{"id":12934,"date":"2019-03-04T14:41:05","date_gmt":"2019-03-04T14:41:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/?p=12934"},"modified":"2019-04-15T14:04:33","modified_gmt":"2019-04-15T14:04:33","slug":"what-voting-leave-has-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2019\/03\/04\/what-voting-leave-has-revealed\/","title":{"rendered":"WHAT VOTING LEAVE HAS REVEALED"},"content":{"rendered":"

Murdo Ritchie, a contributor to this blog, who has been an advocate of a Leave vote, argues what a Leave vote represents.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

WHAT VOTING HAS REVEALED<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Blue – Leave
Yellow – Remain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

The loud vote of no more in the United Kingdom against remaining in the European Union has been one of the most successful protest votes in history.1<\/sup>\u00a0 Unlike the previous referendum on Europe in 1975 voters were not asked to vote Yes or No, but to Remain or Leave.\u00a0 This turned the poll into a vote of affirmation for the EU institutions and Prime Minister David Cameron\u2019s strategy or rejection for a multitude of different reasons.\u00a0 Never have the class and national divisions that make the UK been made so visible.\u00a0The UK\u2019s semi-detached approach to the EU may have never undergone the depth of crisis that Greece, Ireland or Portugal experienced or the flights of population that many countries in the south and east still undergo, but many voters unexpectedly unleashed an angry statement they were not prepared to continue living with the rotten status quo.\u00a0 It was a protest without a coherent plan, but a protest nonetheless.\u00a0 This crisis would not have occurred if the Remain vote had won.<\/p>\n

The enormous tensions within the UK\u2019s ruling elite reveals one of the main reasons the bourgeoisie has never been able to create a republican consciousness for itself or an \u201cimagined community\u201d across a larger class base to erect a British nationalist culture.\u00a0\u00a0 Some have tried to argue that the referendum only came about because of an internal dispute within the elite, principally the Tory party.\u00a0Nevertheless, even if the large turnout of seventeen million voting to Leave is assumed to say nothing, an elite quarrel has freed the enormous anger and widespread alienation that has been ignored about life across the UK.\u00a0 Prime Minister Theresa May, despite her ongoing actions to the contrary, has been forced to proclaim that austerity is over.\u00a0 Many will hear this as yet another lie and deception that is at the root of the simmering anger.<\/p>\n

London was the only electoral area of England to vote to remain, the other eight voting strongly to leave.\u00a0 The vote in Scotland was in many ways a continuation of the earlier independence referendum reflecting the hegemony of the Scottish National Party.\u00a0 It was also an rejection of the centralising London\/ South East hegemony of the UK.\u00a0Northern Ireland also sought to break with the centralising power but by using the newly acquired economic weight of the southern republic and the EU.\u00a0 By every possible interpretation, this was a rejection of the status quo ante and definitely not an affirmation of the neoliberal strategy of the EU.<\/p>\n

Architects of austerity David Cameron, George Osborne and Nick Clegg may have left the tottering building they designed to pursue careers in the lofts of adjacent structures but they are unable to disguise the contempt they have for the leave voters no matter how high they climb.\u00a0 This is shared by enormous chunks of the middle classes in the UK and Europe.\u00a0 As well as the declared austerians of the Tory party, the monopoly bourgeoisie in big business and its representatives like the Confederation of British Industry, also a majority in the Institute of Directors, the boards of the banks that crashed the economy, the PR industry that tries to tell others what to think as well as the great, good and self-interested from all levels of the middle classes were horrified by the result; they casually assumed a remain vote with business continuing as usual.\u00a0 Conservatives with big and little \u201cc\u201ds and liberals with big and little \u201cl\u201ds were thrown into a panic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big guns of the international liberal order were wheeled out to stop us going along the Puerto Rican option: the IMF, the WTO, the OECD, Ten Nobel economists added to the din; Obama wagged a finger; Clinton too.\u00a0Then Soros.\u00a0 In reply a forest of fingers was stuck in the air.\u00a0 This was a vote against experts and technocrats, and the architects of austerity; it was also a vote against \u2018free\u2019 as in free trade and, above all, free movement; the \u2018free\u2019 of global markets and the single European market.\u00a0 People know by now what\u2019s meant by market democracy: markets\u201d2<\/sup><\/p>\n

Of course many wannabe \u201cradicals\u201d can be found trying to shore up the liberal status quo too.\u00a0 Like the assorted conservatives and liberals they are also people of tradition too.\u00a0 Theirs\u2019 is the continuity of calling for the urgency of dramatic alternatives but not yet; demanding revolutionary movement but expressing hostility to the ruptures they didn\u2019t expect would open; change in words without change in the real world.\u00a0 High moral platitudes explained how they weren\u2019t defending the status quo but preparing for a better future by rejecting a far worse alternative of populism.\u00a0 The strident assertiveness of the new imperialism of the Euro with the Four Freedoms of Fortress Europe were preferable to a revival of the decaying corpse of the British Empire.\u00a0 Even now, a bewildered \u201cleft\u201d still cannot explain to itself what has happened.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

POLITICS-BY-PANIC<\/strong><\/p>\n

The single most shocking expression of middle class contempt for the result was their determination to overturn it.\u00a0 After all, how could seventeen million common people be so stupid as to follow the leadership of Nigel Farage, Boris Johnston and Jacob Rees-Mogg?\u00a0 After all, aren\u2019t they only decorations carefully placed for entertainment only?\u00a0These leaders may only be another voice of \u201cestablishment\u201d Britain, but don\u2019t the mass of voters recognise the acceptable mainstay from the gargoyles kept safely perched at the fringes?\u00a0 Most people who voted to leave could clearly see the opportunistic outlines and shapes of these effigies; it was their real world of lived experiences of lies, deceit and self-service from the mainstream elite and its officer class they met in daily life not these peripheral leaders demonic posturing that made them vote the way they did.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the mainstream remain camp knew that if enough feeling about being too close to the absurd views of these ridiculous creatures could be crafted then enough guilt-by-association could be created.\u00a0 Ugly pictures of leave voters as stupid, easily fooled, uneducated, unambitious, racist and many other tropes were conveniently spread.\u00a0Jasper and his pantomime populist villains fooled the easily led.\u00a0 Ironically, the remain camp was only the local expression of the views of the EU elite that built its supranational institutions to by-pass the national parliaments where the unenlightened populace brought the populist politics of communism, fascism and nationalism into power.\u00a0 They knew better.\u00a0 The vote had to be overturned somehow.<\/p>\n

The UK\u2019s elite has long shunned popular sovereignty keeping it away from the mass of people with the doctrine of the crown-in-parliament, or parliamentary sovereignty.\u00a0 The first successful legal challenge to the vote relied on activating this doctrine.\u00a0 Financier and philanthropist Ms Gina Miller, argued that only parliament could decide if the UK stayed in the EU.\u00a0 After all, a referendum has no real authority, let alone obligation for the result to be implemented; it is only a consultative referendum \u2013just like the previous one in 1975.\u00a0 But that one made the right decision.\u00a0 This appeal to the UK\u2019s antique unwritten constitution defeated the recently written constitutional right of a country to secede under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.\u00a0The supremacy of EU law, so dominant since 1973, was overturned by the dynastic Bill of Rights of William and Mary.<\/p>\n

