Losing in Extra-Extra-Extra Time

~Twelve years ago, Bryan Caplan, economics professor at George Mason University, read America Alone and proposed a wager:

If any current EU member with a population over 10 million people in 2007 officially withdraws from the EU before January 1, 2020, I will pay you $100. Otherwise, you owe me $100.

Throwing caution and my children's college fees to the wind, I've recklessly taken this guy's bet.

Eight years later, on June 23rd 2016, the United Kingdom held a referendum: Residents of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and Gibraltar who were citizens of the UK or any other Commonwealth country were asked whether they wished the nation to "leave the European Union" or "remain a member of the European Union". At 10pm the insufferable BBC results coverage began and, never mind the smirky Beeb types, within the first few minutes up popped my old chum Nigel Farage to hint that we may have come up a bit short. So, as I had an early flight to Dublin, I thought I'd turn in for the night.

This tension - between mass opinion and elites that decline to recognize it - is the central feature of political discourse in Brexit Britain, Trump's America, France's fraying Fifth Republic, and much of the Continent.

If the "elites" win, the world enters a Dark Age of oppression. As Orwell said: "A boot stomping on a face. Forever."

It sounds like he lost the bet even though he was right. The U.K. doesn’t officially withdraw until the end of the month. I guess they’ll be quibbling over semantics.

It’s not semantics; bets are precisely worded and the words are assumed to matter. He lost in a good way, and I would be happy to have lost a similar bet. It’s well worth that price to see freedom expand.

When did the UK withdraw, vs when the change in status takes effect makes a difference. If I quit my job on December 31, but my last day is January 31, when did I quit?

Yet, when it came to recovering its own sovereignty, this uniquely nimble and inventive Midwife of Nations stood paralyzed. Not through necessity - by comparison with the above, withdrawal from the EU was simple, and could have been accomplished by December 31st 2016 - but because Mrs May (a deeply dishonest political leader), Mr Bercow (an actively obstructionist Speaker), Baroness Hale (a revoltingly interventionist judge), and Mrs Miller (on behalf of the Remainer business class) actively subverted the will of the electorate. Convinced that the frustrations of each missed deadline would wear down the citizenry, they demanded a "People's Vote" - to repudiate the last vote, which was presumably by non-people or (more to the point) Not Our Kind Of People. To paraphrase Barbra Streisand, people who need People's Votes are the unluckiest people in the world: After last month's election the Remoaners have fallen silent on that.

Classic Steyn. One of the best writers on the planet.

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