A Crisis Of Thier Own Making! Quebec Secession Is Coming, and Canada Isn’t Ready
Any Time Is a Perfect Time to Exit the Peoples’ Republic of Trudeau
It’s 2016, the year of Brexit and Trump—but May, one month before the former and six before the latter. Barack Obama is addressing the G7 for the final time in a private session. I watch him describe the critical role that table played in managing the global events of his presidency. From the fallout of the great financial crisis to Russia’s illegal 2014 annexation of Crimea and to the Paris Climate Agreement negotiations, he paints a picture of an imperfect but irreplaceable multilateral institution that is to be appreciated and protected. It is peak Obama: intelligent, incisive, self-deprecating, wise, lengthy. He closes by apologizing for going over his allotted time but begs his colleagues’ indulgence, “since it is my last G7.”
British prime minister David Cameron speaks next. I remember him opening with a joke riffing on Obama’s close: “Who knows? We’ll see next month if this is my last G7.”
Cameron’s jaunty insouciance made me believe for the first time that the Brexiters were going to win their referendum. The PM had made a manifesto commitment to “give the British people a referendum with a very simple in or out choice.” It was a sop to Euroskeptic UK Independence Party voters, a cynical attempt to consolidate the British right under…