European Citizens [Heart] EU More After Brexit

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 7/04/2016 06:36:00 PM
Danes are against @#$%ing themselves up, British style.
As an inveterate worrier, I feared that the UK voting to leave the EU in an admittedly ill-conceived referendum would make others in the union clamor for something similar. If enough demanded an exit, it would spell the end of the EU as we know it--and likely the euro currency. (In the era of Trump, you never know.) The domino effect would have been started by the British with likely no end in sight among the other 27.

But surprises of surprises, what seems to be happening instead is that the others are valuing their EU membership more in the aftermath of the shock UK decision. Likely after seeing the pummeling the UK has taken--seen the pound's value lately--cooler heads are prevailing. Consider Denmark, which like the UK chose to keep its own currency and keeps a fair distance as well from Brussels:
Denmark became the latest Nordic country to experience rising public support for the European Union, defying predictions that a U.K. vote to exit would inspire other euro-skeptic corners of the bloc.

According to a Voxmeter poll published by Ritzau on Monday, 69 percent of Danes now back EU membership, up from 59.8 percent in a poll held prior to the U.K. vote. The poll also found that the proportion of respondents wanting a U.K.-style referendum had fallen to 32 percent from 40.7 percent.
UK-style political and economic turmoil are not what they want. It just took some "demonstration effects" to make Britain's nonsense evident to everyone else:
“This poll confirms that nobody wants to put themselves in the kind of mess the British have created for themselves,” said Marlene Wind, a professor in political science at the University of Copenhagen. "Prior to the Brexit vote there were lots of predictions that a British exit would trigger others to put their EU membership on the line.”

Rather than stoking anti-EU sentiment, the financial and political chaos that’s enveloping the U.K. is for now shoring up support for the beleaguered bloc. The Spanish election following the Brexit referendum showed a revival for the main establishment party, while polls across the Nordic region have also indicated rising backing for the EU.
This has put the fear into the rest of the Nordics:
A post-Brexit survey in Finland released last week also saw a surge in support for EU membership to 68 percent, from 56 percent in March. In the other Nordic country’s EU member, Sweden, backing for EU membership was 52 percent, according to a TNS Sifo poll held on June 26. A Statistics Sweden survey published on June 2 put such backing at 49 percent.
 
The Brexit vote had generated "a wake-up call across Europe," with citizens now seeing it as "a big gamble" and associating it with "uncertainty," Wind said.
Can European isolationism and xenophobia finally be staunched by showing what happens when people give in to such small-minded misanthropy? I hate for the UK to have been Exhibit A, but if it stops the others from resorting to similarly rash idiocies, it will at least have served a purpose.

And remember, we have good reason to doubt whether the UK is going anywhere.