The crisis of the old order.

[The meaning of the Brexit result is] that the status quo is broken. Old structures are crumbling. The West is in a crisis of the old order.

And those pleading with UK voters to cast their ballots for the status quo had essentially placed themselves on the side of dysfunction, of chaos, of menacing threats to the very essence of the West. Uncontrolled immigration. Economic stagnation. A loss of national identity. These constitute the legacy of Europe’s seventy-year march toward more and more integration. Add to that the steady erosion of democratic structures as EU countries ceded more and more control over the lives of their citizens to nameless and faceless bureaucrats in Brussels whose constant preoccupation is the stealthy accumulation of political power—a mission at which they are brilliant.

The wonder of it isn’t that British voters issued this “stunning” rebuke to the status quo. It wasn’t really that stunning in the context of the hydra-headed crisis besetting Europe these days. The wonder of it is that so many British leaders and institutions fought so desperately to preserve a status quo that clearly isn’t working.

"Brexiters' Rage against the Elites. Globalism is out. Nationalism is in." By Robert W. Merry, The National Interest, 6/24/16.