The UK may have only half-heartedly integrated itself into the EU\u2019s structures and economy since 1973 so, unlike other countries, it ought to be easier to break free.\u00a0 But it will still cause enormous difficulties, and regulatory alignment will still be required to operate behind the EU\u2019s protectionist walls.\u00a0 Stress tests carried out across the entire economy show that disaster is immanent when the UK leaves; lorries are stacked up outside south coast ports as exercises to show No voters what they voted for; entire factories are closed now because of uncertainty about supply chains in the future, panic is created by willing PR companies servicing eager news outlets; a government hopes by this method to corral votes from its own putative supporters to push through its unsupported policies; essential medicines have to be stockpiled because they will soon be unavailable.\u00a0 There are even plans in place to evacuate the Queen when the riots occur.\u00a0 Complacent indifference before the vote has been replaced with vindictive panic afterwards.<\/p>\n

In Westminster no compromise and no deal will happen.\u00a0 One collapse seems to follow another.\u00a0 The mood of despair grows.\u00a0 Yet the creation of these panics shows only a small amount of the power a petulant bourgeoisie can use.\u00a0 An organised left would take advantage of these opportunities but instead lines up with the left liberals finding more ways to console them by giving support to their principal institutions.\u00a0 Malcolm X, as well as others before him, used to draw a distinction between house slaves and field slaves.\u00a0 When the master\u2019s house caught fire the house slaves would become flustered running around calling on other slaves to help fighting the fire.\u00a0 The field slaves stood back and let the flames consume their oppressor\u2019s home.<\/p>\n

If jobs are going to go, why has the UK got one of its highest levels of employment?\u00a0 Weren\u2019t EU quotas previously responsible for turning mining, shipbuilding, steel and fishing communities into \u201cghost towns?\u201d\u00a0 If the EU was responsible for high levels of migration, why were there so many migrants, principally Irish and Commonwealth citizens in the UK before joining the EU?\u00a0 Without EU rules falling from the Commission, workers would have no protection but would have to organise into trade unions to fight for their own interests instead.\u00a0Abolishing the Working Time Directive might even stop its stated maximum number of hours to be worked remaining the minimum necessary hours before achieving a decent living wage; any supposed protections negated by the right to opt-out and the employer\u2019s refusal to hire anyone who doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 State aid would cease to be outlawed by EU laws with the private sector yet again fearing being \u201ccrowded out\u201d.<\/p>\n

EU migrants might lose their rights or is it obligation to get on a plane and look for work in a country that doesn\u2019t speak their language.\u00a0The soi-disant \u201cleft\u201d was appalled when then Employment Secretary Norman Tebbit demanded workers get on their bikes and look for work in nearby towns and villages; now it demands that the surplus population of Europe have a right to travel to the rich countries for work.\u00a0The right of individual workers is only the obligation of the single European market making factors of production move to where they are demanded or from where they have been rejected.\u00a0 It is not an expression of citizenship.<\/p>\n

\u201cConversations with young Southern European immigrants in London \u2026 are a welcome reality check.\u00a0 They know all too well what the \u2018free movement of labour\u2019 means for people like them, and how much the discipline on the Euro is responsible for driving them north.\u00a0 No lessons in the mechanics of wage suppression or Deutsche Bundesbank\u2019s anti-keynesianism are needed.\u201d3<\/sup><\/p>\n

RACISM AND RACE GUILT<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unease at the EU\u2019s policies, according to the remain camp, can only be because of the indigenous population\u2019s inherent racism.\u00a0Anger at the never-ending deceit of society\u2019s officer class and lack of control over important areas of life either by the migrants or their hosts is entirely disregarded.\u00a0 After all this is a properly working European economy.\u00a0 Because of previous waves of migration, the UK has built an extremely diverse set of cultures within its borders.\u00a0 Indeed it could be argued that the UK has never been so hostile to racism as it is at present.\u00a0 Take a look at the current Westminster or Holyrood cabinets, or the Mayor of London.\u00a0 Most public institutions have successfully countered most forms of racism, even if more needs done.\u00a0 Institutional racism may be structurally absent even if there are still racists.\u00a0 But although racism will always be present in capitalism, there is also a lot of race guilt.\u00a0 Vague and nebulous it often originates from various chunks of the middle classes who have to publically display their \u201cinclusiveness.\u201d\u00a0 Far too often, it accuses others of racist and sexist behaviour when others act outside of its narrow framework of \u201cpolitical correctness.\u201d\u00a0 It ignores the racism of the remain camp\u2019s plans as well as ignoring the anger in the population it doesn\u2019t see or even believe exists.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe average immigrant is younger, better educated and healthier than the average British citizen \u2026In addition, most of the people who appear as immigrants in the migration statistics are students \u2026 Of the 330,000 net arrivals in the latest numbers, 169,000 are students\u2026 [T]he reality of young, healthy, hard-working thriving immigrants wouldn\u2019t have helped the remain case [because] it touches on too many sore points about being left behind\u201d4<\/sup>\u00a0 Since the accession states from Eastern Europe joined the EU, the number of immigrants residing in the UK is about 3.3 million around 5 % of the total population or about 7% of the total workforce.<\/p>\n

Being squeezed out of meaningful employment is, of course, only one form of alienation.\u00a0 Watching all services being eroded while being told that total wealth is increasing is another. Being left behind implies that there is a final destination to be reached.\u00a0 It is always somewhere else.\u00a0 And it seems only other people arrive there.\u00a0 The remain camp constantly calls on people to move and move again. \u00a0\u00a0Migrants are pulled to the UK; London for the ambitious UK subject.\u00a0 \u201cNo single measure uniquely defines someone as being a member of the Left Behind, although one has a sense of the defining footprint of an area that is Left Behind is there is a tendency towards a lack of ambition and a feeling of mistrust and alienation, with perhaps a sense that there situation has resulted from the malign (be intentionally or unintentionally) actions of others.\u00a0 It is no surprise that this group is very vocal in its condemnation of immigrants as taking jobs, wealth, housing and services they feel are theirs by right.\u00a0 For those trapped in this landscape, depression and pessimism have a higher currency than optimism and \u2018can do\u2019\u201d5<\/sup><\/p>\n

SEVENTEEN MILLION RACISTS<\/strong><\/p>\n

According to one who believes many \u201cargued for a remain vote did so not because of illusions in the EU but because they saw that the main issue in the campaign \u2026 would inevitably be reactionary nationalism and outright racism\u201d6<\/sup>\u00a0 Put simply, don\u2019t vote to answer the question on the ballot paper, vote for something else.\u00a0Besides if voting leave assisted \u201creactionary nationalism and outright racism,\u201d why would voting to remain obstruct it?\u00a0 Surely, that is an illusion about the EU?\u00a0 That comment was in International Socialism the journal of the Socialist Workers Party.\u00a0 A larger article did mainly pre-empt this question earlier.\u00a0 \u201cSome comrades nevertheless argue that the British debate on the EU will be so dominated by racist anti-immigrant arguments that we should vote Yes [remain] to express solidarity with migrants.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t address the fact the \u2018reforms\u2019 with which Cameron will seek to justify campaigning for a Yes [remain] are likely to include restricting EU migrants\u2019 access to welfare benefits.\u201d7 <\/sup>Indeed there is an enormous difference between freedom of mobility to cross borders as a citizen and freedom to cross borders as only an individual component in a factor of production in an all-Europe labour market.\u00a0 That is all the EU offers.<\/p>\n

Under David Cameron\u2019s so-called \u201cemergency brake\u201d of the proposals he submitted to the EU, the UK would be permitted to withhold social benefits just not for the first four years after they arrived but to have it extended for a further three years.\u00a0 Child benefits could still be paid abroad but only at a rate commensurate with the rate in the recipient country.\u00a0 There would also be limits on the movements of nationals from outside the EU who were married to EU citizens.\u00a0 If David Cameron had won his referendum, he would have used that victory to fight for these policies.\u00a0 Of course, this is not to claim that the EU would have accepted or endorsed these proposals, though existing restrictions on welfare benefits for migrants in other countries suggests he may have found some receptive ears.<\/p>\n

