RUTHFULLY YOURS

When Lord Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington following the decisive American victory at Yorktown, the British military band retreating from the scene played an old drinking song The World Turned Upside Down. That may be a myth; the story was originally told by someone who hadn’t been at Yorktown. But it’s a myth that has lasted right down to the present (being referenced most recently in the Broadway hit musical Hamilton) because it captures the widespread and serious consequences of Cornwallis’s defeat.

Well, it’s a bigger world today, but Brexit looks to be turning pretty much all of it upside down. Just consider some of the leading players and institutions hit by it:

David Cameron: He had been walking a tightrope as the Europhile leader of a Eurosceptic party who hoped to finesse the issue of Europe indefinitely. In order to fend off UKIP and a Tory rebellion, he promised a referendum, hoping that his coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, would nix it in the next coalition. But he won an outright majority and had to keep the promise. Then, wanting the referendum out of the way, he held quick talks with the EU, asked for little, got less, and returned to London boasting of trivial concessions. Finally, he fought a tough campaign against half of his own party and lost it. It turned out that his Eurosceptic Tory opponents had a better sense of the Tory faithful (and U.K. voters generally) than he did. He fell off the tightrope with dignity, however, and will resign to allow a Eurosceptic to be elected Tory leader and prime minister who can conduct Brexit negotiations more plausibly than a Europhile.

Angela Merkel, Jean-Claude Juncker, and the European Commission: If the European leaders negotiating with Prime Minister David Cameron over his package of concessions had been only slightly more generous, he might well have won yesterday’s referendum. A reformed Europe or a Europe à la carte was acceptable to many Brits who disliked an over-centralized and undemocratic one. Such a looser Europe would also have solved or ameliorated their other problems such as the euro. But the Eurocrats calculated either that Mr. Cameron was bluffing or that the Brits would always halt at the brink of withdrawal. As a result Britain will soon be out of the EU, other euro-problems are growing worse, and the “contagion” of Euroscepticism has been given a boost throughout Europe.

Chancellor George Osborne, (Canadian) Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney, the Lords of H.M. Treasury, the IMF, OECD, etc., etc.: Both men and institutions (and Christine Lagarde for the IMF) made extravagant predictions of the economic and financial disasters that would descend upon Britain following Brexit. One Tory commentator described Mr. Osborne as the first Chancellor to try to spook the markets. The financial markets were duly spooked – as always happens in response to a major uncertainty – but they seem now to be stabilizing. The reputations of institutions and their leaders are now on the line, however. If their long-term predictions (which were widely derided as simply made up) prove false, exaggerated, or misleading, they may need to follow Mr. Cameron into other professions.

President Barack Obama and the U.S. State Department: Pressure on the U.K. to participate in an integrated European political entity has been a sustained theme in U.S. foreign policy since the early 1950s. Much of the time the Brits were reluctant or even hostile; Washington kept pressing. This time Mr. Obama made it personal. But the implied deal – you surrender your independence in order to advance our interests within the EU – is obviously a tad one-sided. And the referendum result is now an insuperable obstacle to Washington taking it up in future. Mr. Obama will simply have to learn several European telephone numbers – if only to ring more than one of the EU’s five presidents.

The fact of the matter is that Britain contributes around 21% of EU net receipts. In other words, membership has been a drain, never a gain. And in the unlikely event that an independent Scotland were to rejoin Europe, that would be one more burden off the Exchequer’s books.
In the aftermath of the Brexit referendum the usual suspects were out in full force. The United Kingdom would be the big financial loser. Its economy would shrink. And yes, the financial markets were in turmoil. The big financial houses had bet the wrong way. But did you observe some figures at the close of trading in major European stock markets on Friday?

The London FTSE 100 index was down 3.15%. But across the channel, the German DAX index was down 6.82% and the Paris CAC index was down 8.04%. The EURO STOXX 50 index was down 8.62% and the EURONEXT 100 index was down 6.72%. In other words, the percentage drop of leading stock indexes in the rest of the European Union was, on average, more than double that of the London index. In passing, we might observe that the Swiss stock index dropped by 3.4%. It so happens that Switzerland, shortly before the Brexit vote, formally withdrew its application to join the European Union.

