The media have included Cornwall as part of ‘Brexit Britain’. But let’s put June’s vote in context. The Brexit vote was not that much higher in Cornwall than in large swathes of Wales and southern England. Devon, Somerset and Gwent, along with Bedfordshire, Cumbria, Tyne & Wear, Warwickshire and West Yorkshire, were all less than 2% more likely to vote Remain. This is a marginal difference. And in part it’s explained by the higher numbers of elderly voters and those with no qualifications in Cornwall when compared with several of these other places. They were the groups most likely to plump for Brexit. Meanwhile, equally large chunks of middle and eastern England (and north-east wales) were more Brexit-inclined than Cornwall.
EU referendum
EU referendum – the people spoke. Although not with one voice.
When the dust settled a week ago, the press was quick to tell us what happened.
‘the country voted with its heart‘ (Mirror)
‘Britain backs Brexit‘ (Telegraph)
‘Britain votes to leave EU‘ (Independent)
‘the UK voted to leave‘ (Huffington Post)
Except that neither ‘the UK’, ‘the country’, nor ‘Britain’ did anything of the kind. The Leave side won a relatively small majority (51.9%) of those who voted. However, not everyone voted. Here’s the full voting figures for the UK and for Cornwall.
| UK | Cornwall | |
| Leave | 17,410,742 | 182,665 |
| Remain | 16,141,241 | 140,540 |
| Didn’t vote | 12,949,258 | 96,533 |
So in the UK only 37.4%, or just over one in three voted for Brexit. ‘The UK’, ‘the country’ and ‘Britain’ turn out in practice to comprise just over one in three of the electorate. Even in Cornwall, a majority of the electorate was not in favour of leaving: 43.5% voted for Brexit, 33.5% to stay and 23.0% weren’t bothered either way.
Of course, turnout is irrelevant to the result and those who didn’t vote – a massive 64% of the 18-24 year olds who we were told were apparently so keen to stay in the EU incidentally – are ignored. The Leave camp won, and those calling for a re-run are mistaken; this would set a very dangerous precedent for the future.
On the other hand, democratic elections have rules and rules can vary from one election to the next. For instance, in 1979 the UK Government demanded that 40% of Scottish electors had to vote for devolution for it to happen. It didn’t as in the event the 51.6% who voted for devolution (very close to the 51.9% for Brexit) did not reach the 40% threshold and had to wait 20 years.
And just last month the Government pushed through its Trade Union Act. This makes strikes in ‘important public services’ which include the NHS, schools, fire services and transport, illegal unless 40% of those eligible to vote in a strike ballot vote for the strike.
Under those rules the 37.4% who voted for Brexit would have been insufficient to trigger such a far-reaching constitutional change. Given these precedents, it was perfectly possible for Parliament to have insisted on similar rules for such an important vote as the one last week. But apparently, for the Tories, membership of the EU was less important that either Scottish devolution in 1979 or strikes in public services. Or maybe the metropolitan Establishment was just so arrogantly and mistakenly cocksure it would win a Remain vote the thought never crossed its mind.
Anyway, here’s the results by constituency in Cornwall (excluding postal votes which may mean the Leave vote is understated). By the way, the report online in the Cornish Guardian has the wrong figures for Camborne-Redruth, exaggerating the Leave vote by 10,000. It seems that west Cornwall was a little less keen on Brexit than east.
| Leave (%) | Remain (%) | |
| Truro & Falmouth | 47 | 53 |
| St Ives | 54 | 46 |
| Camborne-Redruth | 56 | 44 |
| South East Cornwall | 58 | 42 |
| North Cornwall | 60 | 40 |
| St Austell & Newquay | 62 | 38 |
Fear and loathing on the referendum trail 9: Remain 3, Brexit 0. No extra time required
I began by being fairly unenthusiastic about the EU and a referendum campaign that feels more like Big Brother. I’ve now convinced myself to vote Remain. This remains a Remain with reservations. Let’s not kid ourselves; the EU is no shining example of progressivism, it’s been captured by nation-state governments and neoliberal ideologues. However, we have to ask which option is the lesser evil. Which offers the better chance of democratic renewal in Cornwall and the UK generally? Which would be more likely to take action to decarbonise our economy? Finally, which is better for Cornwall in the long run? And the answer to all three questions is clearly Remain. I shall be voting in a spirit of scepticism. I don’t want a neoliberal EU and I don’t buy into the economistic, never-ending population growth, never-ending consumption, never-ending ‘growth’ scenario peddled by the political elite and the likes of Cameron and Osborne.
