Brexit Trumps the United Kingdom

Editorial of The New York Sun | July 31, 2019

The latest panic in respect of Brexit is a warning that it could lead to a breakup of the United Kingdom. “Brexit has become the enemy of the UK union,” is the headline in Nikkei’s world business newspaper, the London Financial Times. It’s worried about Scottish disunion and Irish unification. “Boris Johnson’s ‘do or die’ strategy,” the FT says, “is gambling with Britain’s future.”

To this case of the nerves, The New York Sun says “boo.” The Sun is, after all, the only mainstream American publication to endorse a yes vote on both Scottish independence and Brexit. We issued that editorial — “Dis-United Kingdom?” — in April 2014, as the Scottish referendum was looming. The Scots failed, alas, to take our advice. No wonder they’re still unhappy.

Our reckoning was — and is — that a yes vote on the two questions combined with a Republican accession in America in 2016 could, as we put it, “clear the way for a broad assertion of the values of classical liberalism.” Britons did deliver on Brexit, and American voters elevated Donald Trump to the White House. Not only the FT but also the Guardian fears that a no-deal Brexit could break up the UK...........To Read More.....