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While Britain was NOT prepared for BREXIT, it seems that Europe was

How it was possible for "leavers", both voters and leaders, to be so blind and unable to anticipate this, remain a mystery to be clarified in time, hopefully our life-time.  

It started, literally, within hours of Britain's vote to leave. While Brits were still trying to understand what  "leave" means and whether the result is for real, cities and companies across Europe leapt into action, all of them hoping to lure businesses, entrepreneurs and investment from Great Britain.

Britain hasn’t even officially filed for divorce and was still trying to make sense of what the next step will be when the rest of EU started to cast attractive offers to all business areas. Despite the high levels of uncertainty, others in Europe are already looking to gain from Britain’s pain. Nothing personal guys, is just business. Virtually all major cities in Europe race now to be "the new London".

Across the Continent, officials are already vocally trying to entice financial services firms, technology start-ups and others to leave Britain for Paris, Amsterdam, Dublin, Frankfurt, Sweden, Belgium, Luxembourg, Romania and even the relatively tiny Vilnius. They warn that businesses will suffer if they stay in a Britain that no longer has unlimited access to the European Union and its hundreds of millions of potential customers. 

A Lithuanian lawmaker wrote to the chief executive of HSBC, trying to court the bank. A website promoting Frankfurt as an attractive location to invest went live. A Berlin start-up published an online how-to guide for anyone looking to move to the German capital. 

In Romania, country with high developed IT infrastructure, fastest internet in Europe, highly skilled population and still beneficiary of EU structural funds,  two campaigns started simultaneous one luring Britons that votes "remain" to move to live in Romania encouraging locals to "adopt" them - "Romanians for Remanians" the other, "We have a plan for you" inviting investors and high-tech & creative industry to start doing business in Transylvania. 

In less than a week since BREXIT, cities allover EU changed their websites and launched new pages featuring themselves as "the best place for business". 

In France, President Hollande openly invited financial industry from City to relocate promising tax deduction and support for any British national that will relocate with the companies. 

In Romania, President Iohannis and Prime-Minister Ciolos (former EU Commissioner for Agriculture) launched a new development strategy luring foreign investors and companies with a new concept of "green economy" offering advantages and support to anyone interested to do business in IT, creative industries, research and development and ecological agriculture. Lets not forget that Romania is already home of the most advanced laser in the world and has been successful in developing  one of the fastest growing market in information and communication technology sector, being the leader in Europe, and sixth in the world, in terms of the number of certified IT specialists. Romania also have the most fertile soil in Europe and the least degraded. 

 In Republic of Ireland, Niamh Bushnell, Dublin’s commissioner for start-ups, watched the referendum results in a room filled with entrepreneurs and tech executives. As the realization that Britain had decided to go it alone set in, Ms. Bushnell said, the first reaction of those in the room was shock. That emotion, however, soon turned into something else: a sense of opportunity. “We saw this as a call to action to promote Dublin as an alternative to London,” said Ms. Bushnell, who has been meeting with Irish ministers to discuss how to entice entrepreneurs away from Britain. Next week her team will open a website — roughly a year in the making — to promote Ireland’s tech prowess

So, as anybody can see, Europe WAS READY for BREXIT, "just in case", as many officials said. “We didn’t want the vote to turn out that way,” said Tarek Al-Wazir, economics minister for the German state of Hesse. But, he added, “we prepared just in case.”

Meanwhile, all major financial institutions, that collectively employ tens of thousands, even none of them have any immediate plans to move their European headquarters from Britain, all agreed they would eventually shift a significant number of highly paid employees to cities that remain in the European Union. 

One executive in charge of relocation told NYT that the percentage of employees in his firm who might be required to move ranged from 10 percent to 40 percent. “Multiply that throughout the industry and it’s tens of thousands of people and their families,” he said. “And bear in mind that most of these people are millionaires.” 

I can go on and on with dozen of examples from all sectors and I can say over and over again that that the "remain" campaign warned about the collapse of the British economy over and over again. Some major questions remain: 

• What was in the minds of BREXIT leaders when they decided to drag their own country in such a major mess?
• Where they so blinded by hate against EU not to foreseen such logical outcomes?
• How is it possible that handful of so called "patriots" to literally cripple the country they claim to love while offering all the benefits to the "oppressive structure" they claim to hate? (do not forget that instead of a domino effect Brexit actually enhanced EU in the perception of other EU-nationals)  
• What was Cameron's plan when he decided to move the ballot date from 2017 to 2016? 
• How 17 million voters actually believed the gigantic lies of "leave" campaign?
• Why all the experts and the "remain" campaigners were unable to convince the population even they were telling the truth?
• Why most "leave" voters, even now, still prefer to believe that everything will turn to be well and EU will collapse when is more than clear that this is not going to happen? Because of Brexit no political leader would even touch the "leave" subject, after all they have electoral campaigns to win and nobody will vote for a party promising disaster.
• And the most important question: How in the hell nobody thought that by leaving EU Britain is braking a promise made to its most important and closest partners. This makes Britain one of the most unreliable partner for other countries to sign trade agreements  with. Who will trust Britain now?

Unfortunately these questions remain unanswered first because nobody in British media apparently seems interested  even to ask them. On the other hand, I doubt that any politician responsible for the disaster will be willing to answer. 

I am no analyst nor a guru, but I love Britain and all that Britain mean to democracy this is why I do believe that Britain will be able to find its way out of this mess only if people will force the political class to answer these questions. 

Accepting the harsh reality is the first step for healing.