Amidst all the hyperventilation from financial pundits, what might these figures be suggesting? Contrary to the propagated bunk that Britain would suffer economically from withdrawal from the European Union is the simple fact that Britain is a net contributor to the European Union. According to published figures, it appears Britain contributes around 21% of European Union net receipts. In other words, membership of the European Union is a net drain on British finances. Could the markets be telling us that it is the Eurozone, not the United Kingdom, which is facing a financial crisis?

One should not have to spell out the bleeding obvious: where was the benefit in being shackled to a sclerotic, economically comatose bloc which appears unable to conclude a trade agreement with the United States? By contrast, Britain will be free to conclude trade agreements with the US and East Asian countries, as well as renewing relations, both political and economic, with countries such as Australia and New Zealand.

As for the push by the Scottish National Party Government, led by Nicola Sturgeon, for a second independence referendum, a reality check is in order. First, Scotland’s solvency is dependent on continued subsidies from the British government in London. In the aftermath of the British withdrawal, it is hard to imagine the European Union welcoming a new member which, from day one, would be net dependent on subsidies from Brussels. Under the rules of the European Union, Scotland would have to make a fresh application for membership. Second, any application for membership has to meet with the unanimous consent of all existing member states. Would Spain agree to an application from a breakaway state, thereby ceding legitimacy to the Basque claim for secession from Spain? I suspect that moves for any Scottish breakaway from the United Kingdom will suffer a similar fate as those moves, some years back, by French-speaking nationalists in Quebec.

It would have been understandable if Boris Johnson had allowed himself a celebratory fist-pump when he appeared before the press in London on Friday morning. After all, the former London mayor was the de facto leader of the Out campaign, which against all odds had just won the U.K.’s referendum on the European Union.

Yet he looked shocked and ashen-faced. Not because he was now regretting his decision to campaign for Brexit, but because a short time earlier David Cameron had announced that by October he would step down as Britain’s prime minister. Plenty of people thought his resignation was inevitable, given how vigorously Mr. Cameron had fought to stay in the EU. But not Boris. He was one of 84 Conservative members of Parliament who had written a letter to Mr. Cameron on the eve of the referendum saying he had a “mandate and duty” to stay in post whatever the result.

But Mr. Cameron didn’t relish the prospect of being in charge during what will be a dangerous passage in the history of the British Isles. There is a mighty prize to be had—a new settlement with the EU that preserves access to the world’s largest single market and restores sovereignty to the British Parliament—but the risks are formidable, including the breakup of the U.K. England and Wales voted to Leave, but Northern Ireland and Scotland voted to Remain, and separatists in both are already using the skewed result as a pretext to agitate for independence. It will take Disraeli-like political guile, as well as Stakhanovite hard work, to guide the U.K. safely through this period.

For the 52-year-old Mr. Johnson, the crown he has been reaching for all his life is finally within his grasp, but the contest he will have to win has come sooner than he would have liked.

One happy result of Britain’s historic vote to leave the European Union is some belated signs of seriousness from grown-ups in the Labour Party. Witness this weekend’s rebellion against the party’s far-left leader, Jeremy Corbyn, in a move for new leadership in a turbulent time.

The putsch against Mr. Corbyn started on Friday when two Labour members of parliament formally sought a no-confidence vote against their leader. It gained momentum Saturday evening when Mr. Corbyn fired Hilary Benn, the party’s spokesman for foreign affairs, for disloyalty. Mr. Benn’s sacking led 11 (as of this writing) of Labour’s leading members of parliament on Sunday to resign their posts in the shadow cabinet in hopes of forcing a leadership election—an astonishing scale of rebellion in British politics.

Their complaint is that Mr. Corbyn didn’t campaign hard enough for Remain ahead of last week’s referendum. Remain was the party’s official position, held by many of its leading politicians, its financial backers among trade unions, and a large majority of the party’s young, educated and cosmopolitan supporters.

Instead, Mr. Corbyn followed his own pro-Brexit instincts, widely shared on the radical left, that the European Union is a free-trade, pro-deregulation vehicle for imposing “neoliberalism,” whatever that is, on Europe’s working class. He stumped for EU membership half-heartedly at best, and he refused to appear alongside Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron in the campaign’s last days to make a united case.

Britain’s decision to leave the European Union opens an era of political disruption, but along with it comes opportunity. The U.S. can seize this moment of uncertainty to reassert its leadership of a Western alliance of free nations.

