Brexit: taking back control so nothing actually changes

Brexit: taking back control, only to carry on as before?

There is one promise repeated in the propaganda of every European divorce: "we will take back control." The vote to leave the EU carried that stamp. But judging by what is happening today in the United Kingdom, the fine print does not change: immigration that keeps drawing criticism, bank oversight through CRS, traffic restrictions justified by the climate narrative, and internet censorship. You do not even need to be inside the EU to get the same menu.

Some argue that Brexit served the essential purpose: leaving the project of an "ever closer union," not adopting the euro, and regaining the right to sack your own politicians when they fail. It was the only way to remove anyone, because in Brussels nobody gets removed. That argument has its logic.

The other camp sums it up as wishful thinking. The policies that were meant to be avoided have nothing to do with Brussels, but with the elites of the global system: the EU, the United States, China, and anyone else pulling the strings. Voting in London does not change the framework. Even the Commonwealth alternative, that trade network inherited from the empire, fails to replace the European market: it grows like the rest of Europe, which is to say, not at all.

The unsettling fact is that, with or without the EU, public discontent looks the same. For the most iconoclastic, the solution would be to take self-determination all the way down to the municipal level. Let's see who signs up for that.