Has there been a dramatic outburst of racism during or since the vote?\u00a0 Quite simply, nobody knows.\u00a0 The way the figures are counted reveals how difficult it is to establish if racism is really increasing, decreasing or simply stays constant.\u00a0 The Institute of Race Relations publishes a fortnightly round-up of racist incidents and far-right activity taken from the local press and some police reports.\u00a0 \u201c[V]erbal abuse on public transport, vandalism of religious monuments, poorly attended protests by extremist groups are culled from the local press.\u00a0 They\u2019re usually not considered important enough to merit national attention \u2026 Anecdotes \u2026 are difficult to verify, and reports of hate crimes can go up when people are looking for them.\u201d8<\/sup>\u00a0 By this haphazard manner official figures are created.\u00a0There were about a hundred reports of alleged racist abuse and hate crime immediately following the announcement of the result.\u00a0 However, hate crime is only an expression of subjective perception.\u00a0 Essex police Assistant Chief Constable Maurice Mason explains how, \u201cIf the person feels its hate crime it\u2019ll get recorded as a hate crime.\u201d\u00a0Most were, in his opinion, \u201clow level matters, some members of the public complaining about Nigel Farage or whatever, that\u2019ll be recorded as a hate crime\u201d9<\/sup>\u00a0 In the absence of accurate statistical evidence, this is why assessing racism requires a political judgement.<\/p>\n

Not to have illusions in the EU but vote to remain is the same as claiming to have no illusions in Euro-imperialism but to remain in it -ie give it support by voting for it.\u00a0 Almost as absurd as claiming to support democracy while campaigning for a second vote whose only purpose it to reverse the first.\u00a0 Only cynics, the unbelievably na\u00efve,\u00a0 or those with such ridiculously short-term perspectives can support this approach.\u00a0 How is it possible to be a democrat and vote to remain in in a treaty based organisation set-up, designed and maintained to keep major decisions away from parliamentary assemblies and demand compliance based on the supremacy of EU law?<\/p>\n

The EU was from its creation a mechanism for the ever more direct expression of bourgeois class power, especially through its core doctrine of the Four Freedoms.\u00a0 Through them, it became possible to pursue the ideas that could continue the necessary bourgeois economic modernisation that the European bourgeoisie needed.\u00a0But, as far as the UK was concerned, it was a confused attempt to graft a bourgeois economic modernisation onto a decaying feudal host did not take properly when the political state was still using methods from another era.<\/p>\n

THE OFFICIAL CAMPAIGNS AND THE VOTE<\/strong><\/p>\n

The official state funded leave campaigns rarely reflected any grassroots issues or worries but continued the themes of a new world based on more free trade.\u00a0 Indeed, the only difference between the official campaigns to remain or leave was free trade inside the European Union fortress or free trade outside its protectionist walls with the wider world.\u00a0 At this level only the \u201cinside\u201d elite battled the \u201coutside\u201d elite.10<\/sup>\u00a0\u00a0But the anger that could not be expressed through parliamentary elections, or even the referendum, still made itself heard by a vote of rejection in this referendum.<\/p>\n

This is one of the fundamental differences between the two votes.\u00a0 With or without illusions a vote to remain was vote of endorsement for an existing set of institutions and a continuation of its politics.\u00a0 Or, at least, that is how it would have been used.\u00a0 It would try to change nothing.\u00a0 The EU, David Cameron and George Osborne would have attempted to continue governing the way they had always governed.\u00a0 The EU would have continued its neoliberal policies and bringing into effect the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Policy with even more supranational court structures that by-pass democratic institutions would have been created.11<\/sup>\u00a0 \u00a0Besides Cameron and Osborne also claimed they had no illusions in the EU too.<\/p>\n

Discontent was rife in pre-exit Britain.\u00a0 \u201cFor some, Cameron will always be the man who wrecked his country in a clumsy attempt to save his party.\u00a0 At worst, a bad Brexit could break not just the economy, but the union \u2013giving Scotland new reasons to seek independence, even pushing Northern Irish voters towards unification with the south \u2026 Had Brexit never happened, Cameron would still have bequeathed us the bedroom tax and axed Sure Start centres.\u00a0He would be the man who cut tax credits for the poor while abolishing the 50p tax rate for the wealthiest, left teachers soliciting donations from parents so they could buy basic supplies, and whose \u2018jobs miracle\u2019 (record levels of employment) relied heavily on insecure and part-time work.\u00a0 And his defence for all this \u2013that without austerity, Britain would have lost its credit rating and faced even more painful cuts.\u201d12<\/sup><\/p>\n

But the leave vote was not an endorsement of the officially sponsored Leave campaigns.\u00a0 It was a vote of rejection for all sorts of reasons most of which would have been rejected by the leaders imposed on the official Leave campaigns.\u00a0The Vote Leave leaders held no high office; they put forward no policies that could realistically been implemented.\u00a0Its leaders were demagogues that resembled cartoon villains in a referendum designed in such a way that they should have lost. \u00a0They could say anything they wished knowing that they had no obligation to implement it.\u00a0\u00a0But the anger over too many issues such as unsatisfactory employment, housing and public services meant that voters told our rulers, \u201cTake back control!\u201d\u00a0Even when they didn\u2019t want to.\u00a0 When David Cameron left No 10 he was merrily whistling.\u00a0 Both Osborne and Clegg were visibly relieved to be leaving political life.<\/p>\n

FINDING NEW FRIENDS<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Of the twelve electoral regions, nine voted to leave, three to remain: London, Scotland and Northern Ireland.\u00a0 The referendum was fought under the same rules used to contest Westminster General Elections.\u00a0 These were the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 and the European Union Referendum Act 2015.\u00a0 The right to vote was limited to residents of the United Kingdom who were Commonwealth citizens or citizens of the Republic of Ireland.\u00a0 The age of eligibility was eighteen years and members of the House of Lords were excluded.\u00a0 These are the traditional features of the Representation of the People Acts of 1983 and 1985.\u00a0 Although these were the traditional rules for eligibility, a more extensive precedent had been set by the referendum on Scottish national independence to lower the age to sixteen years and to include EU citizens and Commonwealth subjects who were not UK subjects.\u00a0 It was a precedent that was not followed.\u00a0 This does not make the referendum undemocratic or corrupt.<\/p>\n

The South West electoral region also includes the electorate of Gibraltar.\u00a0 This did not stop the region from voting to leave.\u00a0 (Though Gibraltar alone with its transplanted population voted to Remain.).\u00a0Gibraltar joined the European Economic Community as part of the UK in 1973.\u00a0 Crown Dependencies that are not part of the United Kingdom such as the Isle of Man and the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey were also excluded.\u00a0Inhabitants of the Isle of Man, nevertheless, are defined as British subjects under the Nationality Act of 1981.<\/p>\n

By voting to remain, the most cosmopolitan area of the UK most integrated into EU structures became allied with the two regions most desperate to break with centralist submission to its national power.\u00a0 Two (Northern Ireland and Gibraltar) were colonial legacies and claimed by other nations.\u00a0 London was the centre of the former British Empire with Scotland formerly one if its strongest supporters.\u00a0 \u201cTake back control!\u201d had a different meaning in each of these areas.\u00a0In two of them, time to remain meant time to go too!<\/p>\n

THE TWO LONDONS<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are two Londons.\u00a0 One is the enormous metropolitan colossus that grows and grows and grows with an undefinable external border.\u00a0 The other is the chartered City of London with its own city wall inside the metropolis.\u00a0 Both voted to remain inside the EU.\u00a0 Both Londons seem increasingly detached from the remainder of the UK seeking to attach themselves to the European Union.<\/p>\n

