More on Brexit
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Interesting, and if accurate revealing, report just out which produces evidence to show that a protest against austerity and welfare cuts on the part of those particularly affected was a factor in the Leave side winning:
Welfare cuts and other austerity measures implemented under the Conservatives pushed vital swing voters to back Brexit and won the EU referendum for the Leave campaign, according to a new report.
Research published by the Social Market Foundation suggests the best indicator of a person’s referendum vote was not age or education, but happiness or sadness about their personal finances – with unhappy people tending to vote Leave and contented ones preferring Remain.
The report, which analysed the level of cuts in each area of the UK alongside each area’s growth in support for Ukip, argues that had it not been for austerity, the referendum would not have turned out the way it did.
If that’s the case that shows that working class consciousness is not as bad as might be thought. If this is the reason why so many voted Leave at least it shows that it was not to kick out the Poles.
I would say it was not JUST to kick out incoming fellow workers but I heard those sentiments from a strange array of labourite type voters, one a shop steward in local hospital, soon to jump ship into management.
The inaccuracy of polls against actual votes is that many say what they think they should say and be PC about their responses. But actually make their choices differently.
I agree with Matt and when it came to who effected their happiness and sadness was for many Brexiteers it was and still is the presence of foreigners – the scapegoats.
Yes, it was also austerity.
I recall watching a news report after the result in one of the most economically devastated regions which overwhelmingly voted leave, the presenter taking a young unemployed guy who blamed migrants for no jobs around his town, looking at the new community centre, looking at the sites of new factories, looking at the new infrastructure…and pointing to all the accompanying signs where it was written in small letters, “funding by the EU”. The TV presenter then took the guy to the one of the very few Eastern European in the town (migrants usually go where there are jobs) and asked…is it his fault, are you blaming him for your unemployment?
The Remainers simply failed to show the reality to the myth that the UK was subsidizing the EU and not the other way around and that the Brussels was assisting the deprived regions much more than central government in London.
If they voted to ‘kick the foreigners out’ and no doubt many did, they’ve been ‘betrayed’ by the government which has made it clear that not only can all EU migrants who are already here stay (and a good thing too) but so can any who enter until the end of 2021. The extreme Brexiteers have chosen to interpret the result as a mandate, not to kick the ‘foreigners’ out but to bring in more ‘free trade’, i.e more globalisation, which was a contributing factor in the deprived areas becoming deprived. But, if it comes to an another referendum, we can be sure that they will again be beating the xenophobic drum to win votes (I remember seeing one of their leaflets suggesting that the whole population of Rumania and Bulgaria had the right to come here; true but unlikely to be exercised any more than the right of the whole UK population to move to Spain was going to be). The Remain side had a bad hand since they were defending things are they are, that a general status quo that was indefensible should remain. Which all goes to show that a referendum is not the best way to make decisions since what motivates people to vote one way or the other often has nothing to do with the question at issue.
Correction: it is only until the end of 2020 (not 2021) that there will continue to be free entry for EU migrants into the UK.
However, there is a hare-brained scheme proposed by some Tories to unite their party that is being considered by the government. Under this free entry would be extended until the end of 2021. This scheme is hare-brained because, instead of the backstop if no comprehensive trade deal is reached by then, it propose an automatic free trade agreement, but this won’t address the EU’s concerns since it is not so much customs checks to see if tariffs have been levied that is the problem as checks to see if goods imported from Northern Ireland into the EU meet the EU’s single market regulatory standards.
And nobody is mentioning how the UK will preventing “illegal” migrants coming in through the backdoor that NI will be.
If/when Scotland votes for independence and applies to rejoin the EU, as the SNP proposes, then the same problem will arise over the Scotland/England border.
The whole thing is crazy. Reconstructing borders that the development of capitalism has already broken down. That’s what the capitalist class get when the are foolish enough to ask the working class to settle a disagreement they have amongst themselves.
By coincidence, Patrick Cockburn, making a similar point to my last post.
A Plague of Rats: How Years of Austerity Prompted Many Britons to Vote for Brexit
And that’s in South East of England (almost as far South East as you can get) where everybody is supposed to be prospering at the expense of those Up North. It’s a wonder why 36% there voted Remain. Also be interesting to know what the turnout was. I would imagine that most didn’t bother to vote.
