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The Brexit Crisis. A Verso Report, collection Verso Books 2016 William Davies 2016 Thoughts on the Sociology of Brexit first appeared on
PERC Laleh Khalili After Brexit first appeared on Truth Out Salvage
2016 Not a Coup but a Blaze first appeared on Salvage Peter Hallward
2016 The Will to Leave first appeared on Jacobin Lara Pawson 2016
Can This Really Be Us? first appeared on Versobooks Sam Kriss 2016,
The Whorled Circle of a Political Cosmology first appeared on Versobooks Akwugo Emejulu 2016, The Whiteness of Brexit first appeared
on Versobooks Wail Qasim 2016, A Special Intensity of Exploitation
first appeared on Versobooks Rebecca Omonira Oyekanmi The Myth
and Reality of Brexit and Migrants first appeared on Versobooks
Etienne Balibar [translation by David Broder] Originally published in
Libration Wolfgang Streek 2016 [translation by David Fernbach] originally published in Die Zeit John Gillingham, 2016, The European
Idea has Turned Rancid extracted from The EU: an Obituary, Verso
Books, 2016 Antonis Vradis, 2016 Stop Shedding Tears first appeared
on Versobooks Stathis Kouvelakis 2016, Letter to The British Left first
appeared on Jacobin
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
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UK:
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Contents
Introduction
1. Thoughts on the Sociology of Brexit
William Davies
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Wolfgang Streeck
Introduction
Lets Take Back Control was the slogan that won it. Devised by the
Leave campaign, it left questions begging take control of what?
From whom? When did we last have control? intentionally unanswered, the slogan acted as a blank to be filled by the grievances
and frustrations of a disgruntled and austerity-battered electorate.
It anatomised the perceived unfairness at the heart of the relationship between little Britain and the technocrats of Brussels. It
touched the historical nerve that replays the image of Britains
plucky independence and resolute courage in the face of impossible odds. It was the machine-like feedback loop that repeated
difference and separate-ness until the hate began to bloom.
And so, in the days following the vote on 23 June, this is what
Capital-H History feels like. And it is clear that History comes as a
shock. The financial markets dont like such turbulence. The
ripples from such a seemingly parochial event are being felt around
the world. Sterling has collapsed. The Bank of England is getting
ready to pump more money into the financial system. Interest
rates might dip to 0%. Property prices are looking like a bad bet.
The main political parties have collapsed, in a crisis of legitimacy.
The commentariat is forced to look to new diagnoses for the sickness of the moment.
History is returning, and this collection of pieces, gathered in
the days following the vote, is an attempt to take seriously this rupture. The authors come from both sides of the vote, or refused to
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in general (and not just of the subsidised variety) were most likely
to vote Leave.
While it may be one thing for an investment banker to understand that they benefit from the EU in regulatory terms, it is quite
another to encourage poor and culturally marginalised people to
feel grateful towards the elites that sustain them through
handouts, month by month. Resentment develops not in spite of
this generosity, but arguably because of it. This isnt to discredit
what the EU does in terms of redistribution, but pointing to
handouts is a psychologically and politically nave basis on which
to justify remaining in the EU.
In this context, the slogan take back control was a piece of
political genius. It worked on every level between the macroeconomic and the psychoanalytic. Think of what it means on an individual level to rediscover control. To be a person without control
(for instance to suffer incontinence or a facial tick) is to be the butt
of cruel jokes, to be potentially embarrassed in public. It potentially reduces ones independence. What was so clever about the
language of the Leave campaign was that it spoke directly to this
feeling of inadequacy and embarrassment, then promised to eradicate it. The promise had nothing to do with economics or policy,
but everything to do with the psychological allure of autonomy and
self-respect. Farages political strategy was to take seriously communities whod otherwise been taken for granted for much of the
past 50 years.
This doesnt necessarily have to translate into nationalistic
pride or racism (although might well do), but does at the very least
mean no longer being laughed at. Those that have ever laughed at
chavs (such as the millionaire stars of Little Britain) have
something to answer for right now, as Rhian E. Jones Clampdown
argued. The willingness of Nigel Farage to weather the scornful
laughter of metropolitan liberals (for instance through his periodic
appearances on Have I Got News For You) could equally have
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made him look brave in the eyes of many potential Leave voters. I
cant help feeling that every smug, liberal, snobbish barb that Ian
Hislop threw his way on that increasingly hateful programme was
ensuring that revenge would be all the greater, once it arrived. The
giggling, from which Boris Johnson also benefited handsomely,
needs to stop.
Brexit Was Not Fuelled by a Vision of the Future
One of the most insightful things I saw in the run-up to the referendum was a video produced by openDemocracys Adam Ramsey
and Anthony Barnett discussing their visit to Doncaster, another
Labour heartland. They chose Doncaster because it looked set to be
a strong pro-Leave location, and wanted to understand what was at
work in this. Crucially, they observed that in strong contrast to
the Scottish Yes movement Brexit was not fuelled by hope for a
different future. On the contrary, many Leavers believed that withdrawing from the EU wouldnt really change things one way or the
other, but they still wanted to do it. Ive long suspected that, on
some unconscious level, things could be even stranger than this:
the self-harm inflicted by Brexit could potentially be part of its appeal. It is now being reported that many Leave voters are aghast at
what theyve done, as if they never really intended for their actions
to yield results.
This taps into a much broader cultural and political malaise,
that also appears to be driving the rise of Donald Trump in the US.
Amongst people who have utterly given up on the future, political
movements dont need to promise any desirable and realistic
change. If anything, they are more comforting and trustworthy if
predicated on the notion that the future is beyond rescue, for that
chimes more closely with peoples private experiences. The discovery of the Case Deaton effect in the US (unexpected rising mortality rates amongst white working classes) is linked to rising alcohol
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and opiate abuse and to rising suicide rates. It has also been shown
to correlate closely to geographic areas with the greatest support
for Trump. I dont know of any direct equivalent to this in the UK,
but it seems clear that beyond the rhetoric of Great Britain and
democracy Brexit was never really articulated as a viable policy,
and only ever as a destructive urge, which some no doubt now feel
guilty for giving way to.
Thatcher and Reagan rode to power by promising a brighter future, which never quite materialised other than for a minority with
access to elite education and capital assets. The contemporary populist promise to make Britain or American great again is not made
in the same way. It is not a pledge or a policy platform; its not to
be measured in terms of results. When made by the likes of Boris
Johnson, its not even clear if its meant seriously or not. Its more
an offer of a collective real-time halucination, that can be indulged
in like a video game.