But I’m even less keen on being part of a Little England run by the likes of Farage, Johnson, Gove, assorted climate change deniers, austerity enthusiasts and neoliberals. Or for that matter five of the six political dwarves who in a collective fit of absence of sense, we voted in as our Cornish MPs last year. A surprising number of people seem to be thinking the same way. So let’s be EU-sceptic but pro-European. Let’s vote Remain and get this toxic issue out of the way. We can then get on with the serious stuff, like ridding ourselves of Cameron and the Tories, working with progressives in the rest of Europe to democratise the EU, organising for fair and equal treatment for Cornwall and its communities, and building an alternative to the neoliberal ideology that’s irresponsibly wrecking the planet in the interests of the 1%.
Fear and loathing on the referendum trail 8: Cornwall, is it all about the pasty?
Which referendum option holds out most hope for those who dream of devolution of powers to Cornwall and Cornish self-determination?
Just as ‘debate’ about the EU at the nation state scale is reduced to the depressing level of ‘what’s in it for us’, so is ‘debate’ in Cornwall often reduced to the financial impact of EU grant aid. We are one of the few regions of the UK that directly benefits financially from EU membership in the shape of massive regional grant aid since 2000. Which should make Cornwall one of the keenest Remain hotspots in these islands. Bremainers point to the loss of those grants and regard Cornish Brexiters as turkeys voting for Christmas. This is too simple. Brexiters question the efficacy of EU grants yet are quick to promise they’ll be replaced by UK government grants.
But can we believe that? Or is this another of those blank Brexit cheques they seem so quick to hand out? As well as paying for the needs of the NHS, the EU ‘dividend’ has been promised for Cornwall’s grants, for farmers, for exporters, indeed for anyone who complains they’ll lose out from Brexit. This £7.1bn (not the £18bn claimed by those horsemen of the apocalypse – Farage, Gove and Johnson) – is going to have to go a hell of a long way.
Call me a cynic but it’s really not very credible. The UK Government’s record in handing on EU money to Cornwall has hardly been inspiring. It’s persistently dragged its feet, holding on to EU grants for up to two years and slow to stump up matching funds. Generally, it’s been unwilling to delegate control for spending Cornwall’s grant money to Cornwall itself or Cornish-based institutions. Would this suddenly improve after Brexit? With the same set of centralist, austerity politicians in control?
On the other hand, the impact of EU grant aid has hardly been independently assessed by academic researchers. An evaluation in 2015 by a private sector consultancy firm was less than overwhelmingly positive. The project class who run Convergence and the former Objective One handouts have been extremely coy in encouraging research on the impacts of their activities. Their decision to allow mega-projects like the university campus at Tremough or the Eden Project tourist attraction to commandeer the bulk of EU funding rather than spread it around among SMEs has never been properly evaluated.
Adopting the former strategy, just because it’s easier to manage, has resulted in a degree of leakage. Grant money destined for Cornwall has leaked out to non-Cornish institutions such as the University of Exeter. The number of well-paid jobs created that have gone to existing residents rather than new residents must be limited. The jury remains out on EU grant money managed by an unaccountable project class with limited knowledge of Cornish communities.
