Where to begin?!
Until the middle of last week, a large majority of Americans had no idea what was going on with “Brexit”: no idea why such a vote was happening, and no idea what the consequences would be one way or another. Which, to be quite frank with you, didn’t make them any different from a large majority of Brits.
Now, of course, there have been huge moves in global markets, so many more people know something has happened. As the local Brits, people are asking us what’s going on, and what our opinions are. It’s hard to put our personal situation (long sterling assets, still) aside and give a dispassionate answer, and it’s even harder to give a clear explanation about why it actually matters so much – either to Britain or to the world.
It’s almost certainly the case that the UK vote won’t matter as much in the longer term as it seems like it does today, that markets are overreacting as they always do, that those people who are calling for a European banking collapse are hyperventilating drama merchants, and that equities and currencies will rebound given some time. Don’t forget that Europe would take the gold medal in an intergalactic fudging competition: when Ireland rejected the treaty of Lisbon in a referendum in 2008, the result was conveniently put aside and another referendum was held the following year, which received the “correct” result; and in 2005 France rejected the EU constitution in a referendum, which has had no impact at all.
One comment doing the rounds on social media is that Britons have had a bit of superiority complex watching American politics and the improbable rise of the orange man with the stuffed weasel on his head. “America might be the land of the free, but at least in the UK we aren’t stupid enough to consider voting without considering the long-term consequences.” Ah well.
Talking of The Donald, the hilarity of the week to date has been his recent trip to Scotland, where he congratulated the locals on voting to leave the EU….errrrr…. except Scotland wanted to stay in. Hence Scots took to Twitter to insult him. The problem here is that the language used this abuse is peculiarly British. So I’ve had to answer the question from my colleagues “have you actually called someone a spoon?” and “what the hell is a c*ckwomble?” I was more than happy to explain, as you can imagine – and I have actually called someone a spoon, yes.
Finally, I might have mentioned that we have plenty of sport on TV in the office. Unfortunately this means that I saw the “other” Brexit, as a bunch of clueless idiots bumbled their way out of Europe…
South of the Mason-Dixon line 