The Remain campaign continued to rely on forecasts, warnings
and predictions, in the hope that eventually people would be dissuaded from risking it. But to those that have given up on the future already, this is all just more political rhetoric. In any case, the
entire practice of modelling the future in terms of risk has lost
credibility, as evidenced by the now terminal decline of opinion
polling as a tool for political control.
We Now Live in the Age of Data, Not Facts
One of the complaints made most frequently by liberal commentators, economists and media pundits was that the referendum
campaign was being conducted without regard to truth. This isnt
quite right. It was conducted without adequate regard to facts. To
the great frustration of the Remain campaign, their facts never cut
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policy is now far too long in the tooth to be treated entirely credulously, and people tacitly understand that it often involves a lot of
policy-based evidence. When the Remain camp appealed to their
facts, forecasts, and models, they hoped that these would be
judged as outside of the fray of politics. More absurdly, they
seemed to imagine that the opinions of bodies such as the IMF
might be viewed as independent. Unfortunately, economics has
been such a crucial prop for political authority over the past 35
years that it is now anything but outside of the fray of politics.
In place of facts, we now live in a world of data. Instead of trusted measures and methodologies being used to produce numbers,
a dizzying array of numbers is produced by default, to be mined,
visualised, analysed and interpreted however we wish. If risk modelling (using notions of statistical normality) was the defining research technique of the 19th and 20th centuries, sentiment analysis is the defining one of the emerging digital era. We no longer
have stable, factual representations of the world, but unprecedented new capacities to sense and monitor what is bubbling up
where, whos feeling what, whats the general vibe.
Financial markets are themselves far more like tools of sentiment analysis (representing the mood of investors) than producers
of facts. This is why it was so absurd to look to currency markets
and spread-betters for the truth of what would happen in the referendum: they could only give a sense of what certain people felt
would happen in the referendum at certain times. Given the absence of any trustworthy facts (in the form of polls), they could
then only provide a sense of how investors felt about Britains national mood: a sentiment regarding a sentiment. As the 23rd June
turned into 24th June, it became manifestly clear that prediction
markets are little more than an aggregative representation of the
same feelings and moods that one might otherwise detect via twitter. Theyre not in the business of truth-telling, but of moodtracking.
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The EU itself is a massive bureaucratic mechanism, institutional machine and ideological apparatus devised to facilitate the
movement of capital, goods, services and people across its internal
borders. The free or relatively unrestricted movement of goods
and capital without encountering tariffs or protection barriers has
resulted in the further consolidation of the power of the big manufacturers in Europe as well as unfettered growth in and institutional protection of the financial and banking sector. The EU legal bodies legislate around or regulate some of this free trade, but generally decide in favor of big business over trade unions.
The EUs empire of free trade has been the target of the ire of
both the right and the left; the right is incensed over the regulations seen to hamper businesses (especially environmental and
health-and-safety regulations as well as the human rights charter)
and the left is incensed over the unaccountability of the EU officials and its rigid neoliberal stance. This undemocratic power exercised by distant Eurocrats is the plausible basis of a progressive
criticism of the institution.
But what has distinguished the EU free-trade pact from other
free-trade pacts notably the North American Free Trade Agreement is the relatively unrestricted movement of people across internal European borders to seek jobs or residency elsewhere in the
Union. And it is this free movement of people that has triggered a
long festering xenophobia at the heart of British society.
Britains insularity has been punctured throughout its history
in moments where the need for migrant labor has trumped the
Little Englander aversion toward foreigners. One such moment
was the post-Second World War reconstruction era when the devastated country needed people to aid in the reconstruction of the
national economy (much like the rest of Europe). The importation
of guest workers from the colonies, followed by decolonization and
the migration of former colonized subjects to the metropole have
triggered virulent xenophobic and racist responses in Britain. That
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the British political classes have refused to reckon with the countrys colonial legacy and their steadfast refusal to acknowledge the
racism interwoven in its institutions have only exacerbated this
xenophobia and racism.
This xenophobia takes different shapes according to the historical moment, but neoliberal policies have only ever intensified
these sentiments. Migrants are today blamed for taking up places
in housing and schools, burdening the countrys publicly-funded
universal health system and weakening the working class. Scant attention is paid to how, beginning with Margaret Thatchers
scorched-earth neoliberalism, policies of privatization and austerity during both feast and famine have led to a degradation of
national life, a diminishing of social mobility and a growth in inequality in the UK.
In the 1990s, under the reign of Tony Blairs New Labour,
Thatchers policies continued in new guises: the fiercely beloved
National Health Service (NHS) was funded, but often via publicprivate partnerships that have in fact burdened the NHS with serious debt and crumbling infrastructures, while enriching private investors and developers. Instead of preserving unused schools, local
councils were encouraged to sell off their school buildings in the
1990s, again benefiting property developers who turned these attractive Victorian structures into high-end housing without anticipating the acute future need for school buildings and school
places. The sale of social housing, which had been a pillar of
Thatcherite policy of privatization, has been exacerbated by wholly
inadequate construction of new affordable housing and no effort to
replace the stock of social housing lost under Thatcher.
The privatization of the efficient national rail, electricity, phone
and water infrastructures has been a boon to profiteering private
firms, while the basic transport and utility infrastructures have deteriorated, and their costs especially of commuting have become exorbitant. The replacement of manufacturing jobs with
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This convergence of anti-migrant xenophobia and Islamophobic racism has now become the most recognizable feature of
politics in Britain and have shaped successive election campaigns.
Parliamentary elections, especially since 2010, have often pivoted
around the question of migration. Although in the 2015 elections,
Nigel Farages right-wing anti-immigration and Eurosceptic party,
UK Independence Party (UKIP), only secured one seat in the parliament, he nevertheless picked up millions of votes and Farage
managed to define the discourse around migration. So much so,
that in pandering to UKIPs base, David Cameron announced the
EU referendum.
The London mayoral election, held a scant eight weeks before
the EU referendum, was another example of this ignominious turn.
The campaign between Labours Sadiq Khan, a liberal Muslim
leaning toward New Labour, and the Tories Zac Goldsmith, until
then best known for his environmental campaigning, showed the
extent to which even the more ostensibly liberal members of the
Tory Party would appeal to this seam of racism and Islamophobia
in order to win votes. This all came to a head with the referendum,
where all other issues faded into the background and migration
and anti-Muslim sentiments (the latter of which does not have a
logical relation to the EU in any case) became the central axis
around which the referendum pivoted.
