always been skeptical that the EU would survive beyond the medium-term. Uniting nations as diverse as Britain and Greece isn’t as daft as merging the United States and Mexico into a single polity, but it’s a lot less likely to work than marrying Maine and Texas—or even British Columbia and Quebec. It’s more like combining British Columbia and Argentina. That kind of arrangement can only work if the federation is incredibly flexible.

The EU is not incredibly flexible, and English people don’t appreciate having decisions made for them in Belgium any more than Canadians would enjoy decisions being made for them by Americans, and vice versa.

Britain would have been better off without joining the EU in the first place if it wasn’t going to stay. That would have been fine. Switzerland is flourishing outside the EU, and so is Norway.

It may be a bit premature to say the EU is dead just because Britain left. The British were always the most likely to leave. They never joined with the same enthusiasm as other people. Many have always felt that “Europe” is somewhere else, that it’s the Continent, not the islands, and they refused to scrap the Pound for the Euro.

That said, this could well mark the beginning of the end of the EU. Leaving is no longer unthinkable now that the UK actually did it. If one country can leave, any country can leave, and Euroskepticism has been on the rise all over the place for a while. The EU can get along just fine without Britain, and it would probably get along even better sans Greece, but it won’t survive if France and Germany head for the exits.

Except we haven't actually left yet.

One of the comments on Totten's piece - "From an economical point of view, Remain would have been a no brainer." I think for many who voted Remain - myself included - the economic arguments trumped the political arguments. From a purely political point of view - if such a thing is possible - I would have voted Leave. But the economic arguments for Remain were just too compelling. For many, clearly, it was the politics that mattered most.

Update: Tyler Cowen is worth reading too, for another American view.