Brexit logic is a curious thing.
The list of names of organizations who are against Brexit are the very same names that ignite memories of housing bubbles, blown economic forecasts, and the rising income inequality woes the left rails against.
Yet, the British left sings the praises of preposterous claims made by Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, the IMF, and David Cameron who have all blown economic call, after call, after call!
Will Anyone On the Left Stand Up for Brexit?
Praises to Counter Punch writer Oliver Pawley for his insights in Will Anyone On the Left Stand Up for Brexit?
Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, The IMF, David Cameron, George Osborne, Hillary Clinton, Mark Carney — it’s a list of names that many on the left would surely like rather see condemned than side with in a democratic debate. Yet the build-up to the forthcoming referendum on Britain’s EU membership sees them doing exactly that.
Goldman Sachs warn us that homebuilders and banks would be the worst affected if we chose to leave the EU. It’s hard to think of two sets of industries that have failed the British people more in recent years.
At least twice George Osborne has warned the British that leaving the EU would cause house prices to fall, the second time he came out with a figure of 18 per cent as an upper bound. UK house prices could halve and they would still be high — particularly in London and the South East. The latest wheeze to extend the bubble appears to be the introduction of intergenerational mortgages.
This kind of financial ‘innovation’ combined with ever rising student debt means Britain’s young graduates face a lifetime of debt servitude. If Brexit really could bring down house prices the millennials and the generation beneath them ought to be clamouring for it, yet the pollsters suggest they don’t and that three-quarters of 18 to 24 year-olds want to remain.
The threats from the Remain camp that leaving the EU will be a catastrophe for the UK’s economic cooperation with the continent are overblown. Anyone who has spent any time in central London recently will have noticed the huge quantity of continental Europeans employed in the capital. It seems very unlikely that their home countries, many of which are beset with economic difficulties, would want all these people delivered back to them. It is also hard to believe that those countries would wish to jeopardise tourism from the UK, or the spending power of British pensioners living out their days in the sunshine of Southern Europe. The idea that deals could not quickly be done to facilitate movement between Britain and the EU as well as mutually beneficial trade agreements is absurd given that it would in nobody’s interests, least of all big business, to do otherwise. Angela Merkel’s recent hint that Britain ‘will never get a really good result’ in negotiations if it leaves the EU is unlikely to be popular with German firms which exported 90 billion Euros worth of goods and services to the UK last year.
Much of Britain’s left perceives the EU as some sort of enlightened force for good but this isn’t a notion that stands up to much scrutiny. Has it formed a bulwark against US imperialism as we were told it would? Not at all, European leaders have meekly followed America’s neo-conservative agenda leading to disaster. Indeed, Europe’s refuge crisis is the direct result of the Western establishment’s gauche attempts at terraforming Iraq, Libya and Syria into groves of economic opportunity for the few. Sadly, the recent terrorist attacks on European soil haven’t raised the right questions about events both at home and abroad. Instead of trying to curb civil liberties and drop more bombs, European leaders ought to be considering the deeper reasons for discontent. Is Brussels’ Molenbeek district really a hotbed of jihadist sentiment because of few internet videos and radical clerics or does it have more to do with the 40 per cent unemployment rate of Muslim men? Is a foreign policy that supports the continued ruination of Muslim lives abroad ever going to be compatible with amicable relations at home?
Then we have economic policy which has been a disaster. Where was the European sense of fraternity when Greece as in trouble? It completely disappeared. Europe’s leaders chose to protect their failed bankers and broken single currency and throw the Greek people under a bus.
Compare this to Iceland which sits outside of the EU. Its response to the financial crisis was not to kowtow to bankers but to jail them. The Icelandic economy has now recovered to a size above its pre 2008 peak, a target far away from the likes of Greece.
While the Goldmanite European Central Bank chairman Mario Draghi prepares to pump money into a corporate black hole, the youth of Southern Europe see their futures evaporate into a sclerotic mist of unemployment, under-investment and hopelessness. Why does Britain’s left wish to support an EU that propagates such unfairness? Is it not time to admit that Europe has been captured by financiers and will not prosper until their influence is reduced and un-payable debts written-off?
#1 Reason to Vote Brexit
I did a search for images that portray the current situation. This one is perfect (red text mine).
“I merely reminded these yokes that without some incentive to stay in their pathetic little state, we’d take our globally ruinous business elsewhere“.
The British left bows down to that message.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