Britain and Europe are masters of their own fate, but the Continent has always benefited when a confident America points in the right direction. The Obama era has been marked by U.S. indifference and de facto default to the EU, the kind of supranational body President Obama thinks should rule the world.

But the EU has proved unequal to the urgent tasks of reviving economic growth and resisting security threats on its eastern and southern borders. It’s time for the U.S. to get back in the game because America needs a confident, prosperous Europe as a partner to defend the West against the rise of authoritarian regimes and global disorder.

An important first signal would be for the U.S. to invite the U.K. to begin bilateral free-trade talks that run alongside current talks with the EU. Mr. Obama may not be able to rise above his pre-Brexit taunt that Britain will move to “the back of the queue” on trade. But this would not be his first strategic mistake.

A trade deal with the world’s fifth-largest economy—and one of Europe’s healthiest—is in America’s interests for its own sake. A two-track trade negotiation would also help the British in their negotiation over new terms of trade with the European Union by giving Britain the leverage of a U.S. alternative. U.S.-British talks could also prod Brussels to move faster and rebuff the French protectionism that is infecting the EU-U.S. talks.

Whether or not Mr. Obama leads, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump should. Republicans in particular have a great opportunity to shore up a crucial alliance. Mr. Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan can take the advice of our friends at the New York Sun and hold a joint press conference saying they’d welcome British trade talks. This would show statesmanship by Mr. Trump, allay some of the concerns about his protectionism, and offer a welcome opportunity for the two men to agree about something.

Mr. Trump says he’s not against trade, only against bad trade deals. Here is a moment to show he means it. He could also say he will meet with the new British Prime Minister as soon as possible if he is elected, and that America’s relationship with the U.K. is as important as any in the world.

Brexit also creates an opening to reinvigorate NATO. The transatlantic defense alliance has always been broader and sturdier than the European Union in providing European security, and now it will be the main vehicle for British influence in Europe. This can be a healthy development, especially if it frees Europe from a distracting and generally quixotic attempt to create an EU security structure that overlaps with NATO.CONTINUE AT SITE

A cartoon on the front page of The Telegraph this morning sums up the stunned mood in London. “Good evening,” a newsreader says. “Aliens didn’t land on earth and Elvis wasn’t found alive, but everything else happened.” The triumph of Brexit sent shock waves through the edifice of polite opinion. As several commentators noted, it was a Pauline Kael moment: no one who was anyone knew anyone who had voted for Brexit and yet, just as Pauline Kael (apocryphally) was flabbergasted at the victory of Richard Nixon because she knew no one who had voted for him, so all the best sort of people woke yesterday to the impossible news that the angry, unwashed, lumpen folk who live in the wrong postal districts had won! How could it be?

The reaction on the street ripened from near catatonic incredulity to spluttering anger. Like Denmark after the death of the elder Hamlet, all polite society, on the continent and in America as well as in Britain, was contracted in one brow of woe. Yet by the end of the day reality began to reassert itself. The markets had a bad day, and doubtless will have a few more, but the pound, after plunging to a 30-year low, rebounded. David Cameron, who had hitched his wagon to the shooting star of the Remainders, gave what was perhaps the best speech of his career, ending with the announcement of his resignation. But the real news, tomorrow’s bulletin, came from Boris Johnson who, along with Michael Gove, Dan Hannan, and Nigel Farage, was the public face of Brexit. In a speech that was at once mollifying and candid, Boris noted the obvious.

“We cannot turn our backs on Europe,” he said in a speech yesterday. “We are part of Europe. Our children and grandchildren will continue to have a wonderful future as Europeans, traveling to the continent, understanding the language and culture that make up our common European civilization.”“Our common European civilization.” It is one of the ironies of the spirit of the European Union that it has turned its back on the essentials of that civilization, beginning with its hostility to the Christian roots of that civilization and proceeding on to its attack on the essentially European values of democracy and individual liberty. Reflecting on the referendum, Boris pointed out that voters decided that it was time “to take back control from a European Union that has become too remote, too opaque and not accountable to the people it is meant to serve.” This is the fundamental message of Thursday’s referendum. CONTINUE AT SITE

The tendency of modern liberals to wring apologies out of governments for the actions of their ancestors, from the slave trade to Orientalist depictions of the peoples of Islam, is a pointless attempt to re-write history. There are, of course, no calls for Muslim governments to apologize for anything from their slave trade to the early Arab conquests.