The metropolis is the largest city in the European Union; its population of 8.8 million inhabitants in the Greater London Authority area is only slightly less than the total of the non-English nations of the UK.\u00a0Its sprawling conurbations form a city-state within the English nation.\u00a0 It has no perimeter walls; instead it sprawls and sprawls.\u00a0 The sprawl should stop at the boundaries of the GLA, but it continues to grow outside this, absorbing other areas further away.\u00a0 Some measures put the real size of its population between twelve or fourteen million.\u00a0 The city\u2019s growth was chaotic, for most of the eighties and nineties there was no public authority to address the city\u2019s issues of housing, public transport, and education.<\/p>\n

A recent Resolution Foundation report13<\/sup>pointed out that a third of the net employment growth across the UK occurred in London.\u00a0 Despite this jobs boom, London has some of the highest rates of poverty and inequality, the lowest records of well-being as well as high anxiety.\u00a0 A lot of this is because of the city\u2019s housing crisis. \u201c[I]t becomes clear that central government has boosted London\u2019s economy, with a cost to industries and people in the rest of the country.\u00a0 But \u2026 this also [has a] cost [to] people living in London.\u201d14<\/sup><\/p>\n

Population pressures keep forcing up rents and housing costs as well causing difficulties for essential services.\u00a0 Recruitment to certain services such as with schoolteachers and nurses is made more difficult by constant public expenditure cuts, frozen wages, and the financial incentives of wealthier private sector employers.\u00a0The housing market becomes increasingly more speculative with houses ceasing to be built to house people but becoming financial assets to store wealth to sell at a later date.\u00a0 The growing financialisation of the city keeps pushing up the exchange rate making the industrial and exporting sectors of the entire UK economy less able to compete.<\/p>\n

TRICKLE DOWN GEOGRAPHY<\/strong><\/p>\n

The powerful magnetic pull of London allows central government politicians the ability to shift costs over to the European Union rather than address the issues of UK inequality in other regions.\u00a0 A convenient ideological outlook establishes itself to justify this.\u00a0 Former Mayor Boris Johnson said this quite openly, \u201cA pound spent in Croydon is of far more value to the country than a pound spent in Strathclyde \u2026 You will generate jobs in Strathclyde far more effectively if you invest in parts of London\u201d15<\/sup>\u00a0 This approach described as trickle\u2013down geography argues that because London and the South-East are the only productive parts of the economy the rest of the UK is only kept afloat by them.\u00a0 Consequently a policy of more of the same is all that is required.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, London\u2019s economy has felt many of the same pressures as the rest of the UK; the docks have moved further downstream to Felixstowe and Tilbury, much manufacturing has gone now 3.2 million of its inhabitants (85%of the labour-force) work in services.\u00a0 The city\u2019s largest industry is finance.\u00a0 All major national and formerly regional banks are head-quartered along with 480 overseas banks.\u00a0 These handle some $1.9 trillion daily mainly in the so-called Eurodollar market ie dollars held outside the USA.<\/p>\n

Over 70% of the UK\u2019s top listed companies in the FTSE 100 are headquartered in the metropolitan conglomerate and 75% of Fortune 500\u2019s operate in it.\u00a0 Media companies such as the BBC try hard not to be so London centred but repeatedly fail to escape the city\u2019s cosmopolitan pull.\u00a0 Fleet Street may no longer be the one street of shame for the nation\u2019s newspapers, but London is still their location.\u00a0 Yet it is because it is also the seat of government that it attracts the ambitious as well as the enormous resources to sustain it.\u00a0 It has the highest non-food retail sales of any city in the world with a total annual spend of \u00a364.2 billion.\u00a0 It is geographically closer to Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels than Edinburgh or Belfast.<\/p>\n

As the former centre of empire the mix of its population reflects the past as well as the present and future.\u00a0 The 2011 census showed that 2,998,264 or 36.7% of the city\u2019s denizens were foreign born; only New York exceeding this population.\u00a0 But this census placed India as the largest origin of foreign population followed by Poland then Ireland, Nigeria and Pakistan as the main contributors to the city.\u00a0 The collapsing economies of Europe will probably show a rise in immigrant numbers from Eastern and Southern countries seeking the opportunities the common single market denies them at home.\u00a0 Currently, London is a model of national and racial integration with 69% of all children born having at least one parent born abroad.<\/p>\n

The City of London behind its perimeter wall inside the metropolitan conurbation is the historical location of the other older London.\u00a0It is the other London.\u00a0 The square mile is the home to the Bank of England, the London Stock Exchange and Lloyd\u2019s of London the insurance market, as well as St Paul\u2019s Cathedral.\u00a0 It is from here that the pound sterling is the fourth most traded currency in the world and the third most held reserve currency.\u00a0 Initially \u201cthe City\u201d was uneasy about the common market fearing that it may be subject to too much regulation, but as the European Union\u2019s capital centres fought for bigger shares of arms deals, dictators\u2019 stolen wealth and spending from Russian oligarchs\u2019 laundered money, they quickly realised that the European Union\u2019s regulatory ambitions rarely affected them.<\/p>\n

Through its governing Corporation, the City of London essentially operates at arms-length from most English law.\u00a0 It has so many legal peculiarities that it behaves like a separate country within a larger city and country.\u00a0 Surprisingly, it has only a small residential population of only 7,000, but the non-residential vote of business is the main source for the electorate in this area.\u00a0 It comprises about 32,000 business-electors.\u00a0 Businesses with less than ten employees have one vote; ten to fifty, one vote for every five employees; more than fifty gives ten voters plus an additional voter for every employee for every fifty afterwards.\u00a0 This is how the Corporation is chosen as the second quarter of the twenty-first century approaches.\u00a0 It escaped the Municipal Reform Act of 1835 and has been escaping ever since.\u00a0 It should be no surprise that it easily identifies with the neoliberal, counter-democratic, supranational institutions of the European Union.<\/p>\n

The City\u2019s long arm also reaches far outside its walls.\u00a0Its Corporation owns and runs Leadenhall and Smithfield markets including many parks, forests and common lands in around Greater London.\u00a0 It owns most of Epping Forest and Hampstead Heath.\u00a0 It owns in neighbouring borough of Tower Hamlets, Old Spitalfields Market and Billingsgate Fish Market.\u00a0 Even many public spaces in Northern Ireland are owned by it through its association with the Honourable Irish Society.\u00a0 The City or Corporation of London is essentially a private company, and has the only person who can enter the floor of the House of Commons other than elected members and staff \u2013the Remembrancer.\u00a0 It runs its own police force.\u00a0 The Corporation also owns the Old Bailey, the English Central Criminal Court offering its use as a gift to the nation.\u00a0 Both the Inner and Outer Temples of the Inns of Court are located in its walls.<\/p>\n

One important demand of the creditors during the recent Greek debt crisis was that the country\u2019s debt be structured around English law.\u00a0 It is unlikely that any dispute will be heard in a court in Newcastle, Liverpool or Swansea, as the London courts eagerly sell themselves in the global market for justice.\u00a0 They have already become one more tool for disagreements between Russian oligarchs.\u00a0A similar response has some former and current African dictators from francophone countries petitioning the Paris courts.<\/p>\n