Although the outcome was not really foreseen, and although the
end result of the referendum was fairly close (52 percent for Leave;
48 percent for Remain), the win for Eurosceptics took even Leave
voters by surprise.
The most prevalent clich of post-referendum analysis has been
that the vote for exit should be read as a working-class revolt. Setting aside the unspoken assumption that this rebellious working
class must by definition be white, the post-referendum exit polls
actually indicate the working-class characterization of the Leave
vote is inaccurate. It is true that a higher percentage of working-
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class voters voted for exit than did upper- and middle-class voters
46 percent versus 64 percent. But once turnout by class was
taken into account, the numbers looked different. As Ben Pritchetts calculations (along with his caveats about the turnout numbers including anomalies) have shown, the far greater turnout of
the middle and upper classes, versus the working class 90 percent versus 52 percent meant that in absolute numbers, a far
higher number of middle- and upper-class voters (around 10 million voters) actually voted to Leave the EU than the working class
(approximately 7 million voters), many others of whom abstained
from voting.
Lord Ashcrofts exit polls showed that if voters thought that
multiculturalism, feminism, social liberalism, the environmental
movement and immigration are forces for ill, they voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU. The same polls showed that while 53
percent of voters who described themselves as white and 58 percent of those who described themselves as Christian voted to leave
the EU, more than two-thirds of Asian voters, nearly three-quarters of Black voters and 70 percent of self-identified Muslims voted
to remain in the EU.
Only hours after their win, the Eurosceptic leaders had already
back-pedaled on some of their most major promises. Nigel Farage
claimed that he never agreed with the claim emblazoned on the
side of a campaign bus used by Eurosceptic leaders that the 350
million weekly payments formerly paid to the EU would actually be
used to fund the NHS. Iain Duncan-Smiths weaker claim was that
only after the EU agricultural subsidies (to the Tory heartlands)
were replaced would any leftover funds be divided between the
NHS and other needs. The irony was of course that many of those
agricultural heartlands had been in receipt of more handouts from
the EU than other places in the UK.
Claims that the UK fisheries could benefit from a post-EU deregulation were similarly walked back. Even on migration, which
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had played such a decisive and divisive role in the referendum, the
Eurosceptic leaders were already tempering their claims. These retreats from promises have been so blatant that the Leave campaign
has simply wiped the archive of all their opinion pieces and documents from the web.
Even more astonishing is how the Leave camp seems not to
have planned at all for an eventual exit. There is no certainty as to
when or even whether Article 50 (a provision of Treaty of Lisbon which provides for EU member countries leaving) will ever be
invoked, setting into motion two years of negotiations that will allow Britain to unravel its legislations, trade arrangements, migration processes and regulations from the EU.
Perhaps the most worrying fallout of the referendum vote,
however, has been the extraordinary spike in violence against migrants and non-white British citizens and residents. Although
many if not most of those who voted for Leave did not do so
out of xenophobic or racist reasons, the vote seems to have legitimated an extraordinary outburst of such attacks against migrants
especially those from Poland and non-white British citizens, residents, and visitors.
There is very little that promises an abatement of such racism.
The immediate economic fallout of the Leave vote will only exacerbate the sense of economic uncertainty, possibly leading to a recession. The weakening of the pound will inevitably lead to a rise in
price of imports (which will be exacerbated by the implementation
of tariffs once the UK leaves the EU). Massive losses in the stock
market have wiped vast amounts off pensions, giving yet more
alibis to the state and private pension providers for reducing what
is available to retirees. Rating agencies downgrading of UKs ability to borrow will lead to higher borrowing costs for the UK government and a growth in UK deficit, which of course provides an
excuse for further austerity measures and an increase in taxes
(which Tory governments of course will not levy against the
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corporations or the richest earners). The revocation of EU protections for migrant workers means that while the UK will continue to
see migration from the EU countries, these workers will not be
protected from the worst depredations of unscrupulous employers.
As labor studies scholar Roland Erne has argued, this degradation
of migrant worker rights will only accelerate the race to the bottom
for all workers, both migrant and British. Nor will parliamentary
politics in England provide any respite.
Already, politicians from Scotland and Northern Ireland (both
of which voted overwhelmingly to Remain in the EU) are talking of
a second independence referendum and a reunification of Ireland,
respectively, in order to remain in the EU. The rump state that
would remain if such fragmentation occurred would likely have a
much strengthened Tory government and a Labour Party that
would have difficulty winning.
In a coming recession, with intensified inequality, rising
poverty and stalled social mobility, under a Tory government
which has no stakes in egalitarian social policies, racism and
xenophobia, right-wing populism, ultranationalist ideologies, even
fascism will find a fertile soil. The horrifying racist and xenophobic
attacks of the last week are haunted by the rivers of blood racism
of yesteryears. In a now notorious 1968 speech, the Tory MP
Enoch Powell promised rivers of blood to a country in which migration had led to the Black man [having] the whip hand over the
white man. UKIPs Nigel Farage has never hidden his admiration
for Enoch Powell, and even the anti-immigrant views of many in
the Tory Party are shaped by Powell.
The long and brutal history of British colonialism and empire
lies at the heart of so much British insularity and racism. The deep
roots of this racism will likely influence the politics of tomorrow, as
it has already done that of today. To counter such a bleak future,
mass mobilization is necessary and any form of progressive mass
mobilization has to recognize that class politics are always
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articulated through a politics of race. Reckoning with Britains racism and xenophobia across time, place, parties and social classes
is the necessary first step in such mobilization.
In the spectacle of plummeting share prices, currency values, property prices, and trade volumes, we can scry a future.
The United Kingdom, a dream kingdom, a twilight kingdom, is
on the brink of its downfall. Any party of government that did not
implement the verdict of the European Union referendum would
probably be doomed to self-destruction. Any party of government
that did implement the verdict of the European Union referendum
would face the same fate. To implement Brexit would result in an
economic catastrophe, only compounded by the promised punishment from the EU. To avoid implementing the verdict would be to
ignore the decision of 17 million people, which would an astonishing act of oligarchic disdain and bravado. Forget Ukip: it would be
the ranks of far-right street gangs who would be recruiting on the
back of that. There is already a spike in racist violence and harassment, the racists and fascists given confidence by the Brexit result,
obscenely buoyed up by the murder of Jo Cox MP a week before.