Yet, while EU grants may have supplemented the outdoor relief scheme for the middle-classes that passes for government policy these days, would Brexit be any better? Iain Duncan-Smith, Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and co have no discernible track record of supporting the devolution of powers to Cornwall or to Cornish institutions. Ukip was the only political party in Cornwall in 2014 that did not welcome the granting of national minority status to the Cornish. Even the Labour Party in Cornwall jumped on that particular bandwagon. Ukip (although not its voters) is also opposed to a Cornish Assembly. Ukip tends to beleive that regionalism is just a plot by the European Commission and that the raw deal Cornish fishermen get is entirely the result of the EU, which lets successive UK fishing ministers off the hook nicely.
The UK Government has consistently ignored our demands for equal treatment with the other nations of these islands, demands patronisingly dismissed by Cameron and his ilk with ignorant references to South American rivers. In contrast, European institutions, both in and out of the EU, seem readier to listen to demands for the recognition of the Cornish and more prepared to take our status seriously. While the project of the Europe of the Peoples gathers dust in some corner of Brussels, or is it Strasbourg, the support and solidarity of European Free Alliance (EFA) partners within the EU offers a potentially useful pressure point which should surely only be given up after a lot of careful thought.
I’m sure the Cornish voter will be giving the upcoming referendum a lot more of that careful thought than voters in the other shopping centres of Britain. In particular, we need to think through the consequences of a Brexit decision. It may be an attractive idea to put one to the public school toffs who run the Government and ignore Cornwall. But how will voting for another lot of public school toffs who also ignore Cornwall help?
While the EU is no shining beacon for regionalist demands, if the UK leaves the EU then a Scottish departure becomes more likely. This will leave Cornwall stranded (with Wales) within the increasingly English dominated rump of the UK. An England even more prone to be run by political forces deeply opposed to the need to devolve powers to those regions and nations that are left.
If we add the possibility of an economic slump to the unsettling context of a triumphant, but narrow and backward-looking English nationalism, things become even more worrisome. Can we then expect a neoliberal and conservative political class, even more entrenched in the institutions of governance, to distract and divide its people by turning more and more on ethnic minorities, the disabled, the unemployed, the poor and the peripheries, as useful scapegoats for post-Brexit problems?
A post-Brexit England just doesn’t look like a very attractive place to be stuck in. So anyone looking forward to the prospect of Cornish devolution should grit their teeth, forget about the unctuous Cameron and vote Remain.
Fear and loathing on the referendum trail 7: Combating climate change
The biggest challenge facing the planet is runaway global warming. As the media distract us with trivia, the globe spins onward towards its tipping point, propelled by our addiction to fossil fuels and stubborn refusal to countenance the possibility of changing our way of life to prevent it. The Paris agreement of last year, when governments agreed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees but declined to provide many specific examples of how exactly they would do it, is already dead in the water.
Temperatures this year have soared to record levels. At this rate the 1.5 degree limit will be reached and passed within a year or two. Meanwhile politicians prevaricate, caught in the vice-like grip of their allegiance to neoliberalism and subservience to corporate interests. The super-rich have to maintain their planet-destroying lifestyles, the fossil fuels have to be exploited, profits have to be made.
Which outcome, Brexit or Bremain, is most likely to confront the urgent need for environmental regulation and de-carbonisation of the economy? This is clearly another transnational issue and can only be solved on a transnational scale. Again, we’re back to trust.
The leading ranks of Brexiters are dominated by those in denial about man-made climate change, people like the two Nigels, Lawson and Farage. Lawson, who curiously prefers to live in France, set up his own Global Warming Policy Foundation to oppose climate change mitigation policies. Meanwhile, Farage admits to not having a clue about the causes of dangerous climate change. Ukip policy in last year’s election included a plan to scrap the Department for Energy and Climate Change and end ‘burdensome green levies’.
Another leading Brexiter, our own PR lobbyist, MP and ‘farmer’, George Eustice, wants to scrap the EU’s birds and habitats directives and re-direct the ‘green dividend’ to farmers. Scrapping environmental protections across the board is likely to trigger an even more frenzied developmental free-for-all on sites currently shielded by EU designations.
