Brexit: An Embrace of the Global Economy's New Geography

Editor's Note: This piece originally appeared in Quadrant. It is reprinted here with permission. After the United Kingdom voted on June 23, 2016, to leave the European Union, most people focused on immigration as the root cause. Some said it was xenophobia or even racism. And certainly immigration, xenophobia, and racism were major issues in the referendum. But the ultimate cause of the Brexit vote wasn't immigration. It was economics. Around 3.2 million non-British E.U. citizens live in the U.K. Two-thirds of them are working there. Only 1.2 million British citizens live in the rest of the E.U. Most of them are retired ...