If the British Vote for Brexit, Will They Get the Greek Treatment?

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A year ago, the citizens of Greece were offered a referendum on whether or not to accept the troika’s “bailout” conditions. The people voted NO, but it mattered not. The bailout proceeded as planned.

As I observed in the post, Greeks Flock to Grassroots Alternative Currencies in Affront to Euro Debt Slavery:

Hundreds of millions of people throughout the Western world are being forced to admit an obvious, yet uncomfortable reality. Democracy is dead. Your vote and your voice doesn’t matter. Not at all.

No group of people understand this as intimately as the Greeks. They voted for one thing, got something else, and in the process were unceremoniously reminded of their political irrelevance. The Greeks are now in a position to show the rest of us how it’s done. Communities need to take matters into their own hands and tackle challenges at the grassroots level. Nowhere is this more impactful and necessary than in the monetary realm, and some Greeks are already leading the charge.

So the Greeks learned the hard way that there’s no such thing as democracy within the European Union. Will the British be taught the same lesson?

Before shedding some light on that question, I want to share some excerpts from an excellent op-ed by Ambrose Evans Pritchard outlining why he supports Brexit. From the Telegraph article, Why I am Voting to Leave the EU:

With sadness and tortured by doubts, I will cast my vote as an ordinary citizen for withdrawal from the European Union.

Let there be no illusion about the trauma of Brexit. Anybody who claims that Britain can lightly disengage after 43 years enmeshed in EU affairs is a charlatan or a dreamer, or has little contact with the realities of global finance and geopolitics.

Stripped of distractions, it comes down to an elemental choice: whether to restore the full self-government of this nation, or to continue living under a higher supranational regime, ruled by a European Council that we do not elect in any meaningful sense, and that the British people can never remove, even when it persists in error.

We are deciding whether to be guided by a Commission with quasi-executive powers that operates more like the priesthood of the 13th Century papacy than a modern civil service; and whether to submit to a European Court of Justice (ECJ) that claims sweeping supremacy, with no right of appeal.

The EU crossed a fatal line when it smuggled through the Treaty of Lisbon, by executive cabal, after the text had already been rejected by French and Dutch voters in its earlier guise. It is one thing to advance the Project by stealth and the Monnet method, it is another to call a plebiscite and then to override the outcome.

Need I remind readers that our own government gave a “cast iron guarantee” to hold a referendum, but retreated claiming that Lisbon was tidying up exercise?  It was no such thing. As we warned then, it created a European supreme court with jurisdiction over all areas of EU policy, with a legally-binding Charter of Fundamental Rights that opens the door to anything.

There has been no truth and reconciliation commission for the greatest economic crime of modern times. We do not know who exactly was responsible for anything because power was exercised through a shadowy interplay of elites in Berlin, Frankfurt, Brussels, and Paris, and still is. Everything is deniable. All slips through the crack of oversight.

Has there ever been a proper airing of how the elected leaders of Greece and Italy were forced out of power and replaced by EU technocrats, perhaps not by coups d’etat in a strict legal sense but certainly by skulduggery?

On what authority did the European Central Bank write secret letters to the leaders of Spain and Italy in 2011 ordering detailed changes to labour and social law, and fiscal policy, holding a gun to their head on bond purchases?

But if we opt to leave, let us not delude ourselves. Personally, I think the economics of Brexit are neutral, and possibly a net plus over 20 years if executed with skill. But it is nothing more than an anthropological guess, just as the Treasury is guessing with its cherry-picked variables.

We are compelled to make our choice at a treacherous moment, when our current account deficit has reached 7pc of GDP, the worst in peace-time since records began in 1772 under George III. 

I am willing to take the calculated risk that our floating currency would act as a benign shock absorber – as devaluation did in 1931, 1992, and 2008 – but it could be a very rough ride. As Standard & Poor’s warned this week, debts of UK-based entities due over the next 12 months amount to 755pc of external receipts, the highest of 131 rated sovereign states. Does it matter? We may find out.

With that out of the way, let’s turn to Yves Smith over at Naked Capitalism for some thoughts on whether or not there will actually be a Brexit, if voters vote for Brexit:

The UK”s elites had been confident that frequent, loud “Don’t Touch That Dial” warnings, with vivid descriptions of all of the horrors that would ensue, would herd voters into line well before the June 23 polling date.

Instead, an online poll commissioned by the Independent showed the Leave campaign to be winning by a stunning 55% to 45%. That revelation coming on top of weak economic data from the US, put Mr. Market in a funk. The Financial Times’ “poll of polls” puts Leave in the lead by a smaller margin, 46% to 44%.

