What is Brexit? Part 2

Le Monde Diplomatique

Une Europe à refaire
par Serge Halimi *
... ...

" Car, cette fois, il sera difficile d’ignorer le suffrage universel en s’appuyant sur une classe politique désavouée par le résultat du référendum du 23 juin afin de rafistoler un arrangement rejeté par le peuple. Nul n’imagine à Londres un déni démocratique aussi flagrant que celui qui fut perpétré en France et aux Pays-Bas au lendemain du vote négatif de mai et juin 2005 sur le traité constitutionnel européen. Il est également douteux que les Britanniques puissent être traités avec autant de mépris que les Grecs, qui, en guise de réponse à leur demande de réorientation du cours de l’Union européenne, furent asphyxiés financièrement et contraints d’accepter une purge sociale aux effets économiques désastreux.

" En 1967, le général de Gaulle s’opposa à l’entrée du Royaume-Uni dans la Communauté économique européenne parce qu’il refusait « la création d’une zone de libre-échange de l’Europe occidentale, en attendant la zone atlantique, laquelle ôterait à notre continent sa propre personnalité ». Il serait toutefois injuste d’imputer à Londres la seule responsabilité d’un tel effacement, tant celui-ci trouva de mains complices à Berlin, Paris, Rome, Madrid… Au point qu’on ne voit pas trop quelle « personnalité », quelle spécificité l’Union européenne défend encore (lire « Le legs britannique à l’Europe »). Il est d’ailleurs éclairant que, pour tenter de prévenir le départ du Royaume-Uni, celle-ci ait consenti sans grande difficulté à une disposition qui aurait suspendu les aides sociales pour les travailleurs d’autres pays européens, et à une autre qui aurait accordé une protection renforcée aux intérêts du secteur financier.

" Projet d’élites intellectuelles né dans un monde clivé par la guerre froide, l’Union a raté il y a un quart de siècle l’une des grandes bifurcations de l’histoire, un autre possible. La chute de l’URSS offrait au Vieux Continent l’occasion de refonder un projet susceptible de satisfaire l’aspiration des populations à la justice sociale et à la paix. Encore aurait-il fallu ne pas craindre de défaire et de reconstruire l’architecture bureaucratique érigée subrepticement à côté des nations, changer le moteur libre-échangiste de cette machine. L’Union eût alors opposé au triomphe de la concurrence planétaire un modèle de coopération régionale, de protection sociale, d’intégration par le haut des populations de l’ex-bloc de l’Est.

" Mais au lieu d’une communauté, elle a créé un grand marché. Bardé de commissaires, de règles pour les États, de punitions pour les populations, mais grand ouvert à une concurrence déloyale pour les travailleurs. Sans âme et sans autre volonté que celle de complaire aux plus aisés et aux mieux connectés des places financières et des grandes métropoles. L’Union ne nourrit plus qu’un imaginaire de pénitences et d’austérité, immanquablement justifié par l’argument du moindre mal.

" On ne prendra pas la mesure de la protestation que vient d’exprimer le vote britannique en le taxant de populisme ou de xénophobie. Ce n’est pas non plus en amputant encore davantage les souverainetés nationales au profit d’une Europe fédérale dont presque personne ne veut que des élites politiques autistes et discréditées répondront à la colère populaire qui vient de se libérer au Royaume-Uni, et qui monte ailleurs…"

There is little doubt that a perfect storm of intersecting global and local events hastened Britain’s exit.

Growing xenophobia and nationalism on the rise across Europe nudged by the refugee crisis triggered by long-running instability in the Middle East was the swing factor that determined the referendum outcome.

The Leave campaign proponents cleverly tapped into the fear and resentment directed at these new arrivals as well as thousands of immigrants from less affluent Eastern European countries...

For the rural poor and the working class, the referendum was a godsend opportunity to make their anger felt and to teach the complacent government a lesson.

The merits and rational reasons for Britain to remain in the EU were irrelevant.

In the end, an emotionally charged campaign for Britain’s exit from the EU carried the day.

The Brexit referendum debate was so emotionally charged that it drowned out any rational voices.

There simply was not any room for a considered and rational contest of ideas. I consider that a tragedy...

" The leftwing case for Brexit is strategic and clear. The EU is not – and cannot become – a democracy. Instead, it provides the most hospitable ecosystem in the developed world for rentier monopoly corporations, tax-dodging elites and organised crime. It has an executive so powerful it could crush the leftwing government of Greece; a legislature so weak that it cannot effectively determine laws or control its own civil service. A judiciary that, in the Laval and Viking judgments, subordinated workers’ right to strike to an employer’s right do business freely.

" Its central bank is committed, by treaty, to favour deflation and stagnation over growth. State aid to stricken industries is prohibited. The austerity we deride in Britain as a political choice is, in fact, written into the EU treaty as a non-negotiable obligation. So are the economic principles of the Thatcher era. A Corbyn-led Labour government would have to implement its manifesto in defiance of EU law.

