Ashoka Mody: The rude awakening

Two unrelated historical processes met at Brexit.

The European Union, inspired by great wisdom and empathy, had fulfilled its historical mission. That mission was primarily to secure peace in a continent weary of its own ferocity and then to establish open borders to cement the peace and spread prosperity. And that task was largely done by the early 1990s, when the essential framework for open borders was in place. As the historian Tony ...