Moreover, the sense is that with only 10 days to the decision date, the Leave campaign is gaining momentum. The Conservatives have realized that having a bunch of toffs, big banks, and intrusive foreign leaders tell British citizens how economically damaging a Brexit would be seems only to have persuaded voters at most that the people at the top of the food chain would take a hit. Voters seem to be in a bloody-minded enough mood to be willing to take a hit if they can inflict some pain on their putative leaders and take the banking classes down a notch or two. Another sentiment (and one that the elites appear to deny) is that voters are willing to pay an economic cost, even a large one, for more national sovereignity. So now Labor leaders have been moved to the front line of the sales campaign.

But even the referendum next week results in “Leave” getting the most results, that does not mean a Brexit will necessarily happen. There are at least two ways that the will of the public could be thwarted.

Peter Hitchens outlines one possibility, that Parliament refuses to honor the vote. From the Daily Mail:

I think we are about to have the most serious constitutional crisis since the Abdication of King Edward VIII. I suppose we had better try to enjoy it.

If – as I think we will – we vote to leave the EU on June 23, a democratically elected Parliament, which wants to stay, will confront a force as great as itself – a national vote, equally democratic, which wants to quit. Are we about to find out what actually happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?

Since the intricacies of Parliamentary procedure are well over my pay grade, I will leave it to our British readers to game out how the Parliament could maneuver to keep the UK from departing the European Union even in the face of “Leave” winning.

Aside from some sort of crude rejection, there is a second, time-honored way that has gotten recalcitrant voters to fall into line: keep sending them back to the polls until they give the desired answer. Admittedly, it make take the European Union giving the UK some real concessions in order for voters to be swayed. For instance, Denmark required approval in a referendum as a condition for signing the Maastrict Treaty. The first vote narrowly turned the pact down. Danish officials then negotiated four exclusions from the treaty, and voters ratified in just under a year later.

This is a question that’s been on my mind for quite some time. It’s hard to believe the people in charge would ever allow voters to exert their will on any issue of substance. After all, we all know democracy is largely a facade at this point across so-called “developed” countries.

Then again, the EU has far less leverage over Great Britain than it did Greece. It’s going to be a very interesting couple of weeks.

For more on what happened to Greece, see:

“This is a Coup” – The Story of How Greece Lost Democracy

Yanis Varoufakis Reveals – Berlin Blocked Greece From Chinese Funding During Crisis

This is Sparta – 1,000 Bitcoin ATMs are Coming to Greece

Yanis Varoufakis on “Europe’s Vindictive Privatization Plan for Greece”

German Study Proves It – 95% of Greek “Bailout” Money Went to the Banks

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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3 thoughts on “If the British Vote for Brexit, Will They Get the Greek Treatment?”

  1. i think it’s pretty clear that the voting ballots were created by a company sympathetic to the eu if not run by them.

    if the ballot maker is compromised, perhaps also are some of the companies involved in counting some of the votes.

    if vote is close, it only takes a few fraudulent bought off counting companies to sway the results.

    most likely the brexit vote will remain to stay in the EU by just a hair because there most certainly IS voting fraud.

    if the powers that be in both london and new york want ‘britain’ to stay in the eu, and we know they do, then most likely they will have their minions rig the vote.

    still, anything is possible. it’s quite possible the vote can be rigged to an extent but not entirely. if you get enough people voting for brexit , it may happen. whether or not the EU will respond in the worst possible way is just speculation. i’d wager a brexit would result in the EU’s problems of greece italy and spain getting a lot worse a lot quicker and they wouldn’t have too much time to worry about britain’s exit, as a whole new set of fires would be getting started as a result, not to mention the turkish ultimatum.

    Reply
  2. Forget what the politian’s are saying on the TV or in the papers. We have a plan for leaving the EU and its called FLEXCIT. The vote is not in the bag, but Cameron is damaged goods what ever the outcome. Any idea Parliament will ignore the will of the people will be met with rather more than the lame response that the Dutch, Danes or Irish offered up when giving the wrong result.

    This is the 48 page summary http://www.eureferendum.com/themarketsolution.pdf

    This is the full version all 421 pages http://www.eureferendum.com/documents/flexcit.pdf

    and the movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GliFMIHiGog

    Farage and all the other politian’s may offer sound bites, but its the people who have worked out how to do it. Our political class is completely useless which is why the people are resting control of our country back.

    Reply
  3. “Are we about to find out what actually happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?”

    Well, I know that in the world of physics, if the object won’t move, it gets destroyed.

    Reply

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