Leave voters and the Brexit elite

Disconnects are usual between leaders and the led. But nowhere is this more extreme than between the average Leave voter and the Tory Brexit Westminster elite.

According to statistics the typical Brexit voter is likely to be white-English, resident outside the large metropolitan areas, as well as older, poorer and less well-educated than Remainers. In assessing why Leavers voted for Brexit, we find miscalculation of how Brexit would affect Leavers’ own economic interests mingled with the toxic allure of xenophobic nationalism.

The Leavers’ arguments were essentially not different from those peddled against outsiders throughout history, from the arrival of east European Jews at the beginning of the twentieth century to blacks in the 1950s, or Asians in the 1970s. “They take away our jobs, they drive down wages, they push up housing costs, they strain the resources available for health and education.” In 2016 there was also the financial myth that EU withdrawal would free up 350 million a week from EU contributions which could be redirected to the NHS.

These supposed financial advantages were alloyed with xenophobia and nationalism. “We will get our country back.” “We will take back control [against them, the other].” Outsiders would go or at least stop coming. The Brexit appeal was about nostalgia, the recreation of an England long gone: the England of fish and chips and Max Bygraves shows, an England where the only foreigners were the occasional “paki” on the corner and the odd Italian barber. In short, Leavers saw Brexit simultaneously as a step to improving their lot economically and securing a more ethnically homogeneous community, both ethically and socially. Brexit for them was a sub-conscious drive to turn back the clock to the society that existed under the Keynesian state managed capitalism in the decades following the Second World War.

But the Tory Brexit elite have no intention of turning back the clock. Their main complaint against the EU is not freedom of movement, but the inhibitions that the EU places on the even further extension of neo-economic liberalism. They recognise that exiting the EU will lead to capital flight (non-investment, re-location); a mass influx of cheap low quality commodities, including food, from around the world. Unemployment will grow and state revenues will fall, bringing about a near end to welfare spending and disaster for the NHS. But the Tory Brexit elite will “solve” the problem through an internationally competitive economy of low wages with a minimal welfare state and limited employment and consumer rights - and all this while waving the Union Jack.

If Brexit was an act of desperation, driven by the worst of motives, by those marginalised and left behind in Britain, the consequences of the referendum will only tighten the noose around their necks.

Why Britain's conservatives oppose the Alternative Vote

In opposing the alternative vote, Britain’s Conservatives are trying to cheat history.

If you look at the start of every period of Tory-dominated government (i.e. 1931, 1951, 1970, 1979, 2010.), the percentage of the electorate voting Tory is always lower than on the previous occasion.

Today, the Tories can only hope to form a majority government by being the single largest party under a simple majoritarian electoral system. Under AV in most of those constituencies where the Liberal Democrats can get into the second place the Tory would be doomed. Parliaments are more likely to be hung.

AV is not about proportional representation (one person, one vote, one value) but merely a step to make the individual MP more representative of the voters in his or her constituency. But that is not to Tory advantage.

Can New Labour attack the Tory Toffs?

Maybe Labour can hold on to a fraction more of its core vote, if it plays the 'Tory Toff' card against Cameron et al.

That said, Blair and Brown have faithfully served the interests of big-business and the rich since 1997 to make Britain its most economically unequal since 1945. New Labour is as much in the pockets of big money as the Tories.

Attacking Toffs is not the key issue. Britain needs a political movement to struggle for greater social equality - and that is not on offer from either the Tories or Labour.

The Lisbon Treaty: a mountain out of a molehill

Let us put the Treaty of Lisbon into perspective because blaming it for the sins of capitalism as too many on the left do, misses the point.

New Labour has facilitated the highest level of social inequality in Britain since 1945 and Britain is the most socially unequal country in the EU. (Cameron’s policies will accelerate inequality)

New Labour has created a police surveillance state in Britain with diminished civil and personal liberties. Britain has the highest level of state surveillance in the EU. (Cameron will not reverse this.)

New Labour has, though lies, involved Britain in the imperial wars of United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most European states avoided wholly or in part these wars. (The Tories supported the war mongering.)

The key problems of Britain are not caused by the EU; they were made in Britain. The Treaty of Lisbon is a bureaucratic tidying-up exercise which has been made a whipping boy for the pain of capitalism by the perpetrators of those sins. Britain would gain, not lose, by becoming more like its immediate continental neighbours in the EU, nor does Britain need strings of opt-outs.