With most environmentalists lining up behind Bremain, on the climate change crisis criterion alone the decision looks pretty clear cut. Vote Remain. Putting the Brexiters in charge of the environment seems like another case of John Major’s python in charge of a pet hamster, except that the python may well succumb to the current wave of global mass species extinction before the hamster.
Fear and loathing on the referendum trail 6: Democratic renewal? Better in than out?
The other day I caught some guy on the radio saying ‘it all comes down to who you trust, Cameron or Johnson’. That’s a fair point, although I wouldn’t restrict it to just those two. Who can we trust to renew our tired democracy, with its antiquated voting system, corrupt party funding and unaccountable quangos that spend £millions of our money? Will Brexit lead to democratic renewal once the dead hand of the Euro-bureaucrats is removed?
The only weapon that can tame the growth of transnational power that accompanies neoliberalism is democracy. Which is why the transnational corporate elite and the super-rich are so wary of it. Friedrich Hayek, the leading prophet of neoliberalism, openly proclaimed, when supporting Pinochet in Chile, ‘I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism’. If democracy gets in the way of the market, neoliberals are quite prepared to jettison democracy.
Leading Brexiters are as committed to market competition, the small state and the transfer of public services to the corporate sector as are the leading Bremainers. It’s difficult to imagine Farage and Ukip confronting the super-rich. They’re enthusiastically in favour of trade treaties and have even toyed with the idea of a flat tax. This is a favoured nostrum of neoliberals and would hand over even more £millions to the top few percent. In exiting the lobbyists’ paradise that is the EU, would they clear out the lobbyists’ paradise that is Westminster?
Claims to use the money saved from the EU on the NHS are just that. Empty claims. For a start, Brexiters exaggerate the money available by a factor of 2.5. Then it’s not clear how it would be re-allocated. The amount of tax we pay that goes to the EU is equal to just 0.6% of our tax bills. Is that really enough to fund the NHS? Why not just raise income tax by 1%? And what about those in the UK who rely on EU funding, farmers or some science researchers for example? Won’t they also have a claim on all that money saved from exiting?
Can we trust Farage et al. to respect workers’ rights once the vestigial protections of the EU’s Social Charter are binned? Imagining Iain Duncan-Smith, John Redwood and George Eustice leading a campaign of democratic renewal and restoration of public services stretches the bounds of credibility a little and makes the existence of Father Christmas look distinctly reasonable. Moreover, if the elite Cassandras of Remain are right and there is an economic cost to Brexit, is it not likely that there’ll be even more cuts and more austerity politics?
Some in the Conservative Party and Ukip favour the market over democracy. Others favour the nation over democracy. But which nation? ‘We want our country back’ looks suspiciously like a more opaque and less aggressive version of Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’. A vote for exit is poised to unleash a wave of British, or more likely, as the Scots look for the door, English nationalism. Is a UK without Scotland a likely place for the new broom of exit to sweep us into a process of democratic renewal?
Of course, Cameron’s ‘vision’ of a semi-detached UK within a neoliberal EU holds equally dismal prospects for democratic renewal. But that’s not the only vision of Europe. Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis argues that Brexit is the last throw of the dice for a wealthy British ruling class keen to liberate itself from Brussels regulations. He also points out there are movements in the other EU countries committed to radical reform.
The chances of democratic renewal within the EU look on balance to be better than outside. Logically, transnational power can only be confronted by transnational democracy. Although transnational democracy doesn’t necessarily mean the EU, how will a Brexit led by the far right and dependent financially on business rebuild our democracy? Those socialists who argue for Brexit have yet to explain convincingly how radical change will be achieved in a retro-UK dominated even more by conservative values.
Fear and loathing on the referendum trail 5: Any old lie will do
While the referendum campaign has been marked by distraction (from the real issues) and dumbed down debate, it’s also shot through with duplicity. Any old lie will do nicely, thank you.
