There is really only one thing for me to talk about today and you probably know what it is, but if you don’t it is the fact Britain decided to drop out of the European Union. A lot of people are asking the questions why would they do that and why do we care so much? There are quite a few reasons they voted to drop out of the union. The one which I think was one of the two most important was the fact immigrants were coming into Europe without sufficient background checks and now Europe is full of terrorists. The Brits are not stupid, they can see what the hand writing on the European wall is saying and it is if you stay in the European Union you will be subject to more terror attacks than if you don’t, due to some very liberal policies. Yet when we look at who is running Britain it is the conservatives. This is ironic in a way. Even in this country some conservative republicans were saying things like you can’t deport illegal aliens when our laws clearly call for that.

There is another really important reason the vote went the way it did and that reason is the loss of jobs. It is tied in to the illegal immigration. When you get a flood of illegal aliens, even if they don’t commit crimes, they will work for sub-par wages. When this happens the people who held these types of jobs previously will lose them to people who will work for lower wages. A lot of illegals will work off the books meaning they don’t have to be provided with certain expensive benefits which other workers would be entitled to. This all involves breaking the labor laws, but how many people get punished for that, it doesn’t seem to be politically correct nowadays. Between fearing terror attacks and losing jobs the Brits had a powerful reason to reject the European Union.

There was more going on behind the scenes than this however. Many assume the common people were the only ones responsible for rejecting the idea of staying in the European Union, but there were others who had more of a political stripe. They felt Britain was losing the power to run its own affairs. There has long been calls for a common defense with one person as its head and it didn’t look like it was going to have a British head. When the terrorist attacks took place in Paris, the French president described them as an attack against the whole of the European Union. Previously in the early 1950s an attempt had been made by France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries to integrate the militaries of Western Europe, but it failed at the time. Over the years, before the European Union was formally formed, there had been many treaties bringing the countries closer together.

The European Union was supposed to have strict monetary requirements before a country would be allowed to join, but several exceptions were made and this led to countries like Greece defaulting on their debt which caused the European Union problems. Greece was not alone in having financial problems. Ireland has experienced a downturn in their economy and Portugal is feeling the financial pinch. Spain which was formerly in good financial shape, began having financial problems and on examination their banks were underfunded. Cyprus also experience a financial crisis. All this required bailout programs and EU countries were forced to take on some of the debt of other failing EU countries. This didn’t sit very well with those countries. This could also have been one of the reasons for Britain opting out. Just a week before Switzerland had withdrawn its application to join the European Union. Did they find out something they didn’t like? Most of us know Britain never fully integrated into the EU and kept their pound as currency instead of subscribing to the use of the euro. This seemed a little strange at the time, but the pound as proved to be worth more than a euro.

There has been a rumor going around which states the United States encouraged the creation of the European Union and this was accomplished through the auspices of the CIA. If true it may have been done to discourage nationalism and prevent more world wars. We have to remember Germany had started two world wars in just 25 years, so this did seem like a good idea at the time. It also created a force to deal with non EU countries if war broke out with them. NATO which is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is probably the strongest military arm in the EU, but it also includes the United States.

The British are a proud people and deservedly so. They ruled the world for hundreds of years. The idea of being told how to run their country must be a hard pill for them to swallow. They might even be closer to the ideals of the United States than those of the European Union. One of the problems this has presented for us is we will need treaties with Great Britain since the ones we have are through the European Union. If it is agreed to keep everything about the same there will be no problems, but if changes are requested it could be a headache for both us and them. The U.S. will now have to maintain separate relations and treaties with Britain and the European Union and that could cause problems for some institutions such as banks. Some of the foreign banks established their headquarters in Britain, because they felt it was the gateway to the European Union, but now that Britain is not going to be in the European Union they may considering moving their headquarters to an EU country. This could be inconvenient since there could be language problems and such.

All and all the move was a big surprise to many. President Obama had been against it and had said so as if to try and influence the outcome, while Trump was saying it was a good thing. It was sort of strange hearing him say after the vote it was the right thing to do since he said it while he was in Scotland, a country which was for staying in. Now Britain might be facing a problem in the future if Scotland succeeds in a vote for independence and joins the EU. This is a historic time and while the outcome of the vote was unexpected by most of us, there were probably those in the know who expected in. Now there is talk of political parties in Germany and France pushing for these countries to also withdraw. Maybe the drama has just begun.