by Renie Anjeh
The blue-on-blue action, hyperbolic interventions, xenophobic dog-whistles, awkward alliances and uninformed celebrity endorsements are almost done. It is all going to be over in a few hours. Yes, today is the day. The day that we finally lance the boil. It is the day that we give the European question a clear answer. Today is referendum day.
I suspect that Britain will vote to remain in the European Union but there will be long-term repercussions for our body politic whichever way the country votes. A combination of hurt feelings, betrayed souls and damaged egos on the Conservative benches could bring forward David Cameron’s expiry date.
An ungovernable Conservative party could lead to the battle-scarred Prime Minister calling an early election. The consequences for the Labour party are not exactly clear but they are definitely not good. Part of the reason for this is because during this referendum there has been a revival of Labour Euroscepticism.
Although a minority of Labour politicians have endorsed Labour Leave, the pro-Brexit Labour group, they do speak for a significant proportion of Labour voters something which is a problem for the party leadership. These voters are at odds with Europeanism and globalisation and will not obey the party’s quinoa-eating, metropolitan wing. However, while there are perfectly reasonable left-wing reasons to be suspicious to be sceptical of the EU, backing Lexit is fundamentally flawed.
The main reason for this is because Lexit is not on the ballot paper.
It all goes back to why we are having this vote in the first place. Cameron did not call this plebiscite because of any urgent need. No new treaty is imminent, there is no transfer of power or significant change in our relationship.
This vote has been called to appease the Thatcherite wing of the Conservative Party whose Euroscepticism is not driven by any concern for the working class but by an adoration of the free market.
In the very late 1980s, the European Commission developed a social conscience under the French socialist Jacques Delors.
Under his leadership, social rights for workers became an integral part of the European project much to the chagrin of Margaret Thatcher who rightly saw it as an affront to her ideology.
This particularly angered her because she thought Europe was a market-orientated institution especially seeing as it was she who signed the Single European Act which paved the way for more integration and free movement (things that Thatcherites pretend to hate).
It was also Thatcher’s newfound hostility to Europe, not the Poll Tax that led to her defenestration from office. This is why Thatcherites care so much.
This referendum may have driven the nation into a state of ennui but it is activated their political G-spot. Brexit is a unique opportunity for them to regain control of their party from Cameron, avenge the political death of their spiritual mother and pick up from where she left off.
Our country would not become the socialist utopia that Lexiters dream of but a Northern European ‘tiger economy’ with light-touch regulation, low taxes, a smaller state and fewer social rights.
The people who would be hit hardest by this experiment would not be the establishment, as Michael Gove would have us believe, but the very working class people who are likely to vote for Brexit.
Their future – jobs, livelihoods and communities – would be sacrificed at the altar of the free market as an oblation to Margaret Thatcher. So yes, Lexit is not on the ballot paper. What is on the ballot paper is Brexit on the Right’s terms.
No progressive or socialist should naively allow themselves to be a human shield for their agenda.
So where does this leave Eurosceptic Labour voters? What should be their response?
Stay in and fight.
It is inevitable that Eurozone countries will need deeper fiscal and political union in order to make the single currency work and this will require treaty change.
When this happens, non-eurozone countries will have the upper hand because such reform will require their support.
That is why Lexiters should be fighting for a Labour government so that when the times comes, Britain has a Labour Prime Minister around the table who is negotiating from a position of strength. A proper renegotiation with Europe based on our progressive values. That is infinitely better than Brexit under Boris Johnson.
Renie Anjeh is a politics student at Leeds university
Tags: Brexit, EU referendum, Eurosceptic, Leave, Lexit, Remain, Renie Anjeh
The problem with this analysis, is that what you fear cannot happen. In the current Parliament there are about 150 Brexit supporting MPs, some of whom are Labour and some of whom are Tory but not rabid right wingers – leaving us with say 120. How exactly do those 120 suddenly start to win votes against the other 480? How do they implement any right wing surge in policy?
The whole argument espoused by Labour, the LibDems and ScotNats that we have to keep out the nasties is built on a deliberate fabrication – it’s not just the Tories who are running “Project Fear”! I absolutely agree that it would be a disaster for this country if it turned further right but that has nothing to do with the Referendum, so please stop conflating the two!
Just listened to Ben Bradshaw talk absolute shite on the radio.
The Labour hierarchy just can’t seem to understand why their ‘blue collar’ traditional industrialised and post-industrialised Labour vote in northern England, the English Midlands and the Welsh valleys went for OUT. They just can’t seem to understand that there was no way on God’s earth they were going to vote for continued freedom of movement and uncontrolled immigration and frankly it was politically amateurish of the Labour hierarchy not to realise that.
It wasn’t they didn’t understand your message – they understood it all to well. You just wouldn’t listen to what they thought of it. Perhaps you will now swallow some humble pie and shift your position back towards your working class roots. That or face continued decline and increased irrelevance.
As for my own party I will say this once again. The route to power in Wales is through the industrial working class. If you don’t sing a song they like, then they will shop elsewhere.
Looking outward for a moment, Sweden wants an opt out of the freedom of movement thing as does Greece. Holland and Denmark will probably hold a referendum on leaving”within months”.
The EU is a busted flush.
As for economic armageddon, the initial losses on the currency market and FTSE 100 are in recovery and have halved in the last couple of hours.