The most obvious is the Brexit claim that we’re delivering £350m a week to the EU. Once the UK’s rebate is included, EU receipts taken into account and EU grants to private bodies (universities and companies) factored in, it turns out the apparent £18bn outflow claimed by Johnson and Farage is reduced to £7.1bn. Despite being roundly condemned by the Treasury Committee of MPs and others, Johnson and co blithely carry on repeating this flagrant fib, exaggerating the cost of EU membership by a factor of 2.5. They can get away with this as no-one believes official statistics any more, hardly surprising after their cynical misuse by central government since the Blair era.
Meanwhile, the Bremainers concentrate on a narrow economic front, assessing membership solely in relation to its effect on people’s pockets. Since the 1980s politics has been reduced to the question of financial costs/benefits. For these people, everything has its price, but little else.
For the Remain camp therefore, migration (their obvious Achilles heel) is just an issue of economic costs and benefits. Cameron, Osborne and the rest of the metropolitan bubble completely fail to realise that, having asked other people to bear the brunt of the neoliberal restructuring that has casually killed off their former jobs and hollowed out their communities, it’s hardly a big shock if the ‘left-behind’ turn to the anti-immigrant populism spewed out daily by a rabid tabloid press. The press magnify what is hypocritically spouted by Ukip and the Tory right. Hypocritical because these same people sign up to the single market and to the free labour movement that guarantees business its lower labour costs. Hypocritical (and duplicitous) also because as half of net immigration is from outside the EU, Brexit is no magic bullet.
Inevitably, there’s a lot of irrationality swirling around the moral panic over immigration. Even last year, when net immigration into the UK hit record levels, in relation to the resident population the rate of that immigration was only two thirds that of net migration into Cornwall. For most of the past 50 years net migration into Cornwall has been over twice, often well over twice, the level of immigration into England. Yet in contrast to the hysteria across the Tamar, if we complain and ask for a breathing space, the brusque response is just ‘build more houses and accommodate the migrants‘.
On the other hand, the myopic focus on immigration acts as a surrogate for a less articulated concern about population growth. England is already one of the most densely populated countries in Europe. Population growth is adding the equivalent of a city the size of Birmingham every couple of years. Is this really environmentally sustainable? As we already have an ecological footprint in the UK that far exceeds our resources, those liberals who advocate an ever-growing population might like to tell us how this can be accommodated indefinitely.
Even though unable to assess economic arguments for and against the EU, people sense that population growth cannot go on unchecked forever. The political elite think it can. The success of the Brexit campaign has been to transform the referendum from a vote on the EU into a plebiscite on immigration and endless population growth. Remainers respond that pressure on services is nothing to do with a growing population and all to do with austerity and cuts. In reality, it’s likely that both factors – an ever-growing population and austerity politics – are involved.
And what about the non-economic impact of migration? For instance, 1.5 to 2 million British expats live out their retirement in sunnier parts of Europe. If Brexit leads to them losing access to local healthcare we could face the prospect of a potential return migration of boatloads of enraged pensioners. Although, as these would presumably add to the disgruntled left-behind population, they may turn out to be ideal future Ukip voting fodder.
The fundamental duplicity is the masking of the rather miniscule difference between the official cores of either side. Both believe in the benefits of ever greater global trade despite its environmental costs. Both seem willing to sign up to trade agreements that could hand over even more power to transnational corporations. Both argue for ‘single market’ relations with the rest of Europe, which means accepting EU regulations (or ‘red tape’ in Brexitese) a ‘free’ labour market and therefore in practice continuing migration as capital seeks to reduce labour costs.
Neither are prepared to confront the neoliberal grip on politics. So we need to assess Brexiters and Bremainers in the light of three other questions of equal significance. Which option will be most likely to encourage democratic renewal? Which would be best for confronting the urgent issue of dangerous climate change? And which is most likely to benefit the struggle of the Cornish people for parity with the other nations of the UK and recognition of our equal status?
