I haven’t written a single word about this non-event, precisely because it is a non event. It’s an artificially created argument, with the mainstream reasoning used on both sides, being equally fallacious. A gigantic deception played out with all the pomp and circumstance of a Royal Wedding and just about as empty.
Nevertheless, as pointless as I know it to be, as the result is pretty much a fait accomplis, I will be voting to leave the EU. And in any case, just like a recent referendum in Ireland that went the ‘wrong’ way, if ours too, goes the ‘wrong’ way then the State will just do it all over again until it gets the ‘right’ result.
Others have summed up the many reasons why, so I’ll leave it to them to explain. But here’s an apposite quote from one of the only two, yes two articles I’ve read on the subject which make any sense to me as a socialist:
In effect, the left-wing Remainers will have given the establishment (in particular the Tory party) a firm helping hand in supporting the EU, and though Michael Chessum and Owen Jones will cry out about how the EU needs to be reformed and challenged on its own terms, the dominant forces of parliamentary reaction will simply argue (correctly) that the majority of the political establishment and a large number of progressive campaigns from a number of distinct causes and sectors gave Britain’s post-referendum EU membership a resounding sign of approval. From that vantage point, Cameron and the right-wing media will simply be able to drown out calls for more radical EU reforms and gloat about how the Remain vote secures their position and augments their authority. With the corporate world, mainstream media, military, City of London, arms trade and the majority of the political Right and Centre supporting Remain, a vote for Leave isn’t just a vote against the neoliberal forces of the Troika: It is also a vote against our own ruling classes. — ‘Another Tamriel is Possible: Brexit Proposals vs Solutions’ by Elliot Murphy http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/07/another-tamriel-is-possible-brexit-proposals-vs-solutions/
Elsewhere, a less polite voice has spelt out the reasons that underpins the above:
While the European Union tries to “kettle” refugees in Turkey, turn them back to Libya before they reach international waters, struggles to reign in Italy and its navy which has committed the unpardonable sin, according to the EU, of upholding the law of the sea by insisting on rescuing people at risk on the sea, even where and when those people are of darker skin and a different religion than the EU finds admissible; while the European Union contorts and distorts its own refugee policy to deny safe haven to those fleeing barrel bombs, militias, armies, automatic weapons, air strikes waged, supplied, supported in part, by the very same countries that make up the EU; the big worry, apparently, for some socialists in the United Kingdom is that a majority of people in Great Britain might actually vote to leave this confederation of capitalists; this union of exploiters; this common market designed to flatten every particular impediment to the accumulation of capital. — ‘Little Ado About Something’ By S. Artesian
http://thewolfatthedoor.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/little-ado-about-something.html
The so-called Leftie Remainers all appear to be suffering from some kind weird delusion about their capabilities to transform the EU but then this is a symptom of the disease that Lenin called Social Imperialism that I prefer to call straight-up opportunism.
Pretty much all the stuff I’ve read from Leftie Remainers about why to stay goes on about ‘uniting the progressive forces of the EU’ and forming some kind of transnational something or other. Talk about delusions of grandeur! And aside from Greece (where even when in government, the ‘Left’ made a complete hash of it and finally capitulated to the forces of Capital, and in the process, sold out the people who voted them in!), the rest, especially here in the UK, couldn’t organise a Garden Party, let alone a transnational political movement. And all, as Elliot Murphy above points out, without explaining anything at all about how this state of Leftie Nirvana will be achieved.
So I think these two quotes make it perfectly clear why I will commit the fruitless exercise of voting on the 23 June, in the vain hope that enough people will see sense and tell the European ‘Union’ to, F…K OFF! Well I can dream can’t I?
Opinions to the contrary are welcome, as long as they’re reasonably cogent and of course, intelligent.