Those things which are wrong in the EU need to be corrected through joint struggle across Europe by the left. The solution is not to get into bed with market fundamentalist Tories, whose so-called patriotic nationalism (like New Labour’s) is nothing more than the surrender of Britain to the unbridled capitalist market and US imperial power.

The weakening or break-up of the EU would not only see the re-emergence of national antagonisms in Europe, but it would see European state becoming satellites of the US, as Cameron and UKIP would no doubt like. The EU is the last hope for retaining the social market economy.

Face the issue of the EU head-on

I think Britain should confront the EU issue head on.

There should be a referendum on Britain’s continued membership of the EU, rather than claiming opposition in principle to everything the Union proposes and then demanding an opt-out when something has been decided.

My belief and hope is that the people would, as in 1975, back continued membership, if only because the psychological, practical and economic effect of withdrawal would be disastrous for Britain.

With the issue of membership out of the way (and UKIP and the Tory right marginalised), Britain could work with and within the EU to achieve its interests.

For Cameron to carry on winging about Lisbon is an own goal

The Lisbon treaty is now EU law and unless Cameron envisages a campaign to withdraw Britain from the EU he would be well advised from his point of view to move on.

Yet who am I as a socialist to advise Cameron? I wish only for the Tories, now waiting in the wings to inflict terrible cuts on ordinary working people, to weaken themselves through pointless bickering about the EU.

So perhaps I should change my advice. Yes, hold a pointless referendum, argue about the EU and the Lisbon Treaty, while unemployment and poverty grows in Britain.

2010 Tweedle Dum replacing Tweedle Dee

The Tory assumption of office in 2010 will be the replacement of Tweedle Dee by Tweedle Dum. Sure each party has its entourage of yes-people; New Labour cosmopolitan yuppies will be replaced by the offspring of landed families supplemented by a few Tebbit-like second hand car dealers.

Yet on the key issues of upholding the undemocratic authoritarian state, maintaining the vast levels of social inequality that characterise Britain and backing US-style capitalism, both the Tories and New Labour are one.

Conservative tie themselves in their own knot over Europe

However much one dislikes the Conservative Party, nobody is seriously suggesting - as some commentators here appear to misunderstand - that Cameron, Hague et al are themselves fascists.

What has happened is that the Tory leadership has made a terrible mistake which many among the Tories already realise. In his attempt to satisfy Tory Euro-sceptics, Cameron took his delegation of Conservative MEPs in Brussels out of the centre-right EPP group and instead formed a parliamentary fraction with right-wing parties which include fascist MEPs from Eastern Europe.

It is no small matter that the MEPs of the party which will probably form the next British government are of their own free will part of a political fraction in Brussels which contains fascists. This point needs to be made again and again until the Tories (or the fascists) leave that grouping.

If Cameron wants to land on planet Earth with regard to the EU he needs to do two things:

First, leave the so-called Conservative and Reform fraction in the European Parliament which contains fascists.

Second, recognise that the EU is a reality (and largely a beneficial one) and work out how best to purse British interests inside that body.

No to more public debt

We don’t want higher levels of public debt and we don’t want a fall in aggregate demand.

The only solution is a hard pill to swallow and is certainly not on offer from New Labour, let alone the Tories: i.e. an increase in government expenditure on capital projects funded by tax increases, not borrowing. Such an expansion in public investment would help cut unemployment while the high rates of tax on income, land, capital, inheritance, etc would help bring about greater social equality in Britain.

Cameron is no solution to New Labour's faults

Let as look for a second at the faults of New Labour.

Producing the highest level of social inequality in Britain since 1945.

Privatising, linked to hidden public borrowing, through PPP schemes in the public sector.

Running an economy based on massive credit expansion which led to the near collapse of the whole financial sector

Diminishing civil and personal liberties through the creation of a bureaucratic surveillance state.

Brown-nosing to the US and involvement in its imperial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Now which of these faults are Cameron and his Tories going reverse?

Tories link up with Euopean fascists

The fact that the Tories share a European grouping with East European fascists does matter. It means that in European politics Cameron and Hague feel nearer to these people than they do to the European Christian Democrats of the centre right.

In some aspects this development is more disturbing than the growth of BNP in Britain, for while Griffin and his BNP are likely to remain on the margins of British politics, Cameron is set to become Prime Minister in 2010.

