[lbo-talk] [pen-l] Brexit: a coup by one set of public schoolboys against another

[Wendy Lyon]

On 9 July 2016 at 18:19, James Creegan <turbulo at aol.com> wrote:
>
> A few thoughts on Brexit.
>
> Most of the pro-remain or pro-abstention posts on these lists have tended to concentrate on its ramifications for internal British politics. And, if I thought that were the only or principal consideration, I would also favor abstaining. The issue of EU membership plays out differently in the UK than on the Continent (or in Ireland). On the mainland, the UE is a major enforcer of austerity. Britain, on the other hand, doesn't belong to the Eurozone, but, more importantly, Thatcher was a pioneer of the neoliberalism that migrated across the Channel. The British ruling class therefore has much less need of the EU to impose austerity. Membership is rather valuable for commerce and a big boon to the City as Europe's financial hub. The main imposers of austerity are the Tories, aided by the acquiescence of the Blairites, not the EU. The whole question of the EU  in Britain thus lacks the class significance it has on the Continent, and is something of a diversion. Indictments of "faceless bureaucrats" and fear of immigrants direct the genuine class anger that exists there at false targets. The referendum results will have the immediate effect of strengthening UKIP and the Tory right.
>
> EU membership, however, is far from being an exclusively British issue. The EU (and not only the currency union) is above all else an iron cage of austerity for the working classes, who are constantly being told that its bars are unbreakable by any earthly power, with the people of Greece  having been served up on a platter to make the point. Britain's vote is rattling the bars of this cage, and calling into doubt the idea that there is no escape. And even if the pro-Leave majority in the UK was prey, as they were, to xenophobia, they seem to have got at least one thing right: that a major purpose of the EU is to remove economic decisions from the sphere of any kind of democratic control or accountability, even of the weak forms that national parliaments used to afford. Those left behind by globalization (i.e., the majority) increasingly feel any semblance of power slipping out of their hands. Opposition to the EU, in other words, is part of a growing class revolt, which will be more clearly delineated on the Continent. Even if that revolt takes the distorted right-wing form that it is taking in Britain, and also to a great extent on the Continent, I think it is imperative that the left come down on the right side of the class line, distinguish itself clearly from the right, and put forward its own very cogent reasons why the working class should favor the breakup of the Union.

Ummm... do you think they haven't thought of this already? The British
left has been doing it for years, decades even. But the British left
is very marginalised, much more so than on the Continent and in
Ireland - reduced to a pressure group within (a pro-EU) Labour, plus a
number of very small parties that are mostly electorally irrelevant. I
would suspect this is not unrelated to EU membership "playing out
differently" there. There certainly was never a hope of the left, even
if it wasn't split into leave/ abstain/ hold-nose-for-remain camps,
wrestling the discourse away from the right-wing Brexiteers.
Especially when those calling for a Leave vote endorsed the
demonisation of free movement rather than challenging it.

As to the notion that Brexit will trigger a genuine class revolt
throughout the EU - time will tell, but the first (Spanish) results
suggest otherwise. It could very well be that this will hinder rather
than advance a left campaign for dissolution. Much harder to sell
support for "leave" when the one country that's actually doing it is
going down the tubes.