Britain's vote in June to leave the European Union did not have too much of an impact on the labor market in the first month after the decision, official figures showed Wednesday. ...
Though the decision proved a huge surprise to many in the financial markets and prompted a dramatic slide in the value of the pound, the real economy has exhibited a relatively high degree of resilience. Retail sales, house prices and industrial production have all held up — to the surprise of many.
Sure, it is early, so it is too soon to say there will be no bad effects later. But the short-term resilience has surprised the "Remain" experts.
And this is kind of funny (in a "fog in channel, continent cut off" sort of way):
The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, sought on Wednesday to rally support for the European Union, saying the bloc battered by the UK Brexit referendum was not about to break up despite its existential crisis.
Huh. Britain needs the EU to prosper and survive, the "Remain" backers said. Yet with Britain planning to leave the EU, the EU itself is the entity that feels shaky and vulnerable?
This, however, is not funny:
"The European Union doesn't have enough union," Juncker told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, noting his own executive was limited in its response to problems by division among states that was the worst he had seen in three decades in EU politics.
"There are splits out there and often fragmentation exists," he said. "That is leaving scope for galloping populism."
The EU doesn't have enough "union"--that is, Brussels needs to more thoroughly control the flighty provinces; and fragmentation--the lack of enough "union"--leads to "galloping populism"--that is, free voting by free people against the wishes of the Eurocratic elite.
Juncker probably wears expensive Italian shoes, but don't be fooled: these are the jackboots of the new imperial order that seeks to rule Europe.
Europeans should never say they have not been warned about what the proto-empire in Brussels is all about when they get closer union and less fragmentation, and thus erase the "proto" part of their empire.
