RUTHFULLY YOURS

The United Kingdom has always had Europe’s most robust democracy, and with Thursday’s vote to leave the European Union it has given its Continental peers a powerful example of the meaning of popular rule. Now we’ll see if the British have the wisdom to make the best use of their historic choice.

We argued earlier this week that Britain should remain in the Union. But we also acknowledged that it was a close call, and we did so more out of concern for the EU’s future than for Britain’s.

The Brexit vote deprives the EU of its second-biggest—and most dynamic—economy, with the strongest growth rate among Europe’s major economies and a record-setting employment rate of 74%. Government spending as a percentage of GDP has also come down to pre-financial crisis levels, again disproving the Keynesian doomsaying about the perils of fiscal “austerity.”

Brexit may encourage other states—the Netherlands is often mentioned—to debate their membership in the EU, especially if Britain does not suffer the economic and diplomatic catastrophes forecast by the Remain camp, starting with Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne. Norway and Switzerland have shown it’s possible to have prosperity and security in Europe with less nannying by Brussels.

If the EU wants to prevent other countries from catching the Brexit bug, our advice is to avoid the temptation to punish the U.K. with an arduous renegotiation of terms for its re-entry into the common market. The perception of EU high-handedness is what alienates public opinion across the Continent. Brexit ought to be the wake-up call the EU needs to return to serving as a common market that encourages growth and competition, and not—as it has become since the late 1980s—an innovation-killing superstate obsessed with regulatory harmonization, tax hikes, green-energy dogma and anticompetitive antitrust enforcement.

London will have its own challenges. To adapt a line from Margaret Thatcher’s famous 1988 Bruges speech on Europe, Britain has not voted to free itself of a European superstate to see it return in the form of the nanny state exercising dominance from Westminster. CONTINUE AT SITE

London, England — I have been in England for only one-and-a-half days, and it is already clear to me that the Brexit debate has by no means represented business as usual. Customarily, British political affairs are milquetoast affairs, with little of the vitriol or panache that marks American politics. This one, though, is different. It is bitter. It is bad-tempered. And, for want of a better word, it is rude. All told, the British seem thoroughly fed up with the proceedings in general, and even more fed up with those who disagree with them as to the ideal outcome. Whatever happens tomorrow, reconciliation will be a protracted affair.

Almost all of my more cosmopolitan friends are for Britain’s staying in, and, when I express the opposite view, have a tendency to condescend. “Really?” they ask, eyebrows raised. “Really?” And then, their irritation rising, they look at me with a sort of detached fascination, as if I had just suggested putting erotically shaped ice cubes into the Pinot Noir. One woman, who has been a friend since we were both eleven, told me over coffee that I should reconsider my position because “all the smart people” are pro-Remain. Another, an extremely sharp pediatrician whom I would trust with my life, has been berating her pro-Brexit siblings for “canceling out” the “sensible votes” that she and her husband hope to cast. The charges of smugness, it seems, have not been overblown.

Nor, I notice, have the reports of reticence from the other side. Perhaps because they are expecting precisely the reaction I got, the Leavers of my acquaintance tend to start their explanations with an apology. “I’m sorry,” they say, “but . . . ”; “I just think that . . . ”; “I understand that this is tricky, however . . . ” Such is the cultural power of the BBC and the political class — both of which have done their level best to make Brexit seem outré — that some people I speak to pretend that they are on the fence when they are clearly not, and relax only when I volunteer that I’m pro-leaving and have been for as long as I remember. “Oh,” they say with a furtive look around, “well in that case.”

On the train from Huntingdon to London, I see these divisions in full bloom. Almost everyone is reading a newspaper — it feels a little as if I’ve stepped backwards in time, to the 1950s — and their choices betray their politics. Running my eyes across the carriage, I feel as if I am attending a bizarre, hyper-ecumenical protest march, at which anybody with a strong, 40-point-font opinion is welcome. From seat level, the front pages resemble low-slung protest signs: “Leave!” “Remain!” “Leave!” “Remain!” “Leave!” It is possible, I suppose, that the people sitting behind these slogans are less sure of their views than it appears, but you certainly wouldn’t know it from their conversations with each other, full as they are of hard-headed assurances and mild exasperation at any expression of dissent. The phrase, “no, but you see” is used a lot, along with the insistence — repeated as if by rote and used by both sides — that “they are just trying to scare you.” On the surface it is all very polite, as Britons typically are. But there is an edge this time — an edge I haven’t seen for a long time.