There can be no higher question than that of what rules people should be using to deal with each other. For most of human history the rules were imposed by force. You open your market because if you don't, I'll escalate from sending a strongly worded missive all the way up to sending my armies to pillage your countryside.
Recently we've moved to a more contract-based system because using force sucks and you only want to do it if you absolutely have to. But that brings with it its own set of problems. Getting everybody on the same page is hard. Politics largely deals with local perspectives, even when it has to aspire to "the will of the people" when it comes to things like entering into international treaties.
Brexit is history in the making. The EU is a phenomenally novel way of integrating sovereign nation-states into a singular political entity, that happened without war. It's aim is to make something as singularly powerful as the United States, without force. The US had to clear out the West by force in order to achieve its Manifest Destiny. Great that we have it now, but we can't just keep fighting wars to achieve political unity.
That without force part is the problem being solved. Whatever happens here will influence all future non-violent political integrations humanity has going forward.
Make no mistake, this matters. Moreso than just about anything we've done since WW2.
Not just without war, but between nations that've been regularly at war with each other (in various iterations) for well over a thousand years.
It's a pretty remarkable achievement.
Five EU members don't recognize Kosovo as independent, meaning that Kosovo can't even apply for the EU membership. Serbia's making small steps, but won't enter any time soon.
This was a European problem (as in, the continent) that had nothing to do with the EU specifically.
I do have some sympathy with the argument Brexit is a waste of resources, it matters of course but if people were sold lies that can never happen (good trade relations with a trade bloc you just left, low immigration and a strong economy, freedom of services and goods but not of people), that’s a waste of everyone’s time and money for years, it’s not a serious political argument, it’s a deadly pantomime which undermines representative democracy and encourages extremists and fascists. We’ve already seen one MP murdered by extremists (Jo Cox).
MAD means we probably won’t have a major war any time soon, so we’ll be trading with the EU regardless, it’s all semanitics and minor politics.
What was the effect of Columbus sailing across the Atlantic? Maybe nothing! Maybe another sailor would have come 20 years later and American history would have played out just the same with different dates.
Or would two decades of Aztec rule made a difference? Two more decades of Nagualism before the Church started eradicating the libraries and the language? Could books have been copied and hidden? Would political bodies have had more time to adapt? Were there tipping points on the horizon?
Or was America in a steady state just waiting for Europe to come plunder it? Are forces at play which are so much bigger than individuals that nothing we do really matters?
Personally, I think it all matters very much. History does not repeat itself, it’s a story built on every word that came before it. Brexit will frame everything that comes after it, and if we had swapped this decade for a different decade in UK history, we would have a very different story.
Was the Korean war a major war in your book? To the Korean people it was.
In that war, the US's having nukes did not prevent North Korea from starting the war, did not prevent the Soviets from sending MIGs with Soviet pilots against the US army and air force and did not prevent China from sending a million soldiers.
Alternatively, do you claim that the fact that China at that time lacked nukes somehow emboldened China whereas if they had had nukes, they would have hesitated?
The thing is, the people of the UK don't want to be part of that "United States of Europe". It is being forced upon them. The failure of pro-EU people to recognize that they are breeding unrest will lead to civil war, unless they allow the Brits to exit as they've voted to do.
Polls are not reliable (they didn't predict the vote, after all). The vote is the most reliable data we have on the positions of the people of the UK. It is the biggest sample set of any measurement performed, and 1.3M more people turned out to vote leave than to remain.
My assessment of today's youth is that they're rebellious, like any generation of youth. What they're rebelling against is pro-EU, pro-socialism that has been fed to them throughout their childhood. Conservatism is on the rise among the young.
This has been systematically dismantled and much of the responsibility now given to agencies. They don't necessarily share the same aims. Agencies are now major contributors to political parties and a dispassionate approach no longer exists.
A great quote - no one wants innovative bankers. The UK has made this a reality in the political sphere.
A new normal will emerge.
But what is "it"? Sadly, Politics will always be about ideology, and that's never going to be boring or quiet.