Brexit’s Libertarian Fallacy

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The Leave campaign successfully managed to exploit both liberalism and libertarianism’s core principles, even if in fact a powerful case could have been made against Brexit from these theoretical standpoints. First, the liberal framework was used to depict the EU as the despotic state liberals tried to circumvent, and Britain as the individual whose rights were at threat. This intentional confusion of scale is designed to obfuscate the issue. Second, the term libertarianism was hijacked by UKIP as a part of its anti-establishment populist agenda. This corresponds to the growing presence of a libertarian undercurrent in British Politics since the Thatcher era. In fact, the case for remaining was far more compatible with libertarian values because the EU stands for freedom of movement, free trade and toleration.