JOEL KOTKIN: Brexit Will Be Britain’s Fourth Of July.

In many ways, this rebellion’s antecedents include our own revolution, which sought to overturn a distant, and largely unaccountable, bureaucracy. Like Lord North, George III’s prime minister, today’s Eurocratic elites spoke of obligations and fealty to the wisdom of the central imperium. What shocked the centralizers then, and once again today, was the temerity of the governed to challenge the precepts of their betters. . . .

Given the grisly history of internecine warfare on the old continent , the idea of European integration initially had a certain appealing logic. And indeed the early years of integration promised much: greater prosperity, adherence to democracy and even a guarantee that Europe would retain a powerful voice in the world economy and politics. That promise has faded, as Europe remains locked in what appears a more or less permanent cycle of secular decline and stagnation.

Over the past decade, the EU has lagged in terms of both growth and innovation even by our mediocre standards. The EU’s poor performance is recognized well beyond Britain’s borders. Today more than 60 per cent of French voters now hold an unfavorable view of the Union while almost half the electorate in Germany, Spain and the Netherlands have also become Euroskeptic, notes a recent Pew study. In all, these countries’ rejection of the “European project” is even greater than in the UK’s. . . .

These sentiments help explain the rise in support for Brexit. Much of Britain’s hard-pressed middle and working classes are disturbed by the current record immigration, much of it from other EU countries, which has occurred despite Prime Minister David Cameron’s repeated promises to reduce its growth.

Worse, the immigration was a Labour plot to make Britain less British, and its electorate more tractable. More on that here.

Luckily, nothing like that could happen in America.