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The exit argument — when it’s not just bloviating little-England inanity dosed with anti-immigrant bigotry — is that membership hitches Britain to a stagnant Continent whose most powerful countries are locked in a dysfunctional single-currency system that must lead to ever greater European federalism. It is that the Union is short on democracy and long on bureaucracy. It is that leaving the Union will allow Britain, like Norway, to continue to benefit from a single market of more than a half-billion people while freeing it from intrusive regulation. The “Out” mantra is “Take Back Control.” [...]
The European Union, together with the trans-Atlantic alliance, ushered Europe to stability and prosperity from the collective suicide of the first half of the 20th century. It remains the world’s most boring, important miracle. A British departure, at a time when President Vladimir Putin is trying by all means to undermine a fragile union, would be a geopolitical disaster. Further European unraveling would become likely. No wonder President Obama is expected in London next month to reiterate his conviction that a Britain in Europe is a stronger, more influential ally.
Britain can — and must — make the E.U. more transparent, democratic and dynamic. That can only be achieved from within. The country derives immense benefits from being part of an $18.5 trillion economy. To imagine that a Britain outside the Union can continue to enjoy the benefits of membership is pure illusion, as many industry leaders have made clear. The economy as a whole, and the City in particular, would suffer. British insularity would become a byword.
Or rather English insularity, for Britain would likely cease to be. Scotland is strongly pro-European. An E.U. exit would give the governing Scottish National Party an overwhelming case for another referendum on independence. Its outcome would surely be the end of the union established in 1707.
The June 23 vote will be close, closer now that Johnson has gambled. His choice, so perverse for the mayor of this city of countless tongues, risks pushing his beloved country “remorselessly and expensively in the wrong direction.” Seldom has the need for British good sense, continuity and prudence been more acute.
Full article on New York Times