Anne Applebaum Quotes

I've become a lot more politicised because of Brexit.

Fuck the EU!

When it comes to something like Brexit, I am part of the liberal-media London bubble, and so, to me, voting to leave was madness. My perspective was that it was cutting off your nose to spite your face.

I'd love to tell you that everyone who voted Brexit felt like me about the country, about the Union Jack and the cricket team. But I don't think that there's as much romanticism in it, perhaps, as people think.

The Brexit and Trump phenomena are informed by similar forces and social and economic movements. I think it's been really stressful; it's been really scary.

During the Brexit campaign there was a deficit of outrage.

The eurosceptics, many of whom are my friends and are highly intelligent people with strong views, they are entirely respectable in every way, I just don't agree with them.

The argument that won the Brexit campaign is the one that said take back control... which is another way of saying we want to control our destinies again. This is an existential issue for the whole of Europe, not just for the U.K., because this sentiment is not limited to the United Kingdom.

Brexit is a harbinger for Trump, really.

We want to represent all the French people with ideas that are neither left nor right: patriotism, defense of the identity and sovereignty of the people. If a person like me is described as being extreme-left and extreme-right at the same time, then that isn't far off the mark.

I think it's extremely unlikely that the European Union will fracture with nations dropping off the edge.

Nations have lost their old omnipotence; the patriotic tie does not hold. Nations are getting obsolete, we go and live where we will.

European right-wing parties are in fact surprisingly fragmented, disagreeing over almost everything except ultranationalist sentiments and xenophobic opposition to non-European immigrants.

The EU aspired to transcend nation-states, but its fatal flaw has been its consistent failure to recognize the persistence of national differences and the importance of addressing threats on its frontiers. One consequence of this oversight has been the rise of political parties that aim to restore national autonomy, often by appealing to far-right, populist, and sometimes xenophobic sentiments

Brexit is the other face of the refugee crisis - tensions that lead to stasis, external risks that lead to asymmetric shocks.

Would I have voted to leave the European Union? Yes, I would. My theory there is that Britain was fed up having won two World Wars against the Germans and had reached the boiling and breaking point of being told where to live and what to do by a bunch of bureaucrats in Belgium. It was out of that frustration that the vote to leave was made.

Quite simply, without UKIP, there would not have been a referendum. I am convinced that the 'we want our country back, we want our borders back' message that we took across the country on an open-top double decker energised non-voters to back Brexit.

We've seen with Brexit and other things that there's a dark impulse to be petulant and frustrated with complicated solutions.

The arguments in the Brexit vote and in the American presidential campaign are about the same. In a friendly way, may I also give some advice to the American people to make the right choice when the moment comes.

If there is a 'Leave' vote in England and across the U.K. as a whole, then we see the reins of power being seized by politicians who are on the right of the Conservative party.

We did it! Britain is no longer a member of the European Union. By 'we' I mean the 17.4 million Britons who voted Leave, Nigel Farage who fought for the cause for 25 years, Brexit Party MEPs, Tory Party members who were brave enough to desert their party in droves at the Euro-elections and, of course, the Daily Express.

UKIP's biggest fight is with the Conservative Party.

One of the reasons why many British voters chose to leave the European Union was because they distrusted European institutions. Of all the many costs of Brexit, this was one I did not foresee: That it could wind up damaging the nation's faith in its own institutions too.

The E.U. referendum was promised by a Conservative Prime Minister fearful of losing votes and of mass defections to UKIP.

The United Kingdom has committed the heresy of breaking the chains of the E.U. This is a signal victory for democracy. It is a slap in the face to the European system which was increasingly based on fear, blackmail, and lies.