Leaving the EU has a number of immediate consequences.\u00a0The European Medicines Agency \u2013the UE medicines regulator- closed in late January with the loss of 890 jobs though some will go to its new home in Amsterdam.\u00a0 Much of its other work in testing in UK laboratories as well as hosting lucrative conferences will go too. The European Banking Agency \u2013the EU banking agency- with 180 jobs will now be located in Paris.\u00a0 It is expected that between \u20ac750 million and \u20ac800 million of assets that will leave London mainly in the first quarter of 2019 draining further hundreds billions of Euros from the economy as more and more financial firms relocate into the EU.\u00a0 It is also estimated around 10,000 jobs will be relocated to Frankfurt.\u00a0 \u201cAccording to the Brussels think tank Bruegel, 35 per cent of the city\u2019s wholesale banks service EU27 clients, so as much as \u20ac1.8 trillion in assets might be on the move, including potentially 15 per cent of banking jobs.\u00a0 That would include 3,300 positions in five major US investment banks, 10,000 regular jobs and up to 20,000 consultancy, legal and accounting positions.\u00a0Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam, Luxemburg and Dublin are circling\u201d16<\/sup>However, the financial sector took several hundred years to grow as strong as it did; it is unlikely to entirely disappear.<\/p>\n

The metropolis appears to exist solely to service the economic wishes of the Corporation, even if it has its own vibrant life and culture.\u00a0 But \u201cthe city\u201d is the role paradigm for the rest of the United Kingdom so a narrow, limited view of the rest of the UK is continually reproduced.\u00a0 John Lanchester observed citing and paraphrasing Kipling, \u201c\u2019What do they know of England who only England know?\u2019\u00a0 But there\u2019s a variation which might be more relevant.\u00a0\u2018What do they know of the UK who only London know?\u2019\u201d\u00a0 He further pointed out, \u201c[t]o be born in many places in Britain is to suffer an irreversible lifelong defeat \u2013a truncation of opportunity, of education, of access to power, of life expectancy.\u201d17<\/sup>\u00a0 The vote to leave the EU was also a vote against the London elite\u2019s apparent culture of comfort and complacency.\u00a0 London was the only English electoral region voting to remain.<\/p>\n

SCOTLAND: REMAINING TO LEAVE?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Would Scotland have voted to remain if the independence referendum had not occurred less than two years before the leave referendum?\u00a0 Like all counterfactual questions it is open to interpretation.\u00a0 But the political ground had been shifted by the earlier referendum.\u00a0 Labour hegemony had been dislodged and the SNP were attempting to establish theirs.\u00a0A desire to take back control from London had asserted itself.\u00a0 But surely this was not simply to hand it over to Brussels?<\/p>\n

All local authority areas in Scotland voted to remain with a total vote of 1.662,191 (62.0%) against 1,018,322 (38.0%), on a 62% turnout. Scotland also had the highest abstention rate.\u00a0 \u00a0Almost every political party in Scotland voted to remain.\u00a0 There was no real dissenting campaign.\u00a0 The growing nationalist hegemony was joined with traditional labourism which was joined to the conservatives by voting to remain.\u00a0 The peripheral Liberal Democrats, Greens and Scottish Socialist Party could also bask in the comfortable huddle of seeking to remain in the counter-democratic structures of EU imperialism tpp.\u00a0 But they all wanted to reform it, if only they could think of a way how.\u00a0 During the independence referendum the SNP was distinctive struggling against the consensus of the other parties against independence; now it was in harmony.<\/p>\n

The Scottish National Party in Westminster voted against holding a referendum on leaving the European Union.\u00a0 This ought to be surprising because the politicisation leading up to the referendum in 2014 dramatically transformed the ground in Scottish and UK political life allowing it the chance to take a bolder political stance.\u00a0 Both referenda should have been won decisively by the coalition government.\u00a0 Also on a high turnout, the Labour-Tory-Lib-Dem coalition just about scraped a victory while enormous numbers of the population underwent the psychological and political changes that made them able to see that Scottish national independence was a real possibility.\u00a0 A change had just occurred even if it had failed to win the majority in the vote.<\/p>\n

Undoubtedly exhausted, many activists in Scotland saw the result as a defeat rather than the advance it was.\u00a0 Still other features registered that the movement towards national independence was going forward.\u00a0 The 2015 Westminster General Election saw the Scottish National Party win 56 out of 59 seats.\u00a0This was a result that had never occurred in Scottish politics.\u00a0 There was some retrenchment in the 2017 General Election.\u00a0 Since the independence referendum the opinion polls have hardly shifted.\u00a0 They show that a sufficiently solid vote for national independence endures, even if there is still no increase.\u00a0 Making that number grow is, or ought to be, a major issue concerning the independence movement.<\/p>\n

The term Project Fear was used to describe the strategy of the No camp in the independence referendum by promoting uncertainty and doubt in the popular mind to stop the growth of a consciousness that would have had the courage to move toward change.\u00a0 Hope encourages; fear debilitates.\u00a0 Politics-by-panic can only succeed momentarily, but if it succeeds at the wrong moment a lifetime\u2019s hopes can disappear.\u00a0 It has later been used to describe the post-vote tactics of the remain camp.\u00a0 This will have an effect for those arguing for Scottish independence.\u00a0 By adopting these tactics on the EU it will discourage supporters of national independence by creating doubts in the public mind that could inhibit the will necessary for a decisive break with the past.\u00a0 The mind-sets and tactics from one campaign can spill over into the other.<\/p>\n

The exhausted supporters of national independence never had the time to develop a strategy for a second independence referendum.\u00a0The announcement of the European Referendum occurred so quickly that the class perspectives of the SNP\u2019s leadership were switched on so quickly that a properly considered position lay unexamined.\u00a0Although, even if more thought had been given to the strategy and tactics required to attain national independence, it is doubtful they would have responded differently.\u00a0 The self-interested wishful thinking passivity of the middle classes now permeates the Scottish National Party.\u00a0 Immediately after the Independence referendum, the SNP underwent an enormous growth in membership.\u00a0 It became, and may still be, the party with the largest membership base in the UK.<\/p>\n

A nationalist hegemony had begun to assert itself.\u00a0 The disorganisation of the \u201cwider nationalist movement\u201d meant this quickly became the hegemony of the SNP.\u00a0 It was this hegemony that gave the vote to remain its strength in Scotland, even though this allied it with the London elite and the bureaucratic interference of the European Union; ironically, the same EU that was established to combat nationalism. \u00a0Pursuit of national sovereignty was being side-lined to achieve a form of European elite class solidarity.\u00a0 Little attempt was made to understand and educate about the European Union as an institution, its history and its neo-liberal imperialist ambitions.<\/p>\n

Much of the new membership had never been through the earlier debates and brought with them views and positions that expressed their \u201ccentrist\u201d perspectives, practices and outlooks.\u00a0 This included the naive ideas that because the US government and president and held democratically elected government positions (\u201cthe democracies\u201d) so they would easily understand their aspirations for national indpendence.\u00a0This reasoning applied to European national governments and the European Union institutions also.\u00a0 Consequently, SNP support for NATO was strongly asserted and, of course, a desire for membership of the European Union.\u00a0 They assumed support from \u201cthe democracies\u201d would be readily forthcoming; the support they did not get during the independence referendum.<\/p>\n

However, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is well aware that the UK\u2019s membership of the EU is not like most other member states.\u00a0 The UK had opted out of many of the institution\u2019s key treaties, such as those involved with economic and monetary union, the Schengen treaties on borders and migration, and most police and security treaties.\u00a0 UK membership was essentially based on the achievements of Mrs Thatcher\u2019s assertive diplomacy and Gordon Brown\u2019s dour rejection of the Euro.\u00a0It was not membership of the European Union she sought but to remain inside under the already existing terms set by Mrs Thatcher and Gordon Brown.\u00a0 Though the SNP leadership wish to remain inside the EU, they have been clear about distancing themselves from those campaigning for a second vote to overturn the 2016 vote, the so-called People\u2019s Vote.\u00a0 They feared winning a vote in another independence referendum only to watch it being overturned by a later referendum refusing to accept the negotiated.\u00a0A campaign for Indy2 would simply be transmuted into yet another for Indy3 and possibly even more.\u00a0 It would be a referendum best avoided.<\/p>\n

