BREXIT: Independence or Balkanisation?

By Ian Greenhalgh on June 23, 2016

Today’s Daily Mail headline

Well, I have to hold my hands up and admit that once again, I was wrong. I have been expecting a Remain victory in the EU referendum from day one, my rationale being that the vote would be rigged in favour of the remain campaign because that’s what the government wanted and more importantly, the real power behind the government seemed to want the same thing.
But the Leave campaign has won. it’s a damn close run thing but they won a clear majority. I’m very surprised and no idea how to feel about this result.
So what does this mean? Will we really leave the EU? David Cameron  is under immense pressure to do what the outcome of the referendum decides we shall do, regardless; therefore he appears to have a stark choice: take Britain out of the EU or resign. He has said he won’t resign, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he does resign in the near future, he’s already a multi-millionaire so he can swan off to his country house with his wads of cash and devote his time to abusing pigs.
Then there is the spectre of Boris Johnson who is bound to be a picture of smugness now he’s won the vote. I have predicted he will be the next prime minister and that is still a prediction I think may come to pass, but first he would have to become leader of the Conservative Party which doesn’t happen overnight.

Humourous but actually quite accurate in how it reflects British views in general

One scenario did occur to me while watching the BBC this morning (who are noticeably morose at the Leave result) is that of a Balkanisation of Britain. The BBC were gloomily telling us how the Scots and Irish are very unhappy because they voted to remain but the English and Welsh voted to leave; already there have been dark mutterings from Scotland about Independence and an independant Scotland remaining in the EU; over in Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams has been bleating about the border and English meddling in Ireland again.

It occurred to me that breaking Britain into separate states, Balkanisation as it’s become known, might be the hidden agenda behind the remain vote. The reason for breaking up nation  states into smaller nations is two-fold; firstly, smaller nations are less powerful, easier to control; secondly, it allows the exploitation of old national conflicts in order to create new wars and wars are good for the ruling elite because they are highly profitable and kill off the brightest and best of the plebs.
It wouldn’t be all that hard to re-ignite old conflicts between the Scots and English or even easier, restart the ‘troubles’ over in Ireland; thus doing to Britain what the 1991 war did to Yugoslavia – destroy it utterly, leaving behind a patchwork of small, relatively powerless successor states and destroying the hope that Serb and Croat could live together in peace.

1977, Scotland beat England at Wembley and the Scots went wild. They rampaged onto the pitch, tearing up pieces of the ‘hallowed turf’ to take home as souvenirs and tearing down the goalposts – legend has it they too were taken back to Bonnie Scotland as war trophies. It is never hard to start a ruckus between the Scots and English, just provide lots of beer, stand back and wait.

It is very early days, too early to predict the machinations that will result from this referendum, but rest assured, there will be machinations behind the scenes and a lot of wheeling and dealing before anything actually happens. I remain convinced that there is a nefarious agenda being played out around Brexit but we will have to wait to see what actions certain players take before we can make an educated guess about that agenda. The future in British politics is looking ‘interesting’. What’s that ancient Chinese proverb? Something about may you be cursed to live in interesting times…