Scotlands secession is now all-but certain, and the rump-UK will
be but two or three steps from emergency rule in the particularly
British form of a National Government. All politics involves the
death-drive, but Britain is accelerating toward a thanatocracy with
strikingly little friction slowing it down.
Some on the Left insist on their unedifying fidelity to Bad
Hope, glossing the referendum result as, in the extraordinary
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That is to say, Corbyn is being criticised for being too critical of the
EU on progressive grounds, but his opponents are being encouraged to exploit this crisis to attack precisely the one key progressive aspect of EU membership, the free movement of labour
(within, of course, carefully circumscribed limits). Corbyn reached
out to working-class voters with a critical Remain position; the Labour Right think they can reach out to them with yet another sop
to immigrant-bashing. This would wipe out one of the most important benefits of having a left-wing Labour leadership that
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there is one major political leader among a dismal crop who will
not concede a thing to racism. It would also continue the practice
whereby the electoral left-of-centre cultivates the ideological terrain for the far right, before losing it to them in a state of bewilderment. Forget Pasokification; this is the UKIPisation of British
politics. Anyone now gurning with satisfaction at Corbyns discomfiting, who feels resentment at Corbyns failing to campaign hard
enough in the referendum should remember this. The very first act
of a post-Corbyn Labour leader would be to address the legitimate
concerns of ordinary people about migration, just as we are seeing
the ghastly violence that results from years of pandering to such
xenophobia.
To their credit, while Team Corbyn have been frustratingly and
ostentatiously reasonable in their approach, at a time when they
are entitled to go for blood, they have thus far responded to all of
this without obvious panic. Corbyn has stoically insisted that he
would not step down and would be part of any new leadership election. He has appointed a new cabinet that is far more left-wing,
more female and more multi-racial, than the previous. And when
he took to the despatch box he used the opportunity to denounce
his own restive backbenchers, to their predictable groans. Rather
than simply try to placate his enemies, he has appealed over the
heads of his parliamentary party to the membership, the unions
and the wider left. That the balance of forces beyond the PLP appears to still favour Corbyn is attested to by a petition in his support with over 200,000 signatures, by the repeated statements
from trade unions that they support the Labour leadership, and by
the turnout at short notice of thousands of protesters in Parliament
Square, to defend the incumbent. The doubts among some PLPers
as to the coup, and the willingness of decidedly non-Corbynite Chi
Onwurah to join a rickety cabinet, suggest some residual awareness of this on the backbenches. Even Watsons stiletto was half-
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way in which they tyrannise us, restrain us, and deny us. We loathe
the people we imagine ourselves to be when, however appealing
those ideal selves might be, they make us too chaste, too virtuous,
too abstinent, or when we are aware of just how remote they are
from our real selves. Hence the desire to bring it all down, to
watch the world burn. And it is hard to understand the Labour
Rights extraordinary, grandiose petulance, apart from this drive.
They are not only fighting to regain control of their party at any
cost, including that of the party: whether they know it or not, they
are out to destroy the party they have professed to love, whose
ideals they have extolled, and in the name of which they claim to
act now.
This is not a coup, but a blaze. It is a furnace built not just for
Corbyn, but for the Labour Party, for social-democracy, for the
spirit of 45, for the dream of progress in its various incarnations,
for even the consummately bourgeois ego-ideals of civility and toleration. Those who are unwilling to stop the arson, will have
mountains of ashes to harvest.
Theres been a lot of talk, the last few days, about the need to respect the sovereign will of the British people. A simple question
was asked, a simple answer was recorded.
Like the main party leaders on both sides of the referendum,
most commentators on the Left seem to agree with Owen Jones,
that whatever happens there can be no argument for reversing the
expressed democratic will of the British people what is done is
done.
The people have spoken. Dont the basic principles of democracy require that our government now simply do what weve told
it to do?
There are three reasons why the answer to this particular question isnt as simple as it might appear.
First of all, the referendum posed a question about membership
of the EU, but it was immediately clear that millions of people
seized the opportunity to answer a related but quite different question, and arguably an essentially different question a question
about exploitation, austerity, and the brutally disempowering impact of neoliberal capitalism.
For decades, British voters like voters all over Europe have
been deliberately deprived of any real occasion to answer this
question, or even to pose it.
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adopted by free and equal political actors who are properly informed and who, able to penetrate the lies and evasions of those
who might seek to deceive them, thereby gain the capacity to voluntarily make decisions, and have them stick.
It is only their ability to formulate and then impose such a purpose that allows the people to become an actually sovereign actor
in the first place and Rousseau was the first to admit that this is a
rare and hugely difficult achievement.
Laboriously self-constituting, popular sovereignty only persists
as an exercise of political will (rather than as a mere expression of
public opinion), he added, insofar as it continues to project itself
into a freely chosen future: the sovereign never acts because it
willed [in the past], but because it wills, in a present of its own
making, and by definition a sovereign people cannot impose on itself a law that it cannot break. What is to be done is never simply
done.
The referendum may have given everyone their chance to say
yes or no to a deceptively simple question. But in no sense did it
contribute to the constitution of a new general will, let alone that
egalitarian and inclusive civic virtue that Rousseau and his Jacobin admirers understood to be the sole animating force of such a
will.
On the contrary: relying on deceit, nostalgia, and fear, the leading Leave campaigners did everything they could to divide people
against each other, leaving us even more fragmented and disempowered than we were before.
As things stand, to invoke the sovereign will of the people remains an appeal to what we might still decide and do, in the future,
and not to what has already been done to us in the past.
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they cant face whats happening here. I dont want to read comment pieces by leftists with stiff upper lips who insist we accept the
results, buckle down and start building post-Brexit Britain. The
referendum was not democratic. It was fed by a white supremacist
media that either deliberately stoked racial hatred or is so deluded
with its own whiteness, it couldnt recognise the hatred it was helping to harness. I hate to break it to you folks, but that is not democracy: its the building blocks of fascism.
And this is what frightens me most. Despite everything that has
happened in the last few days, starting with the political assassination of a progressive MP, far too many British people still think it
couldnt happen here. Its not the British way, they say. How I wish
they were right. But Ive lived in countries with wars and Ive seen
how quickly societies disintegrate. Ive listened to people who have
survived conflict, whose families have been split in two, brothers
shooting brothers. We need to grow up. Fascism is here. Not the
sort of fascism that Hillary Benn spoke of in his charismatic but ultimately empty speech urging MPs to vote in favour of Syrian airstrikes, but a very British fascism that has been given the green
flag. As the poet George Szirtes wrote, States are fragile fabrics.