UBS has received approval from a London court to move up to 32 billion euros (28 billion pounds) in assets from Britain to Germany
Barclays was granted permission to transfer 190 billion euros in assets to its Dublin-based subsidiary
hmmm…what do they know that we don’t?
George Monbiot brings his hyperbolic observations to the Brexit but the thing is, I don’t think he is far off the mark.
“The tantalising prospect for the world’s pollutocrats is that the UK might become a giant export-processing zone, exempt from the laws that govern other rich nations. It’s a huge potential prize, which could begin to reconfigure the global relationship between capital and governments. They will fight as hard and dirty to achieve it as they did to win the vote. A combination of economic rupture, sudden shifts in ownership, an urgent desire to strike new trade deals and a possible regulatory abyss presents a golden opportunity for disaster capitalism. “
Come off it, Alan, you don’t really believe that, do you? It’s Monbiot at his worst turning himself into a vulgar conspiracy theorist. We know that there is a maverick section of the UK capitalist class that financed the Leave campaign in its own economic interest of escaping from EU regulation of its activities. And, yes, there will be, in far are, individual capitalists who are to banking on a no-deal to make a financial killing, but a group of “disaster capitalists” and “world plutocrats” plotting to turn the UK into
“a giant export-processing zone, exempt from the laws that govern other rich nations”?
I don’t think so. And even if there were they wouldn’t succeed against the will and political power against the dominant section of the UK capitalist class supported in all likelihood by the working class. It’s a fantasy.
A no-deal (if it happens, which is open to great doubt) would temporarily disrupt things but it wouldn’t bring about what Monbiot says these “world plutocrats” want. Eventually, things would settle down and capitalism as we know it in the UK continue.
Well, ALB, I did acknowledge Monbiot’s tendency to exaggerate but when I see Ratcliffe of Ineos, (a capitalist I have detested since he attacked the unions in Grangemouth many years ago when he was just the richest man in Scotland and not the whole of the UK), promoting Brexit while simultaneously protesting about the enforced limits on fracking, I can’t but help that think his positions are linked.
Is he an isolated example, a maverick? Is the Chemistry Growth Partnership just a sector lobbyist group. Is the Chemical Industry Association known as the CIA 😈 just a sector lobbyist group?
Is it all a conspiracy? Are others involved?
“The more you speak and join in, the less likely it is that the result of any consultation will be shaped by vested interests who have either the money, or the connections, or the power to imprint their agenda on the public,” said Mr Gove.
“Vested interests” normally don’t advertise their existence and collaboration. Ratcliffe just happens to have the arrogance to be open about his personal partisan policies.
But you are right, i doubt there can be an actual conspiracy – the only thing the capitalist class join together and cooperate in is screwing workers, otherwise its dog versus dog for the bone.
Revealing list of the demands that US lobbyists would like to be pushed in any US/UK trade deal:
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/us-lobbyists-brexit_uk_5c5b26c6e4b00187b5579f64
Of course this is only a wish list, some of which the US government might not accept and the UK government might try to resist, but it is an example of what is likely to be involved if the UK moves from EU to US regulatory standards.
This is not a necessary consequence of Brexit but of one type, that currently envisaged by the government under which the UK would be able to negotiate its own trade deals. Other types of Brexit, which keep the UK closely aligned to EU standards, as proposed by some Tories and now apparently by Labour, would avoid this.
At least one minister, someone called Williamson, who imagines he’s Minister of War (as in fact he is, “Minister of Defence” is Orwell’s Newspeak), thinks that Brexit provides a chance for a return the good old days of the British Empire:
“Brexit has brought us to a great moment in our history. A moment when we must strengthen our global presence, enhance our lethality and increase our mass.” The Cabinet minister will say that Brexit offers Britain the chance “to consider how we not only project but maximise our influence around the world in the months and years to come”.
He seems to have miscalculated as his speech is being widely seen as ridiculous. Nobody except him believes that the loss of economic clout in trade deals that Brexit will mean for the capitalist class can be replaced by military might (or “lethality” as he calls it). Another example of how the capitalist class’s interests are being looked after by incompetent non-entities.
Sadly he does demonstrate that conflicting interests does increase confrontation
The “… new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth is being deployed to the Pacific for its maiden voyage in 2021 amid a dispute over China’s claims in the South China Sea….” to join American and Australian provocations over control of such a vital trade route. The UK is still a player in the Great Game, Brexit or no Brexit.
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