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.
The half-hearted pro-Remain stance that Corbyn took was, IMO, a disaster. It looks like he supported Remain because he didn't want a full-scale fight with his MPs over this question, but was half-hearted because he knows what the EU fundamentally is (and is getting the fight anyway). The left must avoid this ambiguity. Corbyn missed an opportunity to put himself forward as opposing the EU from the left, and giving the revolt against it a class-conscious, internationalist form, as opposed to the national chauvinist coloration. The left must fight for leadership of the anti-EU revolt, not concede it to the Nigel Farrages and Marine Le Pens.
Jim Creegan