We are more fragile at this point than at any time in my life here.
It could happen here. It is happening here.
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deal was hollow; what we got was war and collapse. Labours new
right, by contrast, is neurotically fixated on a half-remembered image of the working class, and its only promise to them is to be more
racist.
There was something very strange, and mostly unremarkedupon, in the short period of stage-setting that preceded yesterdays
mass resignations. In a series of documents leaked to the media,
shadowy and nameless disgruntled MPs complained that Corbyn
had failed to effectively press for Britain to stay in the EU, sabotaged the LabourIN campaign, and spent much of his time criticising Brussels while ostensibly defending it. But then there was
this: an allegation that Corbyn would not allow the Labour party to
discuss or address concerns around immigration, writing them off
as xenophobia, prejudice or racism at every turn. On the face
of it, this doesnt make much sense: these much-vaunted and (as
were constantly assured) deeply reasonable concerns around immigration tend to correlate strongly with an antipathy to the EU;
indulging them would have only further doomed the Remain campaigns efforts. Corbyn seems to be in an impossible position, not
allowed to defend or critique the European project. But this
shouldnt be read on its face. It isnt a complaint; its a symptom. If
you want to know whats going on in the Labour party, this is a
good place to start: the little psychic knot at the heart of the right
wings determination to get rid of the man.
This is why theyre trying to depose Jeremy Corbyn he refused to be racist enough. The real nature of the complaint is of
course buried in metaphor; the preferred euphemism is electability. For years, Labour has attempted to endear itself to the populace by adopting the language of the far right Gordon Browns
British jobs for British workers; Ed Miliband putting the words
controls on immigration on an official mug and the rock that
would become his tombstone. Its a curious form of self-abasement: a metropolitan elite, terrified of what it is and desperate to
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xenophobic ideas will gain in popularity, but they have not come
out of nowhere and indeed are enforced by the state. The recent
history of British immigration and border policies shows a longstanding willingness to divide people according to their usefulness
to the nation. The official approach to immigration has always
been keen to use popular racism as a weapon to meet its ends.
At a protest to defend migrants rights, called for the day of the
referendum result, I spoke to Anna Pichieri from Movement for
Justice By Any Means Necessary, an independent migrant and civil
rights movement. Asked why Movement for Justice had helped call
the demonstration, Anna told me:
We need to be clear about why this referendum was planned. This
is the outcome of many different governments, on the right and on
the left, using the racist scapegoating of immigrants to push
through all their cuts and austerity measures and the widening of
inequality that we have seen. All these measures yet they have no
solutions, so both parties know that they have to use the anti-immigrant rhetoric, the stereotyping of immigrants, to make sure
that they could push their cuts.
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workers speech. And, going further back, we can see how racism
as a response to immigration has become ingrained in public consciousness by looking at the history of immigration of people of
colour migrating from British colonies.
Ambalavaner Sivanandan often notes that the history of Britains immigration acts is a history of its developing racism. With a
need for post-war reconstruction, the British Nationality Act of
1948 conferred Commonwealth citizens with British nationality
and the right to free entry into the UK. In the years that followed,
mass migration from the colonies took place and was largely responsible for the multicultural Britain that some like to cite as one
of our greatest national achievements. In reality, many who made
the journey hoped for employment and opportunities in the United
Kingdom, but would instead be greeted with hostility and
criminalisation.
With the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962, popular
xenophobia and racism would become legislated and codified, removing the right to citizenship and free movement held by ex-colonial subjects. Whilst Britain was happy to exploit their labour,
made cheaper by racial wage disparities, it was not willing to endow these immigrants with the same rights as British workers. A
succession of immigration laws would begin with this Act of 1962,
each one in response to both the economic desire for labour and
the national popular racist mood.
Around the same time, we see the development of some freedom of movement agreements between the EUs predecessors,
such as the European Coal and Steel Community. Britain joined
the European Economic Community in 1973 and began to reap the
benefits of free access to labour from across Europe. Simultaneously, access from the Commonwealth was massively restricted
a policy to allay the fears of original EEC nations that Britain
would become an open passageway for Commonwealth nations into Europe.
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We can see from these examples in the short history of postwar immigration policy that the state has consistently divided up
immigrants according to how they benefit the economy: racism
and profiteering go hand-in-hand. Now that boundaries of bigotry
are being redrawn once again according to a neoliberal guide-map,
in some ways EU migrants are beginning to face what has previously been quotidian for non-white migrants from Commonwealth
nations.
Subjecting different groups to their own special intensity of exploitation has long created divisions amongst the working class.
This animosity forms part of the violence of Whiteness, though it is
important to reiterate that racism is also top-down from the
powerful elites. Politicians act shocked at the upsurge in racism, as
though they never imagined that decades of using hatred to justify
their policies could turn into an actual violent revolt against people
racialised in the UK.
Anti-racism faces two interlinked challenges: tackling popular
participation in the racist structure of Whiteness and opposing the
states racist laws. In recent years activists have concentrated on
state violence, especially combatting immigration raids and supporting calls for justice for those killed in custody. We can see how
these two concerns overlap in the case of Jimmy Mubenga, who
was unlawfully killed by G4S guards on a deportation flight in
2010. Unfortunately, this referendum has now unleashed popular
expressions of racism and it is tempting to concentrate on tackling
this development. But the state is responsible for creating the conditions that popular racism flourishes, and we must tackle the
states failures if we are to have any hope of impacting racism in
Britain as a whole.
Brexit threatens us now, but it is preceded by a history of devaluing human life with borders. The left as much as anyone failed
to address this and opted instead for quiet disapproval in favour of
concentrating on issues seen as more urgent. Racism is and has
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had ravaged him mentally and physically; his back was a source of
constant pain and his mind slipped from his grasp where once it
was agile. He became distant with his family, but he was thinking
about the future, his childrens future. The war showed little sign of
abating and the international community dithered. Syria was the
past, it belonged to him and Rashida, but perhaps the children
could have a future somewhere else. He chose Britain. The UK is
the first state in the world for human rights. English is the first language in the world. This is the language for science, the new,
everything. A good future for my children.
Thamer flew from Jordan to Paris, then to London, where he
claimed asylum. A day later he was sent to Glasgow, where he now
lives with his family. It took more than a year for Thamer to secure
visas for his wife and children to join him in the UK under the
countrys family reunification rules. The entire process was
fraught, despite the strength of the familys case. An exhausted
Rashida had to convince the British embassy in Jordan that
Thamer was her husband and that her children were her children.
