A Canadian author says he predicted the shocking outcome of the Brexit vote in a recent book.
“Brexit has a lot of parallels to the Protestant Reformation, which is the revolution – political and religious – that Martin Luther launched 500 years ago next year which broke Europe into Catholic and Protestant halves,” Chris Kutarna told CTV News Channel in an interview from Regina on Monday.
“[That] didn’t tell us that Brexit had to happen, but [it] certainly made it easier for us to imagine that it could happen.”
On June 23, Britons shocked the world by voting to leave the European Union. Borne from the ashes of the Second World War, no country has left the EU since its inception.
In Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risks and Rewards of Our New Renaissance, Kutarna and co-author Ian Goldin explore how history can help us navigate – and predict – our turbulent times.
“The Protestant Reformation, you know, breaking Europe up religiously and politically, it was catastrophic in a number of ways,” the University of Oxford scholar said.
“There was a silver lining, which is that people suddenly realized in Rome and in other European capitals that this monolithic institution that they had always grown up with, and whose problems they felt were simply too great to be dealt with, could be radically reshaped.”
Despite the tumult across the Atlantic, Kutarna believes that the European Union will continue to exist – and thrive.
“I think people waking up this morning in the capitals of Europe, one thing they absolutely do believe now is that the EU can be radically reshaped,” he said. “A lot of people still believe that there are positives to be pulled out of a connected and open Europe and it’s up to them now to demonstrate to the wider European public that those positives are going to reach them.”
