Brexit

I’ve remained mostly silent about the prospects of Brexit. On the one hand Remain is being supported by David Cameron, a truly horrible human, and George Osborne, even worse. It’s also being supported by all the Banksters, Bureaucrats, and Corporatists that make up the Neolib consensus both on the Continent and in Britain who predict dire consequences, dire I tells ya, if Leave wins.

On the other hand Leave is championed by the xenophobic Ultra Right, but also, interestingly enough, by the Activist Left who elected Jeremy Corbyn to head the Labour Party.

I think there is definitely a strong case to be made for the Leave position from the Left. If nothing else it will probably cause Cameron’s resignation and new elections. Also there is no denying the Brussels Bureaucracy has been unsympathetic to Leftist reforms for at least the last 30 years.

So unlike Atrios who says-

What Does It Really Mean For People
by Atrios, Eschaton
Thursday, June 16, 2016

While there’s been talk about the impact of Brexit on the supposedly Big Important Things such as The City and Big Finance, trade, etc., there’s been very little discussion about what it would actually mean for ordinary UK citizens. Nobody really knows. What will those currently residing elsewhere in Europe, or who are the equivalent of US snowbirds with their lovely Spanish accommodations, be faced with? Most people won’t ultimately care much about the things which elites think are important (elites find ways for this stuff if they need to, anyway), but they will care if they have to cut their annual 6 month stay in Costa del Sol to 3 months… or zero.

I think a lefty case for leaving the EU can be made, but that most good that could result would depend on lefties actually running Britain. The EU has the potential to hamper more lefty policies, but that’s redundant when the Tories are in charge. If I could vote I’d vote to stay, but I can imagine scenarios such that leaving would be a good thing. Those scenarios just aren’t going to materialize.

And then Scotland will go. Congratulations, David Cameron….

I on the other hand would vote to Leave. Most of the negatives are short term or illusionary and not really all that negative actually except to the Billionaires and Mega Corps. Also as an Anarcho-Syndicalist I believe authority should devolve to independent competing interests and the lowest level of organization possible. Anything else has at least the potential for Stalinist Dictitorial Collectivism and State Planned Economics and even as a Lefty I admit that historical experiment didn’t work out so well.

And I’m not being hypocritical, I thought Scotland should leave too and if they now find it in their interests to exit Britain and join the EU then that’s what they should do.

There is no denying that the Currency Union is badly managed and harmful to its members and its real purpose now is simply to advance and enforce German interests. Likewise I think France, Spain, and Italy should all leave at least the ECU and return control of their economies to their people.

While at one time the EU played a constructive role in stablizing Europe after the Good War (WW II), those days are long past and it must prove the benefits of membership today or disappear.

Brexit – The End of the Universe
By Mathew D. Rose, Naked Capitalism

The other morning I was astounded by an interview I heard in German state radio. It was in Deutschlandfunk, which specialises in news and current affairs. It is considered by many to be the most serious and objective radio station in Germany.

In this case the moderator was querying the EU parliamentarian Sven Giegold of the Greens concerning the upcoming referendum, also known as Brexit, in Britain to leave the European Union. Giegold is a clever chap, in fact one of the few talents in Brussels. One of the moderator’s first questions was if it would not be better if Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, the EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council went to Britain to make the case for Remain in the upcoming referendum.

This question reflects some very basic problems that are plaguing Europe’s elite and its obsequious media. The first is a specifically German one: Authority should not be questioned. In other words when such powerful figures as the German Finance Minister and the presidents of the European Commission and Council tell you to vote Remain, then there can be no doubt what you should do.

Everyone is supposed to forget the recent records of these three politicians. Schäuble has pretty much single-handedly transformed Europe’s recession into a depression as well as reducing Greece to a perpetual humanitarian crisis. Juncker, as prime minister in Luxemburg, created a tax system there, which permitted large corporations to pay hardly any taxes on their European profits, to the detriment of the member states’ taxpayers. Instead of being jailed, he was made head of the EU Commission. Tusk rammed a neo-liberal EU policy down the throats of the Poles, resulting in them recently electing an anti-EU, ultra-conservative party with an absolute majority into government. That is the first time since the post-communist era that any party has obtained such a mandate. These are some rather impressive accomplishments.

To make matters worse, Schäuble has employed his usual tactic of bullying to influence the British, making it perfectly clear that in the case of Brexit “In is in and out is out”. There will be no good will, no compromises. Do not think this is simply polemic. It is the same sort of thing he told the Greeks before he crushed them. Britain may not have the Euro, but a nation defying German hegemony by leaving the EU is a dangerous precedent and must be made an example of – see Greece. There is a large arsenal of economic weapons available to the Germans and they have no scruples about using them.

Be it as it may, the radio moderator was gobsmacked when Giegold explained that such menacing rhetoric from Germany; be it from Mr. Schäuble or former German leaders has never impressed the British in the past. In his opinion such comments simply add fuel to the Brexit fire and are not in the least helpful in.

Following Schäuble’s threat, Tusk demonstrated the typical political acumen of the EU elite with his matter of fact analysis of Brexit, claiming that it could be the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU but also Western political civilisation in its entirety. Oh well, we may have some exciting times ahead of us.

Should Britain prosper after Brexit, the EU elite will have some serious problems. Even worse would be the case that Britain prospers and the EU does not. One should also not forget that following Brexit the UK will be governed by a neo-liberal conservative government, whose political agenda is similar to the EU’s. What happens when they are eventually voted out of office and a more social labour government (should the Blairites not regain control of the party) introduces a different programme?

What the German radio moderator seems not to comprehend is that Schäuble, Juncker and Tusk, like the rest of the EU elite, have become anathema for most Europeans, especially for those with any sense of democracy, justice or solidarity. There is in reality nothing democratic or transparent about the EU. Where else, except in a dictatorship, do you have a parliament that does not have the right to create laws, this being done instead by bodies that have not been elected by the people.

If one looks at the EU today, nothing has changed for years. It is doing its best to push through the trade agreements TTIP and CETA, although there is little popular support for either. Corporate lobbyists still dictate policy. What is illegal concerning nitrogen oxide emissions of diesel cars in the US is permitted in the European Union thanks to loopholes built into the law. Volkswagen will probably not even be punished for its use of a defeat device in its diesel cars. It came as no surprise that this fraud was exposed in the United States and not in the EU. The EU’s new emission law concerning petrol powered cars, WLTP, is being made just as ineffective. Despite a raft of tax scandals, including that involving Juncker, no effective legislation to stop this has been created. The list goes on and on.

The EU spends millions every year maintaining the illusion that it is one of the great European achievements. The problem is that it has not been the case for a long time. It has become the enforcer of a now-liberal agenda, converting the particular interests of big business into European law. So we have an anti-democratic EU under German hegemony furthering the interests of large corporations – I doubt this is what the people of Europe want or deserve.