Brexit vote final nail in EU coffin: Analyst

Britain voted to exit the European Union in a referendum on June 23 after 43 years of membership. The vote called 'Brexit' stirred up political turmoil and sent economic shockwaves through Britain as well as global financial markets. Press TV has spoken to Tony Gosling, an investigative journalist, and Paul Sheldon Foote, a professor at California State University, to discuss the ramifications of the EU exit vote.

Tony Gosling believes that Britain has set out a process which will be the final nail in the coffin of the European Union.

He also said that Britain has triggered a “wave of secession” against the EU, leaving many of the individual nations with a decision as to whether to stay in or exit the bloc.

“Brexit is not just in the interest of the British people, it is in the best interest of almost everybody in Europe in fact. The trouble is that the people of Europe in Italy, Germany, France, Spain, et cetera are not being asked whether they want to stay part of the European Union,” he stated.  

Gosling also noted that people across the continent have been banging their heads against this brick wall called the EU for decades, adding that Britain has been the first country to acknowledge this.

The analyst went on to say that the business elite are using tactics to blame everything on Brexit as their house of cards begins to fall down.

According to Gosling, the European Union is a “monstrous bureaucracy” based in Brussels which has very little, if any, real democratic accountability.

He is also of the opinion that the EU is a “political union,” not some kind of a trade agreement, which seeks to bring all European countries together in order to centralize power. However, the commentator said, this project is not going to happen because the people across Europe have got fed up with this whole idea of “artificially” bringing all these countries together.

Britain and the EU have been at odds over a string of issues, particularly the UK’s inclination to remain a member of the European single market after leaving the bloc.

The analyst also dismissed as "silly" remarks by European Council President Donald Tusk on the UK’s choice of either a hard Brexit or no Brexit, adding that there are several countries in the EU who are part of the single market, but not part of the political union.

The so-called “hard Brexit” suggests giving up access to the EU single market and scrapping the free movement of EU nationals in return for securing control over immigration.

Gosling further argued there might be quite a lot of people in the United States too who would like to secede from Washington to have their individual states run independently.

According to the analyst, given the scale of corruption at the very top echelon of leadership in Europe and across the Atlantic in the United States, it is natural that people would want to get rid of it.  

Meanwhile, the other panelist on Press TV's program, Paul Sheldon Foote opined that in the long run, Brexit can be in the interest of the people of the United Kingdom. “There is a big difference between a common market and free trade, and between having unelected officials control your lives,” he added.   

He argued that the EU is not as united as the people in Brussels try to portray it, adding that there are some countries in the European Union who do not want to be part of the Eurozone and want to have control over their own spending and budgets.

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