NOW HEAR THIS

IstheU.K.enteringtheabyssorfreedomfromEuropeanUniontyranny?

The looming Brexit is no Grexit.

BRITAIN IS NOT GREECE, A HOBBLED NATION DEPENDENT ON EUROPE. IT’S BRITAIN, STILL A MAJOR WORLD ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL CENTRE

No nation does peaceful national political battles quite like the United Kingdom, so get out your silly walking shoes. The British are gearing up for another full-scale national electoral convulsion, a referendum on whether to leave the European Union. Any vote is months away, but the debate has already disintegrated into incoherent jabber among various intellectual and ideological factions. The polls, meanwhile, appear to show support for Br exit is now running as high as 50%—and increasing.

Brexit 2016 is the reverse of Grexit 2015. Greece was an economic basket case that chose to cling to the euro as a lifeline, while Britain is an economic strong hold aiming to get out from under the regulation- crazy EU basket case. Greece needed EU cash. Britain is tired of shipping cash to the EU.

One reason the U.K. is doing so well economically is that, under that watchful Euro-skeptic, Margaret Thatcher, it never joined the continent’s currency union. But it did join the economic union, and has been forced ever since to struggle under the EU’s sclerotic bureaucracy and its raging fiscal imbalances.

Today, Euro-skepticism has new life, in part because EU immigration rules appear to force Britain to take in flows of refugees, along with immigrant workers, at the expense of local employment and mounting welfare costs. A slick Brexit campaign under the “Vote Leave, Take Control” banner has seized the immigration crisis as an opportunity.

Prime Minister David Cameron, in an attempt to beat back the Br exit forces, has pressed European officials to bring reforms to the continent’ s rules and regulations. He has set out some relatively minor revisions, including limits on the benefits mi grants receive when working in Britain.

The big test for Cameron’ s plan to prevent B rexit will come in mid-February when his reforms will be reviewed and negotiate data European summit. A referendum on the outcome of the summit could come later in the year, although the Br exit debate is already cleaving through the business and political classes.

Canadians who lived through the Quebec referenda of the last century will recognize the symptoms: hyperbolic claims, fear-mongering, ideological sniping, crass political opportunism. As one commentator put it, in the context of the global refugee and terrorist crises ,“this is a toxic environment in which to conduct a major referendum on a sensitive question in which British sovereignty and national identity are at stake .”

The political battle lines are messy. Cameron’s cabinet is split on the issue, and will be set free to campaign on both sides. The xenophobic U.K. Independent Party is pushing for Br exit, claiming that a withdrawal from the EU will benefit the national economy. On the other side, The National Institute for Economic and Social Research, a think tank, claims that if the U.K. leaves Europe, the result would be similar to the 2008 financial crisis, with a permanent loss of 6-8% of national income. London as a financial centre would be at risk. Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf said a vote for Br exit is “a leap into the abyss .”

But Britain is not Greece, a hobbled nation dependent on Europe. It’s Britain, still a major world economic and financial centre. Nigel Lawson, That cher’ s former Chancellor, is now head of Conservatives for Britain, an organization that aims to bring in the Brexit vote. “In my opinion,” Lawson said some time ago, “Britain’s destiny is global… We have a global perspective, we don’t just have a European perspective .”

In Lawson’s view, Britain has an opportunity to break from the shackles of Europe through a referendum that claims U.K. sovereignty and reaffirms its national freedom. I like the sound of that.