The Tories are not afraid to stand alone on Europe. If they got the chance they would not ratify the Lisbon treaty, leaving Britain out on a limb. Yet such loneliness was not for them in the European Parliament; they joined forces with East European fascists to form parliamentary group. Their association with fascism is an alliance of choice, and the Tories deserve to be attacked for it.

August 2009 Opinion Poll

For me as a socialist this polling evidence is utterly disastrous. (the Guardian 25 August 2009)

New Labour has rightly been consigned to the dustbin. Its middle England support has vanished; and on account of its accommodation to market fundamentalism, for working people the Labour Party is a meaningless instrument in the worst economic crisis in living memory.

Such is the tweedle-dum tweedle-dee politics of Britain today that many working class voters can actually believe that a Tory government can better protect the remains of the welfare state and advance their interests.

So next year Cameron will win an overall majority in Britain’s unreformed electoral system and will continue the process of further strengthening capitalist power and social inequality in Britain.

From the article

Labour has lost the August battle on health, with more voters thinking the Conservatives would improve the NHS than think the party would make it worse. While 48% think healthcare would be better under a Tory government, only 41% agree with Labour warnings that it would be worse. Even 24% of current Labour voters think the Tories would improve the NHS. The Tory lead on other policies, including education, is bigger. In an immediate general election, 25% say they would vote Labour – the joint lowest score in Guardian/ICM polling history and the worst for Labour in the series since June last year. The figure has only been lower once, in an ICM poll carried out for another paper during Labour's spring leadership crisis. Labour support has dropped two points since the July Guardian poll and one point since a more recent ICM survey. The Conservatives are on 41%, unchanged since the July Guardian poll, although down two on the more recent survey. The party has scored 40% or more in 10 of the 12 ICM polls this year. This month's poll is also the 10th time in the ICM series that Labour has scored below 30% – nine of those have come since March 2008. The Liberal Democrats meanwhile are on 19%, down one since July and unchanged since the more recent ICM poll. Support for other parties, boosted by the European elections, has not fallen to previous levels. At 14%, up two (including the Greens, BNP and Ukip at 3% each, and nationalist parties on 5%), it has eaten into major party support.At a general election these figures could see Labour lose more than 150 seats, and give the Conservatives a landslide majority approaching 100. Asked, regardless of individual party preferences, whether a Tory government under David Cameron, or a Labour one under Gordon Brown, would be best for Britain, most people back the opposition. While 58% of all voters – including 37% of people who voted Labour in 2005 – now think Cameron would be best, only 31% back Brown. The Conservatives lead Labour among all social classes and in all regions, although they are strongest among richer voters and those in the south. Crucially, a Cameron government is the clear preference of most Liberal Democrats – 56% would rather see the Tories in power, against 36% who want Labour. In recent general elections, Lib Dem voters tended to gang up with Labour ones to stop the Conservatives winning marginal seats. At the next election, Labour could find itself the victim of Lib Dem tactical voting instead. Meanwhile the poll suggests Labour would find little relief by choosing a new leader. Among possible candidates, most make little difference. David Miliband is the only one who matches Brown head to head, while Harriet Harman is the alternative leader most likely to deter voters. Offered a straight choice between Brown and Harman, 20% pick Brown and only 8% Harman. She is also less popular among women – 21% to 5% – than among men – 20% to 10%.

Primaries for British elections

Party primaries, such as the one held recently by the Tories in Totnes, are a sham.

The candidate is elected from a closed list drawn up by the party leadership either locally or increasing nationally; these sorts of closed-list elections resemble those formally held in Eastern European. Such primaries give the appearance of choice to local electors, but the actual amount of real choice, if any, in terms of candidates’ policies is determined by the party leadership which drew up the list.

Moreover once the candidate is elected he or she is then bound by a centrally determined manifesto, and, if elected, is subject to the party whip in parliament.

Primaries also finally render local party activists utterly powerless. Joining a party will give them no say in candidate selection at all, so there is little incentive to become active in local politics. The main beneficiaries of primaries are not the local electors, nor the rank and file party members, but top brass of the party itself.

It is precisely these anti-democratic features which make primaries attractive to New Labour politicians such as David Miliband. At a stroke they see how they can rid themselves of any residual trade union and local activist pressure.

Proportional representation (under any of the PR systems) plus the devolution of power to local councils would actually increase the amount of democracy. Yet both Cameron and Miliband run a mile from such proposals.