“The ethics of establishing a campus in an authoritarian country are murky, especially when it inhibits free expression.” — Professor Stephen F. Eisenman, Northwestern University (which has a branch in Qatar)

Oxford and Cambridge, have accepted more than 233.5 million pounds sterling from Saudi and Muslim sources since 1995 — the largest source of external funding to UK universities.

“Several agreements made between the MEC [Oxford’s Middle East Centre] and donors appear to indicate that funders have sought to influence the centre’s output and activities.” — Robin Simcox, A Degree of Influence, 2009, p.35

One of those “dilemmas” is the influence by teachers across the United States on impressionable students who organize Israel Apartheid Weeks. They join with assorted anti-Semitic demonstrators, condemn Israel for every sin under the sun, and use intimidation against Jewish and Zionist colleagues, but are never told any historical, legal, or political facts by their equally biased faculties.

Fundamentalist Islam, backed by vast monetary power, is corrupting our dearest Enlightenment values.

In asking why Western civilization has been the greatest in history, many point to European and, later, American military power, the strength of the British, French, Spanish and Portuguese empires, their command of the oceans, or the progress brought about through the Industrial Revolution. Today, of course, there is a general trend to picture Western achievements in a uniformly negative light, often for valid reasons, including our use of slavery or the mistreatment of so many native Americans. This negativity is, however, highly selective. Why, for example, are Western Christian empires considered a blight on mankind while the great many Muslim empires of the past — which lasted over a much longer period, engaged in the largest and longest-lasting slave trade in history, sought to impose one religion over all others, and placed enormous barriers on rational thought from about the 10th century — regarded as a blessing?

The greatness of the modern West owes much to those discoverers, conquerors, and traders and to the worldwide enterprises they built — just as the Islamic empires had their explorers, traders, and international networks (as in the great Sufi orders). Important civilizations were created in both realms: great urban developments, great architecture, the first universities, great poetry, great art, great philosophy, a flurry of scientific and mathematical activity in the Muslim middle ages, and then in the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution in Europe. The tendency of modern liberals to wring apologies out of governments for the actions of their ancestors, from the slave trade to Orientalist depictions of the peoples of Islam, is a pointless attempt to re-write history. There are, of course, no calls for Muslim governments to apologize for anything from their slave trade to the early Arab conquests.

The modern world of the West is a product of a period that created the greatest advances in human history: the Enlightenment. From that era we can date the beginnings of the most important strengths of our modern world. It is these strengths, in spite of the many blessings they have bestowed and their role as buttresses for cohesive societies, that are derided and often attacked from the Islamic sphere as well as by forces within the West. It is not hard to remember what those strengths are: liberal democracy, human rights, religious tolerance, international instruments for the managing of conflict, women’s rights, minority rights of all kinds, legislation out of political debate, an abhorrence of tyranny, freedom of thought, belief, and speech, critical inquiry, freedom of the press and other media, secularization that permits freedom of religious worship, and safety for the authors of opinions that dissent.

After appearing, the police stood back and allowed the mob to continue destroying the house and setting more Christian homes and vehicles on fire.

Last month in Egypt, a 70 year old Christian woman was stripped naked, beaten, and paraded in the streets of her village by a mob of 300 Muslim men.

“How long will these acts continue with impunity — will they never stop?” — Dr. Mona Roman, host of the Arabic-language news show, Behind the Scenes.

In a chronically familiar scene, angry, rioting Muslims in Egypt burned down around 80 Christian homes on June 17. In the words of one of the victims, Moses Zarif,

“On Friday afternoon, after noon prayers, a large number of Muslims gathered in the front of the new house of my cousin because a rumor had spread in the village that it would be turned into a church. They were chanting slogans against us: ‘By no means will there be a church here’ and ‘Egypt will remain Islamic!'”

According to the report, rioting Muslims beat the two cousins, attacked the building, destroyed all construction materials, and threw rocks at any Christian trying to intervene. Then they “turned their wrath on the Christian homes adjacent to the building, hurled rocks, looted houses and set fire to any Christian property in their wake.”

When the local priest heard what was happening, he rushed to the scene — only to be attacked while in his car; the Muslims climbed on it, stomped on it, and damaged it.