Meanwhile, there were regular reports from home of the deaths of
friends and family. Thamers mother died of a brain haemorrhage
because it was too dangerous for her to leave the house to get to a
hospital, just a few hundred metres away.
Thamer and Rashida still live the horrors of the Syrian war, but
their children are safe, and already their Syrian accents are giving
way to a thick Glaswegian lilt. The hope Thamer had in 2011 when
he took to the streets is now the hope for them in a new country,
with a future free of Assad and his bullets.
Bullets that are still being fired. Which brings us to the point.
Whether or not Britain leaves the EU, there is a war in Syria and
refugees in its neighbouring countries live in squalid conditions.
Thamer wasnt exercising free movement within the EU, or coming
as an economic migrant, he was fleeing war. Whether or not Britain leaves the EU, the UK is a signatory to the refugee convention
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and is obliged to do its bit for people fleeing persecution (the dereliction of that duty thus far is another story). Our obligations to him
and his family wont and should not change because of Brexit.
Myth Two: The Migrant Benefit-Scrounger
The second xenophobic myth peddled by both Leave and Remain
campaigns was that migrants are a burden on the welfare state and
live an easy life here at the expense of British citizens. This was a
myth both campaigns were comfortable with because it is one that
has been perpetuated consistently for about two decades. We know
it well. During the 90s it was tales of bogus asylum seekers. Today
the language has changed slightly, with newspapers happy to use
the word migrant as a catch all term for bad migrant. Stories
abound of Eastern Europeans, Muslims, black Africans, either
queuing at Calais or simply turning up and expecting handouts.
Even the left has capitulated to this myth; what to do about these
problematic people and the pressures they place on the country
has become one of the political questions of our time. Thus the demonization of the poorest migrants became de rigueur, resulting
in a decade or more of government policies whose effect has been
to criminalise this group. The evidence is in the 3,000-strong detention estate and regular mass deportation flights to Britains
former colonies carrying hundreds of people that have spent their
formative years in this country. The evidence is the destitution of
refused asylum seekers and EEA migrants with restricted access to
public services and social housing. The evidence is in recent immigration legislation which gives power to doctors, bankers, landlords and others to act as border guards, policing the legality of
anyone who appears foreign. The evidence is in the story of Mahalia*, a young Pakistani woman who arrived in the UK in 2012
after an arranged marriage to a British citizen.
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Mahalia was treated as a slave, made to cook and clean for her
husband and his extended family, and regularly slapped and
taunted. Her husband was the most violent, either kicking her in
the stomach or punching her face, depending on his mood. Her
mother-in-law and father-in-law, would slap her occasionally and
always shouted and cursed her, even once taking away her baby for
a few days because she struggled to stop the childs crying. It was
easy for her husband to control her movements and limit escape
routes; he prevented her from attending English classes and made
no attempt to regularise her migration status. Once her spousal
visa expired, if she tried to report him to the police she risked
deportation.
One winter, Mahalia ran away and, unsure of what to do, she
went and sat in her local park. A family friend discovered her and
took her home, aghast at the young womans story. But her
mother-in-law called the police, who escorted Mahalia back to the
family home, where her husband tried to suffocate her. He then
pummelled her stomach his feet, pulled her hair and punched her
head against the wall. This time she called the police.
If Mahalia was a British citizen she and her daughter could
claim housing benefit, which would cover the cost of a bed at a domestic violence refuge. But she is a migrant with uncertain status,
which means that she cant easily access this support. When Mahalia turned up on their doorstep, several refuges turned her away
because they assumed she had no access to benefits and couldnt
cover the cost of her stay. Still traumatised and unable to speak
confidently in English, Mahalia and her little daughter stayed in
homelessness hostels, mixed sex hostels for refugees and hotels,
while she attempted to gather evidence needed to sort out her migration status and get access to support.
Persevering, Mahalia worked on her English and began to gather the evidence she needed to prove that she had been abused and
to regularise her status. She does all this from a Travelodge, where
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she and her daughter live in a small room with no cooking facilities. Sometimes shes afraid to leave the room, but she must because her daughter is full of energy and needs space. Every week
she visits Safety4Sisters, a migrant womens rights group that campaigns on issues affecting undocumented women experiencing
gender-based violence. It is here that Mahalia learned she might be
eligible for support under the Home Offices domestic violence
spousal visa exception, yet all the services she came into contact
with assumed that, as a migrant, she was entitled to nothing.
Mahalia isnt an isolated case, there are hundreds like her and
many have no access to public funds. Other abused women continue to live with their violent partners for this reason. This is hardly
the easy life of a lazy scrounger getting handouts from the welfare
state. If you are a poor migrant in Britain today, just as is increasingly the case for British citizens, there are few safety nets to catch
you if anything goes wrong. It is hard to see how the Leave campaigners might seek to make Mahalias life any more difficult than
it already is.
These are profoundly uncertain times; there are calls for a
second referendum, the possibility of a general election and maybe
a referendum on Scottish Independence. Whatever happens, the
public debate will continue, and we need to address the myths and
face the reality. British people must be given the opportunity to
make up their own minds about the reality of migration in this
country based on truth and not lies.
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technocratic class. A class, that is, that does not at all envisage
changing the course that guarantees it the goodwill of hidden
powers (those of the financial markets) and which does not want to
deeply reform the system of government from which it draws its
monopoly of representation. By consequence, the role of opposition is taken by parties and ideologues who seek to destroy the
links between the peoples (or more generally the residents) of
Europe. It will take a very long march and perhaps other brutal
shocks before we arrive at the conjugation and clarification in
the eyes of the majority of citizens, across borders of the close interdependence between shared sovereignty, transnational
democracy, alter-globalisation, the co-development of regions and
nations, and exchange among cultures. We are not at that point,
and time is running short All the more reason if we do believe
in Europe, as I do to continue without relent to explain what is
going on.
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stressful fluctuations of the world market a criterion of both economic and moral judgement. The cultural depreciation of local traditions and those who cling to them by an upper and middle stratum who view themselves as cosmopolitan, who value their country
and its people according to their competitiveness, is very widespread in European societies. It is part of the economistic revaluation of all values in the wake of a capitalist advance accelerated by
neoliberalism. As a result of the shift of the Zeitgeist to the opposing camp, which has forgotten the difference between and internationalism of solidarity and one of finance, those who resist this are
often left with no other language at their disposal than that of the
nation and its good old days. Branded as populists who have not
intellectually grasped the worlds new complexity, and semantically dismissed as anti-European, they hide away in their Gallic villages until an election or a referendum summons them out, with
the encouragement, for lack of any other, of demagogues who are
often shady, as a result of which they are eloquently condemned by
Schultz, Juncker and co. as dangerous backwoodsmen, or even, in
the words of Sigmar Gabriel and his ilk, their former representatives, as a rabble.
