One little-noted facet of Brexit is that Great Britain pays into the EU a lot more than it gets back. When it leaves, what are the net moochers going to do? From Jeff Thomas at internationalman.com:
Back in the late ‘90s, I began saying, “I’ll give the EU twenty years.” At that point, the EU seemed to be going great guns, but I believed that it was an ill-conceived concept that wouldn’t stand the test of time.
There were several reasons for my view. First, I didn’t believe that those countries that were entitlement-focused, such as the Greeks, would ever be as fiscally responsible as, say, the Germans, so the Germans (and other countries where there was a responsible work ethic) would end up subsidizing the Greeks (and to a lesser extent, Spain, Portugal, etc.)
Second, culturally, there was so great a divide between, say, the Austrians and the French, that they could never substantially agree on the union’s laws and directions.
Third, the countries of Europe have been at war with each other countless times over the centuries. They might agree to trade cooperation, but they would never agree to having a former enemy dictate policy to them. And it was baked in the cake that some members would have a louder voice than others, and so, would seek to dominate.
In recent years, we’ve watched the EU stumble repeatedly. Invariably, Brussels has arrogantly assumed that it can dictate to all EU members, and offers few apologies for doing so. The individual countries’ leaders then do their best to explain to their own voters why Brussels should be able to behave like an oligarchy, and the voters understandably have become increasingly angry.
Eventually, the wheels were sure to come off the trolley and, with the UK Brexit vote, we’ve witnessed the first major blow to the survival of the EU.
Whilst the “leave” vote has been acknowledged, we should expect to see politicians placing stones in the road to Brexit, in addition to creating repeated delays. It would also not be surprising to see demands for a recall or even a nullification by the UK Supreme Court.
In the midst of this, we’re already seeing the predictable backpedaling by those politicians and pundits who, up until the vote, were warning that a Brexit would spell unmitigated disaster for Britain. Most of them are now speaking instead of “working on crafting a successful settlement.” (After all, when the sky has failed to fall, they won’t want the public to remember that they ranted like veritable Chicken Littles prior to the vote.)
But, in one sense, the Brexit will unquestionably spell disaster—not for Britain, as was claimed, but for Brussels.
Britain was never fully married to the EU; she was more a “woman on the side,” but in this case, it was the woman that was picking up the tab for the affair. In 2015 alone, the UK paid £13 billion into the EU budget, whilst EU spending on the UK was £4.5 billion. The UK’s “net contribution” was therefore about £8.5 billion—a loss of 65% of its investment. Not money well-spent, considering the trade restrictions heaped on the UK by Brussels.
The £8.5 billion loss, of course, went to support the net-receiver members of the EU, such as the ever-unapologetic Greece.
Most of the above will be common knowledge, but here’s a few pertinent questions that no one seems to be asking—at least not publicly:
At what point does the UK cease to pay into the EU?
To continue reading: Picking Up The UK Tab