MOGADISHU, Somalia—At least 14 people were killed when gunmen stormed a hotel in Somalia’s seaside capital and took hotel guests hostage, police and medical workers said Saturday, before security forces ended the hourslong assault.

Islamic extremist group al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest in a series of hotel attacks in Mogadishu.

“We have finally ended the siege. The last remaining militants were killed on the top floor,” police Capt. Mohamed Hussein said after security forces pursued the gunmen who had retreated to upper floors of the Nasa-Hablod hotel, setting up sniper posts on the roof and throwing grenades. Police said at least four gunmen were involved in the attack.

“We have so far confirmed the deaths of 14 people. Some of them died in the hospitals,” Capt. Hussein said. The deaths included women who were selling khat, a stimulant leaf popular with Somali men, outside the hotel, he said.

Capt. Hussein said security forces killed two of the attackers. Police and medical workers said another nine people were wounded in the assault.

Security forces rescued most of the hostages; it wasn’t clear whether any of the hostages had been killed.

Police said the attack began when a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle at the hotel entrance, ripping off its gate. Gunmen fought their way inside, and a witness said they began shooting randomly at hotel guests.

The bodies of two men, including one thought to be a hotel guard and an attacker dressed in a military uniform, lay on the first floor.

Bullets pockmarked the hotel walls. Security forces combed through the dark hotel rooms, searching for explosives.

The implications of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union will reverberate through the Continent’s politics and economy for years. But it may have an even more immediate global political significance with resonance here in the U.S. as the most powerful demonstration yet of a rising populist tide transforming the established order across the West.

The victory for the Leave campaign was perhaps the single largest blow the British populace has delivered to its establishment in modern history. Voters defied the impassioned—and unified—opposition of the leadership of all five major political parties. They rejected the advice of more than 1,200 corporate CEOs, including half of the chiefs of the FTSE 100 companies who wrote to The Times newspaper last week urging rejection of “Brexit.”

Banks in the City of London, one of the world’s major financial centers, along with the Bank of England, the country’s central bank, and most of its influential think tanks and academic institutions, had warned of the risks to the U.K.’s economic security and global financial pre-eminence if Britain did not stay in the EU. A procession of eminent foreigners, from most heads of European governments to James Dimon, the CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase, had urged a vote to stay.
In April, President Barack Obama traveled to London to weigh in, telling British voters that Britain would go to “the back of the queue” in negotiations for trade agreements with the United States if they chose to leave.

All to no avail. This unprecedented establishment campaign of persuasion failed to sway a majority of British voters who opted instead to take a step the government had repeatedly described as an act of “economic self-harm.”

Not since universal adult suffrage in the U.K. has the electorate been so willing to reject the concerted and unified advice of its political and economic leadership. Instead they chose to side with politicians who directly challenged the establishment, such as Boris Johnson, the Conservative former mayor of London, and Nigel Farage, the leader of the populist United Kingdom Independence Party.

The Leave campaign, of course, was a singularly British phenomenon, channeling longstanding national resentment of the cession of power by the government to an unelected supranational Brussels bureaucracy. But in its message and its appeal it had much in common with surging popular anger seen across the Continent and in the U.S. Populist movements have been on the rise in Europe and America since the financial crisis eight years ago. As dissatisfaction with slow growth, high unemployment and stagnant wages has risen, political parties such as the Five Star movement in Italy, the Alternative for Deutschland in Germany, the National Front in France and Podemos in Spain have made gains at local and even national levels, and populist parties have actually taken power in smaller countries such as Hungary and Poland.

In the U.S., the Tea Party rode popular resentment against economic weakness, government spending and bailouts for banks beginning in 2010. And of course this year, Donald Trump emerged from outside the established political order to become the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party.

With exquisite timing, Mr. Trump himself happened to land in the U.K. in the midst of the populist triumph. Opening his new golf course at Turnberry in Scotland, he congratulated Britons.

“People want to take their country back,’’ he said. And then to drive home the similarities between his own ascent and that of the Leave campaign, he said: “There are many other cases where they will want to take their borders back. You’re going to see that more and more… I love to see people take their country back.”

Tea Party supporters also identified with the victorious Leave campaign Tea Party Nation, a leading umbrella group, congratulated the British on their “Independence Day” and said in a statement “the land that gave us Magna Carta decided they wanted freedom and not a socialist dictatorship.” CONTINUE AT SITE