Saturday 4 June 2016

Blimey, it could be Brexit!

It's a year since I wrote a new entry on this blog, and that isn't because I have nothing to say, merely that the world is getting crazier faster than I can focus on it. Now though, faced with an imminent EU referendum, it would be remiss not to say something. Boris, Gove and the other Brexiteers have the scent of victory in their nostrils, a scent wafting from a silent majority who don't share their real thoughts with pollsters. This scent is part xenophobia – the Brexiteers are convincing many people that leaving the EU would reduce immigration, which it won't – but also partly from their simmering rage against liberal media and cultural elites who have for several decades been fiddling while they were robbed of security, dignity, jobs. Unfortunately the Remain campaign relies on precisely those elites for advocates, which simply turns up the heat under the simmering pot.

So what of a "Left Case For Brexit"? There isn't one. Even if you sneakily share some of that majority resentment, accept the fact that victory for Brexit would leave you locked on this small island with neo-Poujadist governments permanently in power. Read Anthony Barnett's long but thoughtful analysis Blimey, it could be Brexit! Then vote Remain on June 23rd. Just do it.

3 comments:

  1. I was just saying the other day that these feel like the strangest political days I have lived through. This is partly because as a member of the liberal elite I can feel the ground cracking and slipping under my feet; but it is more than an existential crisis for leftist baby boomers. Trump, ISIS, a crisis of the EU deepened by possible Brexit, social democratic opposition in the UK withering on the sectarian vine to which it has been grafted: something big is dying.
    Of course the Remain vote on June 23 is essential.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Al - strange days indeed, deeply unsettling

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  2. Well, thankfully did vote for Brexit. I hope it's the beginning of the end of the power if the liberal elite

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GILT BY ASSOCIATION

I don’t have any special credentials as a commentator on geopolitics, but occasionally, like now, I feel obliged to have a stab at it. The c...