With Brexit, however, they were for the first time the majority
in an EU country, and this they could soon be anywhere, and not
just once. At some point then even slower wits will learn that the
European Union as a model of the future is now already something
long past (the very slowest, the drivers of the Brussels and Frankfurt centralization machine, will never learn, but then this will no
longer be necessary). Attempts at a giant state seem today a modernization project that has become unmodern, since it has proved
incapable of moderating the opening up of the world in such a way
as to do justice to the different local abilities, interests and needs
on such a diverse continent as Europe. The end of the EUs social
dimension in the 1990s was also the end of the EU as a body protecting its populations against neoliberal restructuring and re-
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12
Weakened by the events of the past year and for the historical
reasons described in this book Brussels fate will most likely be
sealed in 2016. The EU may not disappear altogether but survive in
vestigial form, yet it will no longer be central to the European conduct of affairs. As is so plainly clear today, it seldom has been during most of its six decade history. The Delors years (19851995)
and its aftermath, the Eastern Enlargement, were exceptional in
this respect. The EUs marginality during most of its existence can
no longer be denied.
The EU may for many years have been Europes great hope but
it has turned out to be a disappointment, even to its advocates. It
has made notable contributions to the liberalization of the economy, the democratization of Eastern Europe, and the reconciliation of peoples, but these achievements are now threatened.
Above all, there is still no European nation, nor will there be in the
foreseeable future. To expect that this situation can be changed is
tantamount to awaiting the eleventh round in a ten round boxing
match.
Indeed, there may be no further need for an EU. Driven by
technological change, marketplace competition, and consumer demand, the process of integration in Europe and the world at large
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Antonio Costa, backed by the Portuguese central bank, administered a haircut to senior, mainly American, bondholders so brutal
that the nations credit rating plunged almost at once to junk
status. Within earshot of thundering herds moving in the wrong
direction, Brussels got the shivers.
The man now at the helm of Lisbon will not relish having his
knickers twisted by Frau Merkel. But this may not be necessary. In
short order Costa forced her to acquiesce in his governments antiausterity budget, which violated EMU restrictions, and she even
did so without the prior consultation required by the mandatory
provisions of the new European Single Financial Market.
The German chancellor must have feared that where little Portugal has gone, big Spain could follow. The tottering Spanish banking structure is now at the mercy of political instability. Two
months have passed since the December elections, which produced
a standoff between the two traditional parties of government and
anti-EU populists, neither of which can command a majority due
to the resurgence of Catalonian secessionism. What began as an
anti-EU electoral wave is turning into a crisis of state.
No one can be more closely attuned to the fragility of Europes
financial system than the MIT trained economist and Goldman
Sachsschooled banker who runs the ECB, Mario Draghi. He dare
not, however, broadcast the disheartening news that private finance in Europe has never recovered from 2008. Carrying a trillion
euros of bad debt and in serious need of capital infusions, the
banks are in a state of chronic crisis. Their shares plunged nearly
20 per cent at the beginning of the year and can be expected to fall
further, as rich sovereign wealth funds, their biggest investors,
close out large positions.
The underlying problem European banks face, as Draghi well
knows, is that the powers that be in both the public and private
spheres have drawn the wrong lesson from the economic crisis: instead of introducing the up-to-date market methods of financing
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familiar to Wall Street and the City, they have propped up outmoded national banking communities that cannot provide the
credit the economy needs for recovery. Instead, they are a bottleneck to it. With little fanfare, he is trying to mend the problem. The
onerous official plan for EU/EMU banking regulation (Mifid II) is
effectively on indefinite hold.
Economic stagnation is not the only, or even perhaps the main,
source of Europes discontent. Disenchantment with the EU also
pervades those member states who wisely chose not to accept the
trammels of the Eurozone and which, as a result, have enjoyed superior economic performance Poland, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Sweden, and Britain. The hard truth is that the EU is no less
unloved in these comparatively fortunate countries than those
trapped in the EMU.
Only a fool would venture to predict how the official institutions of Europe will become unglued, unravel, fall apart, or simply
evaporate into thin air. The list of possible scenarios is innumerable. A reasonable guess would be, however, that Brexit will trigger
the process of decomposition and reconfiguration. If past events
can serve as a guide to the British referendum planned for 23 June,
the tide will shift in favour of the anti-EU cause.
This was the case with other recent EU referenda: the Dutch
and French rejected the constitution; the Swedish refused to enter
the EMU; the Irish initially repudiated the Maastricht Treaty; and
in December 2015 the Danish decided not to revise the nations opt
out agreement. In each of these instances, establishmentarian, proEU campaigns heavily outgunned diffuse, under financed, and disorganized populist factions and, contrary to nearly all predictions, eventually lost out to them. There is little reason to conclude
that in Britain, where the sides are more evenly matched, the outcome will be much different.
It is now evident that Prime Minister Cameron has not wrested
enough concessions from the EU to placate the countrys wary
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13
Pretty much exactly one year ago, me and a group of friends found
ourselves in a remote village in the countryside of the Peloponnese,
watching with awe and some admitted excitement as Alexis Tsipras
was announcing a surprise referendum on something whose wording didnt quite help one understand what it was about. Yet most of
us took this as a veiled suggestion, a hint at questioning Greeces
place in the euro (and potentially the EU), and voted accordingly.
This is where the similarities with Britains turbulent moment lie:
the majority of the Greek population, just like the British one yesterday, did bite the bullet and voted against both what the status
quo had paternally asked for, against what was perceived to be its
own self-interest.
But this is also pretty much where the similarities end. The
Brexit vote was led by nationalism and racism, as we saw: the fictitious migrant influx into the UK elevated to a major national
calamity that has to be avoided by any cost. We chilled as we
watched the Nazi-reminiscent propaganda and gasped at the
frivolous way in which the dominant discourse sank into a vile
anti-foreigner rant. In this sense there is, of course, nothing to immediately celebrate about yesterdays vote. The most reactionary
side has won. But what was the other side ever about? Why did the
progressive voices of Britainand much of Europe as a
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in the country are already quick to line themselves behind this suggestion, unable to understand the colossal disregard of popular
opinion it presumes and demands.