Mrs Sturgeon feared leaving the EU and having to apply for membership again because the decisions made at Copenhagen summit would make it obligatory to take part in economic and monetary union of the Euro under the externally imposed convergence criteria.\u00a0 As well as making a mockery of national independence, these conditions of new membership would impose severe austerity on the Scottish people as it has on every other population that have experienced them.\u00a0 One further fear was that once outside the EU walls, a referendum would be imposed that highlighted these unpleasant features and would be rejected.\u00a0 But membership of the EU was a policy desired by the financial business elites that the SNP hoped to court.<\/p>\n

Since the independence referendum, all political strategy has focused on remaining in the EU.\u00a0 By some unexplained process, this would aid the struggle for national independence.\u00a0 Membership of the EU somehow expressed the \u201cEuropean values\u201d of equality and inclusiveness that were also held by the Scots.\u00a0 The economic crises imposed by the European Central Bank on Greece, Ireland and Portugal became invisible and were hardly mentioned.\u00a0 Strangely enough for a party committed to national independence, all attempts at finding a strategy for the next independence referendum ceased.\u00a0Even talk of national independence as a goal became rarer and rarer.\u00a0 Occasionally Nicola Sturgeon and other leaders would be compelled to make statements that national independence had not been forgotten.\u00a0 After all wasn\u2019t that the reason they had come into politics and had fought for all their lives?\u00a0 Many SNP activists who became concerned found they were now embedded in a massive sea of mainly new members who expressed unchallengeable loyalty to the leadership.<\/p>\n

Until Venezuela\u2019s recent crisis, there was no way to show the necessary loyalty to the \u201cinternational community\u201d that comprises the US led NATO.\u00a0 Though the recent statements of the Defence Secretary revealed a failure to attack the Tory governments spending on Trident instead showing a desire to \u201coffer a constructive opposition to the Conservatives on defence\u201d18<\/sup>At its early stages, this indicates a rightward shift in SNP perspectives.\u00a0 Showing loyalty to the national governments in Europe and EU institutions that wanted to curry favour with the United States is an unwelcome change.\u00a0 They think this is \u201cclever politics\u201d by claiming one thing publicly while sending out \u201cdog whistles\u201d audible to the powers but not their natural audience.<\/p>\n

But the most important concession to neo-liberalism was the online publication of the Sustainable Growth Commission that envisaged a highly marketised economy.\u00a0 Most importantly, however, it planned to use the pound sterling for a considerable period of time.\u00a0 Promises of a separate Scottish currency were made, but with no real detailed explanation of how such a transition could occur.\u00a0 It was clear this period would be used to bring about the necessary changes in the public mood to bring about the eventual membership of the Euro.\u00a0Something that can only be done by adhering to rigid convergence criteria.<\/p>\n

NOW IS ALWAYS THE WRONG TIME<\/strong><\/p>\n

The massive turnout at the All Under One Banner demonstration in late 2018 revealed a growing feeling that more needed to be done to advance Scottish national independence.\u00a0 The SNP made a number of favourable statements about its unexpected size but, undoubtedly, felt uneasy about a nationalist organisation that was not under its control.\u00a0 The jitteriness of many nationalist leaders is growing greater and greater.\u00a0 Nicola Sturgeon was about to move into a public confrontation with former First Minister Alex Salmond who had expressed his unhappiness with the failure of the SNP leadership to create the case for independence.\u00a0 He was immediately silenced and remains silenced by the series of criminal charges levelled against him.<\/p>\n

What started as pause for recovery from an exhausted movement has transformed into passivity on national independence.\u00a0 It is either complete indecisiveness over a future independence strategy or wilful evasiveness caused by a strategy of somehow bringing the EU and NATO on side.\u00a0 During the independence referendum the EU made clear its fear of prompting secessionist movements across Europe.\u00a0 The brutal suppression of the independence movement in Catalonia where, even now, government ministers are in jail or exile, shows how little enthusiasm the EU would have for a country eager to enforce its national sovereignty.\u00a0 Undoubtedly the EU would welcome into membership a future independent Scotland, but it would be a far weaker presence than currently exists with the United Kingdom.\u00a0 Besides, the new rules that would be imposed would be far more brutal than have ever existed for the semi-detached UK.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the weekend [Andrew ] Wilson [the author of the SNP\u2019s Sustainable Growth Commission Report] praised an opinion piece by the journalist Joyce McMillan in the Scotsman where she argued the case for building a consensus in favour of independence over the long term rather than a new vote [for national independence] in the short term,\u201d observed The National.19<\/sup><\/p>\n

Exactly how the soothing numbness of consensus would motivate more to vote for national independence has never been explained.\u00a0 It will still require the energised motivation of the existing vote rather than nice words to the jittery, self-interested and timid for change to occur.\u00a0 Reassurances will not motivate them; only by adapting to changing reality can that adjustment occur.\u00a0They must be made aware that the status quo can no longer exist and will be overturned.\u00a0 But that can only happen by mobilising the newly energised supporters of national independence.\u00a0 Building on existing strengths not known weaknesses is the only workable strategy \u2013one feared by the SNP leadership.<\/p>\n

Pausing, and resting in order to rethink a new approach makes sense, but it has turned into fatalism that something, sometime will somehow spontaneously permit national independence to emerge. It is almost five years since the independence referendum and nothing that even resembles the outline of a strategy has emerged.\u00a0 The SNP leadership have placed nothing on the table and risk losing what they have gained.<\/p>\n

Macmillan locates the origins of these hesitations, \u201c\u2019If Nicola Sturgeon is proceeding with great caution \u2026 it is because she has good reason to; and because, as a politician who tends to seek consensus, she knows that Scotland remains almost evenly divided on the matter of independence \u2026 Sometimes, amid the maelstrom of Brexit politics, it is wise to step back a little and look at the big picture of where we would like Scotland and the other countries of these islands to be in 25 years time; and if the final goal is a peaceful confederation of countries living in a mutually respectful economic and trading union, with open borders and close cultural links, then we are unlikely to get there by seeking to snatch a second referendum out of the jaws of the Brexit crisis, and pushing a divided electorate to a knife edge decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is probably the clearest statement from anyone near the SNP leadership showing how far the battle to remain in the EU has sapped its will to fight for national independence.\u00a0 Desperation to remain in the EU\u2019s orbit now adds its weight pressing down to stop laying the groundwork for national independence.\u00a0 It is as if they seem unaware that the purpose of political action is to break with the oppressive consensus of the status quo.\u00a0 Only by motivating others for change can change occur; consensus is the problem and wishful thinking is not the solution.<\/p>\n

\u201cWilson tweeted: \u2018What a brilliant piece.\u00a0 The urgency in many hearts and minds is understandable.\u00a0 The tub thumping, unthinking populism of too many clever people in leadership positions playing to their own side is patently risible and will set us back. [Nicola Sturgeon] needs backed not barracked.\u201d\u00a0 Can this really be an unfair complaint when almost five years have passed since the independence referendum?\u00a0 So far, Wilson has produced a document that sends out \u201cdog whistles\u201d to the wealthy investors he hopes to attract and the comfortable whose ambition for change is only to visit a new shopping mall.\u00a0 Even a cursory glance at SNP activists would reveal how many are uncomfortable with his \u201cvision.\u201d\u00a0 It is certainly not one that is motivating many.\u00a0 Ironically, it was the unplanned, walk out of Westminster by its MPs that brought the greatest spurt of support for the SNP in 2018, not Wilson\u2019s turgid report.<\/p>\n

