Brexit may be just the catalyst needed for real EU reform

THE European Union has been hijacked by "patricians" - the elite, establishment, bureaucrats, multinationals and corporate interests. The "plebeians" are rarely consulted. So the June 23 referendum on EU membership - whether or not it should end in Brexit - represents a giant democratic breakthrough.

To plagiarise Winston Churchill, a British departure from the EU is not the end or the beginning of the end. It is the end of the beginning. Prime Minister David Cameron's effort to seek EU reform as a means of averting Brexit has failed. But Brexit could be the catalyst for reform. If not, the EU is doomed.

We will see the workings of these trends in the run-up to the poll. Adam Smith's "invisible hand" posited that the pursuit of self-interest could be to the common good. He assumed free markets (my over-simplification). But where markets are constrained by rules set by powerful special interests, and where democratic systems are politically flawed (see, for example, the US gun lobby), self-interest does not serve, but tends to subvert, the common good.