Brexit was instigated and celebrated by the vile and reactionary
forces of the far-right. But this does not refute the fact that too
many of us have mistaken a bureaucratic mechanism perpetuating
injustice for the land mass and the 330m people that make up
Europe. If there is anything of a formidable progressive force left
in our continent that is able to capitalise on a historical opportunity dawning upon us, it must stop shedding tears for the bureaucratic European Union monster that fades away, and help strike
the final blow instead
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since the Thatcher era. So, a non-white worker who lives in a declining area tended to vote with her white neighbor for Brexit,
while her counterpart in the economically thriving capital city, although not necessarily wealthier, tended to vote with the more affluent population, with whom she shares the reasonably grounded
hope for a better future (if not for herself, then at least for her
children).
Something similar can be said concerning the younger populations electoral behavior, particularly the fraction holding a university degree that hasnt yet properly entered the job market. The
rate of Europhilia drops sharply among the bulk of the active population (35 to 55). The youngsters euro-enthusiasm has to do with
cultural and ideological parameters, but even these correlate to the
upward social mobility expected by holders of post-secondary
degrees.
Interestingly, the Guardian graph shows that otherwise very
different areas that had comparable proportions of degree holders
such as Haringey, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Oxford, and Edinburgh voted in similar proportions in favor of Remain.
In any case, the figures contrasting young peoples Europhilia
with their elders Europhobia have to be mitigated by taking into
account two variables: the first is that the turnout among the 18 to
24 set was significantly lower than the average. As a result, while
the young Remainers were the most motivated to express their
views, their weight was relatively limited within their entire cohort.
The second mitigating factor is that the economic decline endured
by the non-metropolitan areas has translated into an exodus of the
young and most educated layers of their population, which raises
the median age of those who still live there.
Once again, the spatial division of economic growth, which has
to be understood as a particularly brutal that is, neoliberal version of capitalisms combined and uneven development, overdetermines factors such as age and education. Needless to say, this
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aspect also played a crucial role in the emergence of Scottish nationalism, explaining the anomalous in social and class terms
success of Remain in what increasingly looks like an independent
country-in-waiting. To put it differently, Scottish nationalism
could never have achieved that level of power had the Thatcherite
restructuring of the British economy not produced such intense
spatial-economic polarization.
Displaced Class Struggle
Lets leave the objective side of the question aside and discuss
head on what seems to be the main issue for most, and certainly
for all those who stood against Brexit on the Left. Was the vote actually a referendum on immigration? And if so, does this mean that
its undeniable class dimension was dictated by a racist outlook
particular to the working class?
The pro-Brexit campaign was dominated by a discourse with
strong racist undertones and explicit xenophobia. The argument
that Brexit would stop the influx of immigrant workers from
Eastern European countries was repeated ad nauseam by Johnson,
Farage, and their likes. It is also true that those who chose Brexit
often mentioned the rejection of immigration as a serious, or even
a decisive, motivation.
But it rarely, if ever, appeared on stage alone: even when antiimmigration was cited as the main reason for the vote, it was mentioned as part of a broader picture that almost invariably included
some or most of the following: job and housing shortages, low
salaries, overburdened public services, an overall sense of alienation, downward social and individual trajectory, and the loss of
control over ones own life. Entirely real issues fuelled legitimate
anger but were misdirected against immigrants.
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From this angle, the worst thing the Left could do to confront
the Rights hegemony is to conform to the dominant narrative that
Brexits success is a racist outburst from the depths of Britains
psyche. Not only because this interpretation is analytically incorrect, but also because this discourse has an immanently performative dimension. If a consensus emerges as it unfortunately seems
to be doing that voting Leave unmistakably indicates racism,
then the complex and contradictory set of motivations and actions
that led to that result are retroactively fixed.
To put it differently, the Left failed not only to intervene effectively in the referendum campaign but also to win the battle for the
interpretation of its result. Losing that battle could indeed ease the
way for all those who will try to turn the ongoing political crisis into an opportunity to further turn toward an authoritarian and
xenophobic form of neoliberalism.
Misplaced Anger
There is however a more sophisticated argument that dismisses
Brexits political meaning: the vote expressed legitimate social anger, but had nothing to do with the European Union. Instead, it
came from decades of neoliberal policies, hardened during the
Cameron-Osborne years of austerity, which Johnson and Farage,
thanks to an accumulation of lies and demagogic statements, succeeded in presenting as a consequence of the belonging to the
European Union. The center-left media has systematically promoted this narrative, and it will most likely become dominant
within the broader left, including sectors of the radical left.
At first sight, this seems like a more credible story, one that dispenses with the overtly patronizing and essentialist explanation of
a racist working-class pro-Brexit vote. It is however perhaps even
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President Franois Hollande reacted. For Mlenchon, Brexit reveals the European Unions total deadlock. The lesson to be drawn
is that a proper left government in France should immediately propose exiting from all the existing European treaties in order to implement an anti-austerity, eco-socialist program. And if Germany
blocks this move, then a French referendum to exit the European
Union will become inevitable.
Mlenchons reaction is neither isolated nor opportunistic.
After Syrizas capitulation, Mlenchon launched the plan B project with other forces of the European radical Left, including Oskar
Lafontaine in Germany, the left-wing of Podemos in Spain, Eric
Toussaint and his Committee for the Abolishment of Illegitimate
Debt, those who left Syriza to create Popular Unity, and Zoe
Kostantopoulous new Course of Freedom movement in Greece.
The idea is quite simple: the existing European Union bars the implementation of any agenda that would halt or even moderately
slow the advances of neoliberalism and austerity, as amply
demonstrated in Greece. It is therefore absolutely urgent to break
the founding European treaties, which enshrine perpetual neoliberalism and negate democracy and popular sovereignty.
If this is not possible through negotiations as once again the
Greek case suggests then a plan B, leading to an exit from the
European Union starting with an exit from the eurozone is necessary. The plan needs to be specifically elaborated according to
the needs of each country and also from the perspective of a genuinely new Europe to emerge from the ruins of the existing, failed
European Union.
Two international Plan B conferences have already been held,
in Paris and Madrid, with more to come. I am certain that all the
parties involved in the project would be delighted to see comrades
from the British Left participating in its forthcoming activities and
starting a serious conversation about these issues. Such a move
would no doubt help build the type of strategic thinking that is so
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