" And the situation is getting worse. Europe’s leaders still do not know whether they will let Greece go bankrupt in June; they still have no workable plan to distribute the refugees Germany accepted last summer, and having signed a morally bankrupt deal with Turkey to return the refugees, there is now the prospect of that deal’s collapse. That means, if the reported demand by an unnamed Belgian minister to “push back or sink” migrant boats in the Aegean is activated, the hands of every citizen of the EU will be metaphorically on the tiller of the ship that does it. You may argue that Britain treats migrants just as badly. The difference is that in Britain I can replace the government, whereas in the EU, I cannot.

" That’s the principled leftwing case for Brexit." ...

... ... ...

(complete article at link)


The Leftwing Case for Brexit (One day) by Paul Mason Monday, 16 May 2016

It is one of the profound ironies of Canada – one that no one even thinks about – that although we praise multiculturism ..., we are the most integrationist country in the Western world. Because there is no defined way of being "Canadian", it affords the country flexibility in attitudes and institutions ....

" ' We have had no end of a lesson: it will do us no end of good!' So said Rudyard Kipling of the Boer war, and he might well say the same today. David Cameron’s wild European gamble has failed. He and the British establishment took democracy for granted. They lined up all the toffs and boffins, the chief executives, tycoons and clever-clogs in the (south of the) land, and asked the nation to pat them on the back. The invitation to a punch in the face was too good to miss.


" Now, with blood barely dry on their lips, project fear has mutated into project stupid-idiots. I find it staggering that the remain minority can accuse the Brexit majority of not knowing truth from lies – unlike in all elections? – and could not have meant its vote. It should therefore be asked to vote a second time, and show due respect to its elders and betters. What planet are these people on? I would guess the leavers in a second vote would soar to 60%, out of sheer fury.

" Brexit is starting to deliver. British politics was constipated and has now overdosed on laxative. It is experiencing a great evacuation. It has got rid of a prime minister and is about to get rid of a leader of the opposition.¹ It will soon be rid of a chancellor of the exchequer and a lord chancellor. It is also rid of two, if not four, Tory heirs apparent. Across the spectrum the left is on the brink of upheaval and perhaps historic realignment, if only the Liberal Democrats have the guts to engineer it. The Greens and Ukip have both lost their leaders. An entire political class is on the way out. As Oscar Wilde said of the death of Little Nell, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh.

" During the referendum I was persuaded neither by project fear nor by Brexit’s projected sunny uplands. I thought, and still think, time and compromise will eventually stabilise Britain’s relations with the EU as not so different from today. Whether the stabiliser is joining the European Economic Area (within the letter, if not the spirit, of Brexit) or some other arrangement – who knows? I voted remain because I felt Europe’s future to be so precarious as desperately to need Britain’s more forceful presence. I feel that more strongly after the news that the European parliament leader, Martin Schulz, wants to move the EU swiftly to a 'one government' federal constitution. "

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-- full text at Ignore the Prophets of Doom. Brexit will be good for Britain -- by Simon Jenkins, in The Guardian

^{1. That remains to be seen. Personally, I'll expect it when I've seen it done.↩}

Police have said the number of hate crimes recorded for the last two weeks in June has spiked by 42 per cent on this time last year.

A total of 3,076 incidents were recorded across the country between 16 and 30 June – a dramatic increase on the 915 reports recorded over the same period in 2015.

The biggest number of recorded incidents came on 25 June – the day after the result of the EU referendum – when there were 289 hate crime related incidents.

What the social media sites in their own report describe as an “explosion of blatant hate” has included:

* Gangs prowling the streets demanding passers-by prove they can speak English

* Swastikas in Armagh, Sheffield, Plymouth, Leicester, London and Glasgow.

* Assaults, arson attacks and dog excrement being thrown at doors or shoved through letter boxes.

* Toddlers being racially abused alongside their mothers, with children involved as either victims or perpetrators in 14 per cent of incidents.

* A man in Glasgow ripping off a girl’s headscarf and telling her “Trash like you better start obeying the white man."

* Comparisons with 1930s Nazi Germany and a crowd striding through a London street chanting: “First we’ll get the Poles out, then the gays!” (...)

The involvement of children as victims and perpetrators was described by the authors of Post-referendum racism and xenophobia as “one of the most alarming and least expected trends”.

A two and a half-year-old Polish girl walking with her mother through a park in Croydon, south London, was told by a 60-something grandfather: “We voted to leave so why the f*** don't you go home? None of us want you here.”

In Taunton Deane, Somerset, a 10-year-old told their German teacher: “I’m not doing what a bloody foreigner tells me to.”

Nor was the racism restricted to people who could be categorised as frustrated and socially excluded.

In an expensive restaurant in Mayfair, London, on the day the referendum result was announced, a party of celebrating Brexiteers refused to be served by an Italian and demanded an English waiter.

An online booking for another top London restaurant included the demand: “I want British waiter please (sic). Don’t send any Europeans to my table.”

Karlsson thinks his compatriot will be clearly focused on European interest when it comes to Brexit. “I think she will be a very hard negotiator in that we did not create this problem, this was a problem created by Britain.”

Reflecting a fairly widespread view among pro-European Swedes and beyond, he said: “Britain can only get a bad deal, a very bad deal, or a catastrophic deal."

It would be good if the majority of members of parliament could recall and act upon Edmund Burke’s 1774 address to the electors of Bristol: they should summon up the courage to act as representatives, not delegates of constituencies