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Merkel Ally On Brexit: Brits Should Forget Dreams Of Empire, Submit To EU

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Guy Bentley Research Associate, Reason Foundation
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Britain needs to forget about its former status as a major global power and embrace its destiny inside a greater Europe, according to an ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“The old dreams of the empire and the Commonwealth is not a dream for the future, it is a dream of the past,” Elmar Brok, chairman of the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee told Bloomberg in a TV interview.

A member of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, Brok argued Britain should vote to remain a member of the European Union in the upcoming referendum, which will be held June 23. (RELATED: Poll Shows Economists Overwhelmingly Agree On Effect Of Brexit)

Brok claimed all the economic arguments lay with the campaign to keep Britain in the EU. But Brok warned his fellow pro-EU campaigners that the “Leave” campaign capitalizing on the emotional argument for leaving the EU.

He argued if the UK left the EU and wanted access to Europe’s common market they would have no say in the regulations that would be passed.

“They can stay in the internal market, without any say on the rules of the internal market,” he said. “That is the only point how Britain can stay in the internal market.” But in a surprisingly revealing admission, Brok said the EU had “no contingency plan” in the event of Brexit.

Despite a flurry of intervention from world leaders including President Barack Obama as well as a host financial institutions warning Britain about the dire consequences of Brexit, the polls have shifted toward the Leave side. The last two opinion polls put the pro-Brexit side ahead by two percentage points.

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