Chris Lawton

26 Insightful Quotes About Brexit

Confused what the heck Brexit is? Here are some useful quotes to help you understand what's going on.
Sade Andria Zabala
June 30, 2016
“The more the EU does, the less room there is for national decision-making. Sometimes these EU rules sound simply ludicrous, like the rule that you can’t recycle a teabag, or that children under eight cannot blow up balloons, or the limits on the power of vacuum cleaners. Sometimes they can be truly infuriating – like the time I discovered, in 2013, that there was nothing we could do to bring in better-designed cab windows for trucks, to stop cyclists being crushed. It had to be done at a European level, and the French were opposed.”
— Boris Johnson, There is only one way to get the change we want – vote to leave the EU
Tagged: European Union, Central Control, Universalism, Brexit, Stop Difference
“I think there's a British poet who once said, 'No man is an island' even an island as beautiful as this. We're stronger together. And if we continue to tackle our challenges together, then future generations will look back on ours, just as we look back on the previous generation of English and American citizens who worked so hard to make this world safer and more secure and more prosperous, and they'll say that we did our part, too. And that's important. That's important not just here; that's important in the United States, as well.”
— Barack Obama, Remarks by the President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron in Joint Press Conference
Tagged: Brexit, Britain, The Future of Europe in 2016, Cohesive Continental Identities
“I’m not coming here to fix any votes. I’m not casting a vote myself. I’m offering my opinion. And in democracies, everybody should want more information, not less. And you shouldn’t be afraid to hear an argument being made… If, right now, I’ve got access to a massive market where I sell 44 percent of my exports, and now I’m thinking about leaving the organization that gives me access to that market and that is responsible for millions of jobs in my country and responsible for an enormous amount of commerce and upon which a lot of businesses depend, that's not something I’d probably do.”
— Barack Obama, Remarks by the President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron in Joint Press Conference
Tagged: Brexit, Example of Elegant Argument Setup, Britain
“We don't have a common market in the Americas. But in all sorts of ways, the United States constrains itself in order to bind everyone under a common set of norms and rules that makes everybody more prosperous.”
— Barack Obama, Remarks by the President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron in Joint Press Conference
Tagged: Universalism, Universal Norms, Economic Configurations, One Universal With Many Particulars, Brexit
“Brexit. Grexit. Departugal. Italeave. Fruckoff. Czechout. Oustria. Finish. Slovakout. Latervia. Byegium.”
— Rahul Goma Phulore, via twitter.com
Tagged: Brexit
“Awakening to a stock market plunge and a precipitous decline in the value of the pound that Britain hasn't seen in more than 30 years, voters now face a series of economic shocks that analysts say will only worsen before they improve. The consequences of the leave vote will be felt worldwide, even here in the United States, and some British voters say they now regret casting a ballot in favor of Brexit.”
— Brian Fung, The British are frantically Googling what the E.U. is, hours after voting to leave it
Tagged: Economy, Brexit
“The Founding Fathers had it right. There is an inherent danger coming from direct democracy when combined with an uninformed and manipulated public that has to decide the policy of a country, as we saw on June 23 when 36 percent of eligible voters in the UK chose to exit the European Union. Again, this should not come as a surprise. In one sense, the Brexit referendum illustrates as much the failure of the experts and elected politicians as it shows that relying on the masses and populism can lead to suspect and potentially damaging decisions. In that sense, we have to guard ourselves against direct democracy being hijacked by demagogues and populists lest we have to endure the ‘tyranny of the majority’ at the expense of wiser policies.”
— Franz-Stefan Gady, Brexit: The American Founding Fathers Had it Right: Direct Democracy Is a Dead Duck
Tagged: Democracy, Politics, Brexit, Ignorance
“David Cameron... The man who arrived as leader of his party pledging to purge its obsession with ‘banging on about Europe’ has blown himself up over Europe.”
— Andrew Rawnsley, Brexit: a journey into the unknown for a country never before so divided
Tagged: Brexit, Politics
“It will be a formidable challenge for Britain’s next prime minister to make an economic, diplomatic and political success out of Brexit. Or, to set the bar at a more realistic level, to contain the damage.”
— Andrew Rawnsley, Brexit: a journey into the unknown for a country never before so divided
Tagged: Brexit, Politics
“I hope I’m wrong to think that Britain has made a choice that will have very bad consequences, because I don’t wish disaster on my country. But among the things to fear is what happens when the millions of poorer Britons who were seduced by the Brexiters discover that it is not the miracle solution to their discontents that they were promised.”
— Andrew Rawnsley, Brexit: a journey into the unknown for a country never before so divided
Tagged: Brexit, Politics, Ignorance
“The numbing news that Britain has voted to leave the European Union is the worst step backward for Europe -- and for Western civilization -- since the end of World War II.”
— Charles Kaiser, Brexit is the biggest step backward since World War II
Tagged: Brexit, World War 2, Europe
“Brexiteers like the cheating man shocked he can't stay in the spare room for 2 years while he sorts himself out.”
— J.K. RowlingVerified account, J.K. Rowling
Tagged: Brexit, Cheating
“It was the working classes who voted for us to leave because they were economically disregarded and it is they who will suffer most in the short term from the dearth of jobs and investment. They have merely swapped one distant and unreachable elite for another.”
— Anonymous, via Facebook
Tagged: Brexit, Working Class, Social Class
“We now live in a post-factual democracy. When the facts met the myths, they were as useless as bullets bouncing off the bodies of aliens in a HG Wells novel. When Michael Grove said 'the British people are sick of experts' he was right. But can anybody tell me the last time a prevailing culture of anti-intellectualism has lead to anything other than bigotry?”
— Anonymous, via Facebook
Tagged: Brexit, Ignorance, Democracy, Politics
“‘This is a dark day,’ he said. ‘But I hold out hope that, come November, Americans could become dumber than us once more.”
— Andy Borowitz, British Lose Right to Claim That Americans Are Dumber- The New Yorker
Tagged: LOL, satire, humor, Brexit, Politics, Donald Trump
“Right-wing populists like Pat Buchanan in the United States, Jean-Marie Le Pen in France and Jörg Haider in Austria had scored surprising near-victories, if not actual ones, in the late 1990s and early 2000s by focusing the working class's incipient ire on a "foreign" enemy besides outsourcing: immigrants. This antagonism reflected economic anxiety, cultural fear and even racial resentment. Displaced workers felt like immigrants were taking jobs and benefits that should have been theirs. They were worried about losing the one thing — their national identity — the market couldn't take.”
— Matt O'Brien, The world’s losers are revolting, and Brexit is only the beginning
Tagged: Brexit, Economics, Social Class, racism
“The sad irony of all this is that the E.U. was built to prevent the very kind of nationalist fervor its economic mismanagement and political heavy-handedness are provoking now. The dustbin of history exists for a reason.