Arguing against the visibly obvious, Macmillan reassuringly concluded, \u201c\u2019This is not to say, of course, that the idea of Scottish independence should be put on the back burner.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 One important lesson from the independence and European referenda is that for the middle classes the demand for change now is always the wrong time.\u00a0Like NATO, the desire to court favour with the EU produces temporising, hesitation and growing unwillingness to stick to the Party\u2019s originally stated goals and instead turns them into weakened imitations that keep the status quo intact.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

NORTHERN IRELAND: TAKE BACK CONTROL!<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cNorthern Ireland\u2019s deputy first minister Sinn Fein\u2019s Martin McGuiness, greeted the news of the referendum result (56% of the local electorate voted Remain) by embracing one of the principal slogans of the Leave camp, \u2018You can have your country back\u2019 was the unmistakable subtext to his demand for a poll on Irish unification.\u00a0 His Brexit supporting coalition partner, Arlene Foster of the Democratic Unionist Party brushed the call aside.\u00a0 Having spent decades calling for majority rule \u2026 the DUP weren\u2019t keen on putting that principle into practice.\u201d20<\/sup><\/p>\n

Yet the DUP having lost in its own electoral region had won in England.\u00a0 Unlike the divided Tories there was more unanimity within the Party.\u00a0 It clearly wanted to leave; it wanted a stronger alliance with Westminster.\u00a0 Membership of the EU has shifted the economic and political ground.\u00a0 The vote to remain was less about the EU institutions and its appalling practices so much as an alignment of forces to bring down the border to unify Ireland again.\u00a0 Nevertheless, many of the business groups that have sustained unionism openly or secretly hoped that a vote to leave would not happen.<\/p>\n

Northern Ireland is heavily dependent on trade with the south.\u00a0 In 1974, the south sent 9.3% of its total exports to the north but this had fallen to 1.8% by 2014.\u00a0 Up to 37.9% of the north\u2019s services went to the south in 2013, and 25% of its manufacturing exports in 2014.21<\/sup>\u00a0 The north also needs to import a large amount of its meat and dairy produce too.\u00a0Indeed because of different time periods for calving and grass growing milk exports to the south will be drastically affected \u201cSome of the 120 million litres of northern milk heading south will have originated in the south: after going north to be processed in a co-op such as Strathoy in Omagh, they will have been sent back south to be sold by retailers\u2026. If the UK is forced to revert to WTO rules post-Brexit, Northern suppliers will need EU approval to supply the market, and raw milk will face tariffs of up to 50 per cent. \u201d22<\/sup><\/p>\n

The Northern Ireland Executive set up under the Good Friday power sharing arrangement currently is in a state of paralysis.\u00a0 Yet it is still considered it as \u201cone of the EU\u2019s greatest successes \u2026 [whose] transition from violent conflict to peace and political stability stands as a positive example.\u201d\u00a0 Or at least this was what an anonymous senior Irish figure wrote to Michel Barnier.23<\/sup>\u00a0 The paper continued that the EU dimension recognised \u201can island with an invisible border, common trading standards and a sense of pooled sovereignty including a shared European identity [which] which provides crucial reassurance to the nationalist community.\u201d\u00a0 It pointed out that the Good Friday Agreement was premised on the shared membership of the EU by both the UK and the Irish government.\u00a0\u00a0 The vote meant that the cognitive border had gone revealing the very real barrier that comes from the far from imagined colonial status of the six counties scarring the landscape.<\/p>\n

But the new relationship is not the same as in the past with the UK holding onto its possession and the Irish government lamely appealing to end the border. Now it is no longer a border between the UK and Irish Republic but between the UK and the European Union.\u00a0 While both countries had membership of the EU, the border could be imagined out of existence, and business as usual could hide this remaining colonial reality.<\/p>\n

The UK and Ulster Unionists realise that the EU could, in theory, use the weight of its twenty eight countries in any future border disputes.\u00a0 The UK, of course, could use its geographical position to restrict ships, flight and transit to the European mainland to and from the island.\u00a0 For the Irish Republic the opportunity to reverse the past has to be measured against immediate risks to the present.\u00a0 However, it becomes harder to ignore it or leave it uncontested.\u00a0Supply chains between the Republic and mainland Europe are inhibited by the sea and distance making the British mainland an essential transit route for many imports and exports.\u00a0 Ireland exports ninety per cent of the food it produces, 37 per cent goes to England.\u00a0 Currently, food exports stand at \u20ac3.27 billion.<\/p>\n

Although all parties claim not to want a \u201chard\u201d border it is hard to see how one cannot come into existence.\u00a0 The requirements from the EU and UK are that goods are not smuggled in or out to avoid different tariffs, taxes and customs.\u00a0 The UK does not want migration from Ireland into the six counties to become a route for EU migrants to enter the UK.\u00a0 Ulster Unionists do not want any border between themselves and the UK while still wanting a \u201csoft\u201d border with the republic.\u00a0Essentially, it is an insoluble problem.\u00a0The so-called \u201cbackstop\u201d consists entirely of legalistic and fantastic ways to meet contradictory demands; so they will all founder.\u00a0 The leave vote makes the partition of Ireland is an issue that must now be addressed.<\/p>\n

Greater economic integration between north and south means that a powerful political case for integration exists that did not before.\u00a0 Though both sides have happily ridden round-and-round on separate merry-go-rounds in the carnival of reaction, the growing secularisation of both societies has made their circuitous journey a pointlessly dizzying experience.\u00a0 The demography of northern Ireland now means that the protestant majority is not so large.\u00a0 Ireland\u2019s votes in favour of abortion and same sex marriage isolate Ulster Unionism from many in their own secularizing community as well as their traditional support in the Tory party make unification less threatening.\u00a0 The unionist political parties fear this may sway a small but nevertheless significant vote against them.\u00a0 Amusingly, Jacob Rees-Mogg a born again Roman Catholic needs to make common cause with militant protestants.<\/p>\n

The EU has been clear to support the East German precedent that if the north should vote to join the south it will be given automatic, immediate membership without the Dublin government having to re-apply.\u00a0 This was agreed because the EU Commission feared the Irish government reaching an independent position on the border that the UK might exploit to breach the EU\u2019s protectionist walls.\u00a0 Fortunately, Ireland was the first country to escape from European Central Bank austerity, so the economic pressures have lessened.\u00a0These factors are now reasons to assume that even a small shift in the centre of political gravity could create a majority for tearing down the border.<\/p>\n

For the moment, the border\u2019s reappearance allows the Irish population to put aside the brutality of the European Central Bank\u2019s \u201csudden stop\u201d monetary policies and the constant insistence of privatisation, especially of water, as well as the externally imposed austerity policies.\u00a0 The aspiration for normality will compel a challenge to the border and, eventually, the neo-liberal practices of the various layers of government.<\/p>\n

THE FORGOTTEN ROCK<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems very strange that in this twenty-first century, the military occupation of a part of an EU member state\u2019s territory is commemorated by another member state.\u201d24<\/sup><\/p>\n