Fear and loathing on the referendum trail 4: How to win a referendum – rely on the politics of fear
The politics of fear can work both ways. The Leave side responded to elite politics of (economic) fear with its own politics of (cultural) fear. Seventy million Turks are poised to arrive if we vote Remain, to be followed by hordes of Albanians and millions of Montenegrins. The Brexiters have succeeded in making the referendum about immigration and population growth rather than the EU. People might not have a clue how the EU works or where Montenegro is, but they think they know all about immigration.
When questioned, Brexit voters seem driven by a diffuse wail of despair as much as by any rational anti-Eurocentrism. Here’s the chance to stick it to them, as ‘they”ve ignored working class communities for a generation. High levels of immigration, stagnant wages, youth unemployment, overloaded health and welfare services, congested roads? You name it; it’s all the fault of those blasted EU bureaucrats, however obscure and indirect the causal links might be. Europhobia makes a convenient lightning rod for undirected anger. Voting out offers a glimmer of hope. It seems to herald a return to those cosy, familiar days of childhood, of security, of coats for goalposts, home-cooking, mawther’s pasties and a sense the world wasn’t running out of control.
Brexiters inform us that we’ve rather carelessly lost our country somewhere. In one of those offshore tax havens, perhaps. ‘We want our country back’ can be read in many ways but, as uncertainty rules, for many Brexit holds out the promise of the return of some long-lost land of nostalgia. It’s simple, misleading and ambiguous (who are the ‘we’?) but, because of that, an effective slogan.
A vote to leave is the last chance to vote against the chaos of the present. Of course, the deep irony is that never-ending chaotic change and ‘creative destruction’ is the name of the game for the finance capitalism that has us battened down. Tidal waves of cash cascade across the globe furiously seeking out new sources of profit, making and unmaking communities as it washes over them. There’s little evidence that Johnson, Gove and Farage aren’t also fully signed up to continuing that frantic search that turns everything solid into air.
Another irony is how three ex-public schoolboys – Johnson (Eton), Gove (scholarship to Robert Gordon’s Academy, Aberdeen) and Farage (Dulwich College) – have successfully positioned themselves as outsiders leading the sod-em-all brigade in scaling the bastions of privilege.
Fear and loathing on the referendum trail 3: How to lose a referendum – rely on the politics of fear
We’ve seen how neither referendum camp is arguing for the radical democratic reform the EU (or the UK come to that) urgently needs. We’ve also seen how the differences between them are in practice fairly marginal with the majority on both sides signed up to the same neoliberal agenda that has been steadily eroding democratic accountability since the 1990s.
The so-called ‘debate’ has been transformed by the media into a series of vox-pops with the man or woman in the street, most of whom appear to have an extremely hazy understanding of what the EU is or how it works. Bigger issues, such as the power of transnational corporations and lobbyists, the possibility of reforming EU institutions, the pressure points for potential democratic change, are ignored.
You have to wonder whether Cameron, Osborne and their chums deliberately set out to lose this referendum. First, offer an open invitation to chancers like Boris Johnson, whose position on the EU makes a chameleon look drab, to convert it into a Tory leadership campaign. Second, time it for when most students (heavily favouring Remain) have left university and are roaming about all over the place and even less likely to vote. Third, resort to an unfit for purpose and creaking online registration system that inevitably crashes under the weight of last minute registrations. Finally, rely on negative and insipid campaigning and the politics of fear.
Meanwhile, many Labour MPs, who might have been expected to have argued strongly for Remain, have gone AWOL, egged on by Guardian journalists to blame Corbyn for Brexit rather than attack Farage, Johnson and Gove.
The Bremain elite decided to play the economics card. In doing so it overplayed the politics of fear, aiming to bludgeon voters into supporting the status quo as, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth, they would panic towards the polling booths. A torrent of economic reports warned of the ever more catastrophic consequences that will follow Britain leaving the EU. Johnson, Farage and Gove became three of the horsemen of the apocalypse, bringing in their wake confusion, chaos and crisis, not to mention war and plagues of locusts.
