Suzanne Moore makes a case for Brexit, and underscores the fact that neoliberalism is the issue, not just the financial impacts of Brexit on the UK.
The dream of Europe is not the reality – Europe is not the EU, although these terms are often used interchangeably – and because all kinds of people are being totally excluded from this debate.
Lots of people say, vaguely, that they love Europe, that they feel European, and talk as though the EU is some sort of benign, almost charitable organisation. No. The EU is an organisation of free trade. It exists to deliver the neoliberal capitalism I thought the left was not so keen on. Sure, make the argument that free trade is a way of maintaining peace, but this is not some humanitarian NGO. It is run by Jean-Claude Juncker, former leader of Luxembourg, Europe’s biggest tax haven. Mario Dragi, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, runs the European Central Bank, while Donald Tusk, a former rightwing prime minister of Poland, is president of the European Council. Angela Merkel heads up the most influential nation within it.
The Eurozone is also in crisis. If we vote to leave the EU, the whole thing could implode. A series of countries have borne the brunt of its policies, not just Greece, but Portugal, Ireland and Spain, too. The workers’ rights that the EU is said to protect? Tell that to the countries with long-term youth unemployment. Does the EU redistribute wealth? To the bankers, yes. We know who suffers both here and on the continent: the poorest people. Who right now is speaking up for them? I am not surprised that the polls show a complete class divide between those who will vote remain and those who will vote leave. Those who feel disenfranchised economically by wages being driven down have lost faith in the ability of the political class to represent them. The response of this political class – to label everyone else racist – is a zero-sum game. Many will vote to leave as a way of sticking two fingers up, but watching those who benefit from globalisation lecture those who have lost out from it is unedifying to say the least. The country is split and will remain split. Where there was an opportunity for the left to engage, there has been abdication of responsibility, a Corbynite lethargy.
The rightwing populism of Nigel Farage, and indeed Donald Trump, is about neoliberalism’s internal limitations. The assertion that the free market is not God after all, the attempt to put brakes on the free movement of labour at the expense of capital is scary when in the hands of such men, but the left should surely be making the most of these contradictory impulses.
from Stowe Boyd http://www.stoweboyd.com/post/145623236402
