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UK Nationals Can Individually Opt Out Of Brexit. America Should Do The Same

The EU is letting marauding Britons off the hook, offering dual European citizenship

Donald Trump

The European Union is ready to give those who disagree with Brexit an out. The European Parliament’s chief negotiator, Guy Verhofstadt, said the body has “fast-tracked” a proposal to offer Britons the option of staying with the EU despite Great Britain leaving it. I can’t help but think, wouldn’t it be great if we, the American people, had a similar option?


Proposed by Charles Goerens, an EU Parliament member from Luxembourg, there seems to be no time to waste.

"We realized that this has become a very important issue that cannot await treaty change, as was my intention when I first tabled my amendment, since this might take years.”

There was a brief pang of schadenfreude for Americans when we read, heard, and saw stories of British citizens regretting Brexit. It was short lived. Our own crisis of faith is now happening right here in our backyards. The reality of a very likely Trump White House is upon us, and we often feel like there’s nothing that we can say or do about it.

So it went for Brits who had other ideas about the decision to leave the EU. Whether it was stoked by fears of immigrants or the issue of British sovereignty, it left those who thought an economically linked Europe was a better alternative in tatters. But now that they’re being given their olive branch, what about ours?

As Michael Moore pointed out, Donald Trump’s presidency is hardly a mandate. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.5 million votes. And, if you add in the third party candidates, that means 53.5 percent of the United States voted for someone other than Mr. Trump. The result is a deeply divided nation of the unwilling.

It’s fair to point out that we’ve got no idea what Trump will actually do. But what we do know is cause for pause. Despite claiming to want to “drain the swamp,” his cabinet is filled with insiders and those with vague ideas about what they’ve been tasked. He continues to deny the basic obligations of the post he’s been given, handing security briefings off to Vice President-elect Pence, or shuttling concerned legislators to Ivanka Trump—his daughter—on climate change.

There is also the charge of his long list of conflicts-of-interest. Maybe his staying on as executive producer of his reality television show, The Apprentice, is not as large a problem as his numerous business ties, but it’s still absurd. Combine that with the regrets already staring down some of his base, maybe Americans are looking for their own way of opting out of Trump’s America.

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