Whether the economic assessments are right or wrong is beside the point. (Although, as none of the establishment forecasters were able to spot the global crash of 2008, we should take their current predictions with a large dose of salt.) Relying on sound-bites from discredited politicians such as Tony Blair or John Major, while encouraging Angela Merkel or various French politicians to intervene to throw their weight behind Remain wasn’t exactly the sharpest idea in the box. Such tactics were hardly likely to inspire voters to sign up in droves.
The Remain establishment fails to comprehend the level of contempt with which official pronouncements emanating from the political class are held. Put bluntly, people just don’t believe them. It’s more than that; a large minority these days seem to have given up entirely on evidence, unprepared to accept statistics but retailing anecdotes and assertions as if they were holy writ.
Having relentlessly dumbed down the electorate with vacuous sound-bite politics for a generation, the political class is now reaping the whirlwind. The Brexit side can come up with any daft argument or unsupported assertion and they’re regarded as on a par with the conclusions of the IFS or the World Bank. The result is a debate of the dimwits.
Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, the impression is that all the energy is on the Leave side. To leave seems positive, to stay seems, well, just boring. Momentum has swung towards Brexit.
Fear and loathing on the referendum trail 2: Is Brexit any better?
Here’s a question that’s being ignored by a media that prefers to focus on the spat between old Etonians. Which option, in or out, is most likely to reverse the reliance on a failed neoliberal ideology? This ideology, backed by intense lobbying, has the political class firmly in its thrall. Centrist politicians from Ireland to Estonia stumble along in a collective stupor as they busily shovel the earth’s wealth into the pockets of the super-rich.
As they wait for the long-promised crumbs to fall from the rich man’s table, they repeat the magical mantra. ‘There is no alternative.’ We have to make ‘hard choices’, although the choice always seems to be for everyone else to work longer, get lower pensions and put up with declining services. ‘We have no money’, they say, strangely ignoring the fact that the UK economy is five times bigger (even allowing for population growth) than it was when our parents and grandparents could afford to set up the NHS in the 1940s.
There’s clearly a case for radical reform of the EU. There’s also a respectable socialist case for leaving a neoliberal EU that has been thoroughly captured by corporate interests. Not that you’ll hear much about either of those from the BBC or the press. The really curious thing is that the case for reform has instead by default been ceded to the far right – elements of the Tory party and the obsessives of Ukip, whose simple solution for all ills since the 1990s has been to blame the EU.
The differences between that part of the political elite who want us to stay in a neoliberal EU and that part who want us to exit is marginal, to say the least. Brexiters assure us they’ll stay signed up to the single market for example, and therefore to the ‘free’ movement of labour, ignoring the contradiction between this and their call for more border controls, which we already have anyway.
Brexiters are also keen to forge new trade treaties. How likely is it these will be less friendly to the mega-corporations than the TTIP and TISA? They’ll continue with a bonfire of regulations, indeed pour oil on the flames. What they rarely mention is that those detested regulations include maximum working time, maternity rights, right to time off work for family reasons and minimum paid holidays, for example. The UK already has one of most ‘flexible’ and least regulated labour markets in the EU. Those arguing for Leave want it even less regulated.
The result is a rather narrow choice. On the one hand, sign up to Cameron’s shabby deal and retain our semi-detached relationship with the EU. On the other, give up any direct influence on EU decision-making, but, like Norway, adopt its market regulations in order to retain trade agreements. Stay within a neoliberal EU or be a neoliberal UK outside. A choice neatly summed up by one commentator as “This game is being played between deluded austerity monomaniacs touting their non-solution to capitalist crisis, and a bunch of xenophobic reactionaries whose political-economic strategy will be equally toothless in either diagnosing or addressing systemic economic problems“. No wonder a lot of people aren’t exactly enthused, even if they can’t articulate why. So is this a reason to ignore the whole pitiful circus, to sit at home on the 23rd and watch while the British (or is it English) ruling class squabble among themselves?
Kernowpolitico: notes from the periphery 