And yet, and yet. It's easy for a generation that has only known peace and relative prosperity to forget that the arc of the political universe is long, and it bends toward wherever you point it. If that's toward chauvinism and isolationism, well, that's what you'll get.”
— Matt O'Brien, The world’s losers are revolting, and Brexit is only the beginning
Tagged: Brexit, Economics, Social Class, racism, World War 2, History
“History doesn't always move forward.”
— Matt O'Brien, The world’s losers are revolting, and Brexit is only the beginning
Tagged: Brexit, History, Prejudice
“Indeed, Japan is the place where a Brexit vote might lead to an imminent reaction. The yen touched Y100/$ overnight, a strengthening that will not be welcome in Tokyo, where the economy is weak and deflationary pressures remain. The Bank of Japan may be contemplating a response.”
— BUTTONWOOD, Brexit and the markets: a seismic shock
Tagged: Brexit, Economics
“Well, that was pretty awesome – and I mean that in the worst way. 

A number of people deserve vast condemnation here, from David Cameron, who may go down in history as the man who risked wrecking Europe and his own nation for the sake of a momentary political advantage, to the seriously evil editors of Britain’s tabloids, who fed the public a steady diet of lies.”
— Paul Krugman, Brexit: The Morning After
Tagged: LOL, Brexit, Media, Politics, Economics
“It seems clear that the European project – the whole effort to promote peace and growing political union through economic integration – is in deep, deep trouble.”
— Paul Krugman, Brexit: The Morning After
Tagged: LOL, Brexit, History, Europe, World War 2
“The big mistakes were the adoption of the euro without careful thought about how a single currency would work without a unified government; the disastrous framing of the euro crisis as a morality play brought on by irresponsible southerners; the establishment of free labor mobility among culturally diverse countries with very different income levels, without careful thought about how that would work. Brexit is mainly a symptom of those problems.”
— Paul Krugman, Brexit: The Morning After
Tagged: LOL, Brexit, History, Europe, Economics
“I am sick and tired of watching folks like Boris Johnson, Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump, and others appeal to the worst racial instincts of our species, only to be shushed by folks telling me that it's not really racism driving their popularity. It's economic angst. It's regular folks tired of being spurned by out-of-touch elites. It's a natural anxiety over rapid cultural change.

Maybe it's all those things. But at its core, it's the last stand of old people who have been frightened to death by cynical right-wing media empires and the demagogues who enable them—all of whom have based their appeals on racism as overt as anything we've seen in decades. It's loathsome beyond belief, and not something I thought I'd ever see in my lifetime. But that's where we are.”
— Kevin Drum, Brexit wins
Tagged: Politics, Brexit, Donald Trump, racism, Social Class
“We are not on Facebook, where things are complicated. We are married or divorced but not something in between.”
— Xavier Bettel, EU strong enough to survive Brexit, no privileges to UK over exit talks – Merkel
Tagged: Brexit, LOL
“The varied nations of Europe understood that they'd be much stronger if they forged a common market with shared institutions and even a regional currency, the euro, than if they tried to compete as independent units... As a whole, the EU should in theory wield significant power in pressing Beijing to open its markets and play fair on trade. Instead, European nations have routinely squandered that advantage by competing with each other for Chinese investment and favors...

If Merkel and Cameron and Europe’s other leaders had locked arms and fought for those rights together, they’d have had a much greater chance of success.”
— Michael Schuman, Who Wins From Brexit? China
Tagged: Brexit, Europe, Economics
“By choosing ‘leave,’ British voters demonstrated an unfortunate short-sightedness about how the world is changing and how hard it will be for any country with global ambitions to go it alone. With Brexit, both the U.K. and Europe are losing a lot more than a partnership. They're losing their best chance to stay relevant in a greatly altered world order.”
— Michael Schuman, Who Wins From Brexit? China
Tagged: Brexit, Europe, Economics