Dr. Herbert London of the London Center for Policy Research joined SiriusXM host Stephen K. Bannon on Wednesday’s Breitbart News Daily to talk about tomorrow’s Brexit vote, which could see Britain’s departure from the European Union.
“The British are really voting on their sovereignty,” said London. “Will they be controlled by Brussels, or will they be controlled by their own people? I think this really comes down to whether, in fact, the Brits can move ahead in a manner that’s consistent with the ideas and goals of Britain, or whether in fact they’re going to be tied into a European Union that is obviously corrosive, and not moving ahead, and has no economic vitality.”
He thought the choice might seem less clear to “some of the Brits who are just fearful about change,” but most have “come to a conclusion that this is a very key moment in their history.”
“If they are going to maintain any degree of sovereignty and control the immigration patterns that exist in the country, they’re going to have to vote to leave the Union,” London declared.
Bannon noted that the “Leave” campaign was initially reluctant to portray immigration as a major reason for leaving the EU, but the polls swung strongly in their favor once the topic was raised.
“I think they wanted to avoid the issue, and by and large, the Brexit people haven’t done enough on the immigration issue,” London agreed. “What has been discussed, of course, is the transactional costs. And they’re a factor, there’s no question transactional costs are a factor, and you can mitigate the costs of engaging in certain economic activity as a result of the Union.”
He thought many Britons would decide that having greater economic freedom outweighs the benefits of the EU, and might decide a “union of the Anglosphere” with Canada and Australia makes more sense than remaining tied to the European Union, “where in fact you already have countries that are not in the position of providing any kind of solution to their economic problems.”
“This is an opportunity for Britain. It should be seen as an opportunity,” London said. “If the Brits are going to move ahead, and think of themselves as one of the formidable economic forces in the world, I think that moving ahead with an Anglosphere arrangement makes far more sense than being tied to the EU.”
London said “the world is in disarray, and one of the reasons for it is the fact that you are now seeing populist uprisings everywhere.”
“Not all of it is desirable, and some of it leads to extremist parties,” he continued. “You see it in Austria, you see it with Marine Le Pen in France. But there is no doubt that there is something going on in the undercurrent of politics across the globe. And in my judgment, this is a period not unlike 1848, where so many of the judgments that you assumed would be correct are not correct.”
For example, he noted that if he had predicted Donald Trump’s victory in the Republican presidential primary, driven largely by the issue of immigration, two years ago, “you’d say to me, come on, you’re hallucinating, what are you smoking in the morning?”
“And if I said to you that Hillary Clinton, who has engaged in lying about every issue, and is incapable of telling the truth, and has probably compromised significant American security and the American security apparatus, you’d say to me, no, no, no, that’s not gonna happen,” London continued. “But it has happened, and we as a nation are asking some very fundamental questions about what we want to be, as a people.”
He said this was “not unlike what you’re seeing across the globe,” and predicted that “ten years from now, when someone at Breitbart is going to write a history of the world, there’s no doubt they’re going to say 2015, 2016 is not unlike 1848, when so many of the things in the world were changing — royalty changing, Marx coming on the scene, people fighting over what kind of economic circumstance would exist, Europe looking very different, notions that had been accepted for a considerable period are now called into question.”
“We are seeing, percolating under the surface, all kinds of new movements, that I think in some ways are dangerous, in some ways are appropriate, in some ways democratic, and in some ways anti-democratic,” London said. “But there is great change on the horizon, and we are living through it, even though it’s sometimes difficult to recognize.”
Dr. Herbert London is a contributor to the Encyclopedia of Militant Islam, available from Amazon.com.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
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