Brexit: countdown to March 2019

THE United Kingdom leaves the European Union forever at the end of March 2019. Which sounds a big deal but is only a tiny blip in the history of Europe. Singapore as a nation is older than the EU and the UK's involvement with it. And Europe (if you count the whole Greek Empire) has been at war with itself for several thousand years, culminating in the two worst slaughters in human history. The first one ended a hundred years ago and the second is within living memory.

European cooperation evolved from that history, with the world praying that the various nations would not start fighting with each other again. It started with free trade, and warring states had an incentive to get on with one another.

When the UK was allowed to join (De Gaulle having said "non" previously), the European Project had changed from trading to politics and the beginnings of dreams (by the French and the Germans) of a superstate - the "United States" of Europe. The Conservative Party under John Major allowed the UK to be assumed to be a willing party to this (Maastricht) and there have been misgivings ever since.