This week, Theresa May barely survived a vote of non confidence by her own party. The vote, by the party that hods dear the image of the Crown and Empire, was inevitable. Great Brotain is no longer. The English are now only one of many medium size states in a world domnated by China and an also failing United States. Tne truthfor Britain is that ther only way it can retain any vestage of Imperial glory is to remain as part,a major part, of the EU.
I think there is an underlying issue … in a global world. the extremes of wealth on a national basis must flatten. A world where every assembly line worker is paid $100,000, where a woman sewing sweaters in Bangladesh has a car, a three bedroom home, and her kids go to University is not possible. The same is true of a woman in North Carolina.
So for the Bangladeshi woman to make what she can, the American and Brit will earn less and have a more modest standard of living. Such is what happens when an empire ends.
So workers in once wealthy countries are going to be hurt. Making that hurt worse is the redistribution of wealth .. not just to the 1% but from the wealthy countries to rising economies .. China and India being the obvious examples.
For England, the sensible issue is to work with France and Germany to create an economic and political block. Depending on the US to represent the interests of the English .. much less the Scots .. will just feed the hurt done to the workers. The alternative is England joining Norway, Canada, Japan, and Ghana as one of the asteroids in a solar system dominated by big planets.
Great Britain remains as Great Britain is the union of Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Island (though you should include Guernsey, Jersey and some other channel islands). This union has existed before the English established colonies in the new world or anywhere else. There is still a Commonwealth and out neighbor to the north is a member of the 53 nation union. You are free to argue that the Commonwealth is just the remnant of empire, but it’s a significant remnant.
The real tragedy is that some very smart people in charge of the Conservative Party fooled themselves. They did not want a Brexit, but wanted to pacify what they thought was a vocal minority of their own party. Clever electioneering making immigration the issue rather than exiting the union, not allowing the residing citizens of the various EU countries who would be affected by the outcome no vote is hardly Democratic and the vote was close enough those folks voting in their own interest would have turned the vote to remaining in (now the 27 nations they are from get their say, and the obligation to support their citizens), comments of a former US President may have been enough to turn the vote to exiting. The larger mistake by these intelligent people is that they did not require some type of supermajority to leave, a reasonable thing to do with an issue as complicated and expensive as leaving the EU. The EU would like Great Britain to remain and most likely would love Greece to exit.
It is going to be messy, and the European court has given the British government an out saying Britain could just decide to stay in. This at least helps the Scottish party (and Scotland in general) which would prefer to remain.
The one thing the conservatives are unlikely to do is allow a second referendum even though ultimately it is parliament which will have to finally vote and pass all the bills and laws involved with doing Brexit. The Conservative party now that things are down to the wire does not have the votes. This means most likely the Conservatives are not going to remain in power should Brexit take place or even if it does not. The British government has a crises, but crises have occurred before and will occur again. This is a serious crises, Brexit is and was a mistake, but the British are free to make that mistake. They do still have a remnant of empire, and the question is the long term well being of Britain. This Brexit is the hubris of some very smart politicians in the Conservative party who outsmarted themselves never intending to leave the union, but wanting window dressing, and the view from the window changed to seeing a lot of Muslims coming into Europe and the UK, and brining up concerns about the whole European project since the Turks were stopped at the gates of Vienna (Berlin and Rome).