“No one in the British or American establishment foresaw the “Brexit” vote that called for a United Kingdom withdrawal from the European Union. The world has to be thankful for hubris and political miscalculation,” wrote journalist Margaret Kimberley, on July 1st, in her column Freedom Rider for the Black Agenda Report.

If there had been any inkling of a Brexit victory, Prime Minister David Cameron would never have agreed to put the matter to a vote.

“Despite its well-cultivated image of progress and enlightenment, the European Union is not a bulwark of peace and international cooperation. It acts as America’s 28-nation gang of enforcers, at the service of US foreign policy. But the countries that make it up are also victims of US power. The United States is the European Union’s invisible senior partner making sure that it keeps the international ‘banksters’ well-funded, expands NATO and makes certain that no one steps out of the US orbit.”

Under American pressure, the EU expanded its membership to include poorer countries whose people then had the right to immigrate to more prosperous countries like the UK. This race to the bottom for workers was not just the concern of xenophobes and racists but of people whose living wage jobs decrease or disappear.

In one of his worst acts of desperation, Cameron invoked the spirit of the much-maligned Vladimir Putin, declaring that a Brexit vote would only benefit the man turned into a villain by Western politicians and media.

The warnings of economic catastrophe were ignored in favor of a desire for freedom from a cooked-up union that exists to make capital flow more easily. It is true that the most visible Brexit campaigners were motivated by anti-immigrant sentiment. But the Labor Party is also under the sway of finance capital and the discredited specter of the criminal Tony Blair.

The media reaction to the vote is proof of how much the establishment wants to stay within the bounds of the neo-liberal project. “Voters who chose the Brexit route have been labeled as stupid, and we are told that 17 million people didn’t know what they were doing”, wrote Kimberley. Every instance of hate speech and hate crime is now blamed on the Brexit vote, as if there was an absence of racism and intolerance before.

Cameron will step down, but there is turmoil in the Labour Party, too. Scotland voted to stay, and its leadership has already said that the referendum will not be binding upon them. There is talk of a second referendum, which makes a mockery of the constant shrieking about democracy in the capitalist world.

Other nations are watching and people in the rest of Europe are making the case for once again having their own currencies and leaving NATO behind. “They want freedom from the big bullies in the school yard, the United States of America and finance capital,” said Margaret Kimberley.

Ordinary people may not be able to articulate their discomfort, but they’ll speak up when given the opportunity to express their unhappiness. Some who voted to leave the EU may be well-versed on the subject, some were anti-immigrant, others were fed up with politicians who lie to them about wars or austerity.

The end result of Brexit may be the end of the United Kingdom. Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU while England and Wales voted to leave. Given another opportunity, the Scottish people may choose independence.

Britain has committed some of the worst criminal acts in history, ranging from slavery to colonialism. Now it acts in concert with the United States to sanction and threaten. For now it is unlikely to play a major role in provoking Russia, which has suddenly moved down on the imperialist to-do list.

Chaos can be a good thing. The current mess of post-Brexit politics is a sign that one part of the capitalist coalition is in trouble. It will not be easy to go back and negate the will of the people. This earthquake can’t be papered over easily and that is a good thing indeed.

The post-referendum recrimination and political chaos benefit humanity. The latest trade deal monstrosity, the Trans Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), is on hold for now and NATO provocations against Russia will take a back seat. Millions of people will get a respite from the US meddling in their lives,” concludes Margaret Kimberley.

July 12, 2016

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A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.