Slouching Toward Brexit

Pro-Brexit campaigners could scarcely have chosen a more auspicious backdrop for the referendum on whether Britain should remain a member of the European Union, which is due by the end of 2017 and perhaps as early as next year. The eurozone remains an economic disaster and has become an anti-democratic monstrosity. EU leaders are at each other’s throats over the fate of Greece, unwanted refugees, and much else. Many Britons feel overrun by EU migrants, besieged by asylum-seekers from Calais, and threatened by the refugee chaos across the continent. And with capital controls imposed in Greece and Cyprus, a razor-wire fence erected between Hungary and Croatia, border controls re-imposed by Germany and its neighbors, and trade and people flows disrupted, the EU is fast unravelling. Leaving has seldom seemed more seductive.