Northern Ireland is not the only land border the UK has with the European Union.\u00a0 The Peninsula of Gibraltar is one of the UK\u2019s oldest colonial possessions.\u00a0 The commemoration of Admiral Rook\u2019s capture of the peninsula of Gibraltar in 1704 with English and Dutch marines allowed the UK vital access\/ area denial to shipping entering and leaving the Mediterranean at critical times.\u00a0 It kept the French fleet in the port of Toulouse during the French revolutionary wars and was essential in keeping Napoleon\u2019s army and navy from wider adventures.\u00a0The Anglo-French competition for Egypt was only a precursor for control of the Suez Canal that turned the Mediterranean Sea into an Anglo-French Lake.\u00a0 Gibraltar was one of the spoils that the UK obtained under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.\u00a0 The area under the treaty was extended by gradual movements, initially claiming, in the 1820s, that it extended as far as a cannon ball shot from the town walls.\u00a0The Spanish attempted a recovery during the siege of 1882-84 but failed because of the UK\u2019s superior means of supply, and firepower.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Gibraltar joined the European Economic Community as a British Overseas Territory in 1972.\u00a0 It has exemptions from the customs union, the Common Agricultural Policy and the Schengen Agreements.\u00a0 Its peculiarity is even greater because it is not a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, formerly the British Commonwealth, formerly the British Empire.\u00a0 However, it does have associate membership of the Commonwealth Foundation and is allowed to compete in the Commonwealth Games.\u00a0 In order to vote in EU Parliamentary elections, the peninsula is affixed to the South West Regional area comprising Cornwall, Devon, Dorset etc..\u00a0 Its population voted by 96% to remain even though the entire electoral region wanted out.\u00a0The United Nations places it on the list of Non-Self-Governing Territories, but the UK actively campaigns for it to be removed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lord Curzon described its imperial totemic importance, \u201cEven now he Rock of Gibraltar was regarded by a great number of [British] people as a pivot and symbol of Britain\u2019s naval strength in the Mediterranean. And any suggestion to give it up would \u2026 create such a commotion throughout the Empire as had not been known for a century.\u201d25<\/sup><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The population was made up of some UK subjects but mainly Spanish, Italians, Jews and numerous other nationalities.\u00a0 It required maintenance from the nearby Spanish towns for a supply of labour and essential provisions.\u00a0 Around a third do not speak English.\u00a0 The economy for most of its existence has depended on servicing the Royal Navy.\u00a0 The dockyards have been the main employer, in 1984 around 60% of the population were employed.\u00a0 It is claimed that this is now only 7%.\u00a0 Gibraltar is an important base; it was a rallying point for the ships of the Atlantic convoys to assemble during the Second World War.\u00a0 It still has considerable military significance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Like many British colonial outposts, it has become a tax haven with the financial sector becoming a major employer, joined by an influx of bookmakers and online gambling operations, shipping and tourism.\u00a0There is also a small manufacturing sector including a company that converts SUVs into ambulances for the UN and other NGOs.\u00a0 During the Second World War the entire civilian population was evacuated.\u00a0Around 16,000 were moved, \u201cthe evacuation of what were inelegantly called \u2018useless mouths\u2019 began [in May 1940] before actual hostilities \u2026 Since evacuation to the United Kingdom was regarded only as a last resort, the first evacuees [were] bound for Casablanca in French Morocco.\u201d26<\/sup>\u00a0 France was to fall a few weeks later. Yet by shortly after the end of the war only 9,500 returned.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When Spain was under Franco, the UK operated a \u201cslush fund\u201d paying senior Spanish officials to inhibit any attempts a recovery of the region, this was not a strategy they could maintain for long.\u00a0However, the post war settlement worked strongly against Franco, despite his occasional outbursts of demagogy. \u201cSpain was ostracised in international relations after the war, excluded from the United Nations in 1945 and even from American Marshall Aid in 1947.\u00a0 In these circumstances, not getting embroiled with the British government continued to be a necessary principle in Madrid.\u00a0 The British authorities therefore had an opportunity to carry out certain changes \u2013such as putting up large permanent buildings on the contested area occupied by the airfield \u2026 So long as Franco felt thus corralled by international isolation, the Gibraltar \u2018question\u2019 remained dead.\u201d 27<\/sup><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In 1967 the UK government issued a declaration, \u201cHer Majesty\u2019s Government will never enter into any arrangement under which the people of Gibraltar will pass under the sovereignty of another state against their freely and democratically expressed wishes.\u201d\u00a0 Described by some as of the same importance as the Treaty of Utrecht, it left the resolution of the peninsula essentially insoluble.\u00a0 After joining the EU, Spain, like Northern Ireland, it became possible to imagine the border out of existence.\u00a0 Initially, when Gibraltar joined the EEC, Spain was not a member and besides the EEC was not so significant an international player.\u00a0 By the UK exiting a new relationship exists at the border.\u00a0 Spain and the EU now border sovereign British territory; but one that has been disputed for over three centuries by most of the world.\u00a0 It is difficult to see how Spain will not use this new situation either to reclaim the entire territory, the part that has been acquired since the signing of the Utrecht treaty, or demands payment from the UK for the use of Gibraltar.\u00a0 The US would not like to lose this base and feels it would be safer on British hands.\u00a0However, it could live with an arrangement between the UK and Spain for a form of condominium possibly demanding payments from the UK for the use of the base.\u00a0 The EU may feel it useful to activate tensions with the UK but only to bring about concessions on other issues.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

THE POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Invisible Becomes Visible. The scale of class tensions, geographical tensions and the feeling of anger and alienation that affects much of the UK managed to get a voice.\u00a0 Conveniently ignored, it now makes the normal way of ruling almost impossible.\u00a0 The border with Northern Ireland that could be imagined out of existence, now makes clearer the enormous difficulties the partitioned six counties always were.\u00a0The Tory Party in the past were prepared to take the UK to civil war in the hope of keeping Ulster British.\u00a0 It will be interesting to see if they still feel this way.\u00a0 An analogous situation exists with Gibraltar too.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Politically Compromised. The failure to address the European Union as an institution will personally and politically compromise many if not most of those \u201cremainers\u201d on the so-called left.\u00a0They will state how they hold no illusions in the EU, but increasingly will express opinions that reveal how many illusions are at the heart of their thinking.\u00a0 Fantasies will be concocted about the supposed progressiveness of this institution as opposed to the UK state. The EU may be a differently structured form of imperialism, but it is still imperialism.\u00a0 It may claim to have no guns but by ignoring that it was created to fight the Cold War by organising production, resources, distribution and mobilising the civilian population, it misses the essential feature of the EU\u2019s purpose.\u00a0 Wars are fought at the factory floor, finance office and not the battle alone. \u201c[S]oldiers, sailors, ships, guns, tanks, and planes available at the outbreak of war represent only the initial stake.\u00a0 The issue will be decided in dependence upon the extent to which a given society is able, while under fire, to produce ships, guns, soldiers and sailors.\u201d28<\/sup><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

       <\/p>\n

        \n
      1. An Unreformable Set of Institutions. \u201cReforming\u201d the EU\u2019s institutions will be advanced even though the so-called parliament has no powers to initiate legislation and can only sack an entire Commission but not a corrupt or rotten commissioner. It is a limpid institution that bears no similarity to any real national parliament in Europe.\u00a0 The European Council of Heads of States will still meet in secret issuing no minutes of their meetings setting the agenda.\u00a0 The Council of Ministers and the Commission will still have the legislative initiatives it proposes drafted and prepared by powerful business lobbyists.\u00a0 The unelected Commission will still have power to advance the neo-liberal agenda of the Four Freedoms that elected parliaments may lack the courage to put to their electorate.\u00a0 The supremacy of EU law will still compel member states to adopt policies that have never been discussed in national parliaments.\u00a0 These features will only become more pronounced and, therefore, more visible.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

         <\/p>\n

          \n
        1. German Led EU Imperialism. With the UK exiting, the Franco-German motor of the EU may make possible some greater integration on more initiatives especially to do with military matters.\u00a0 Germany has become the hegemonic power while France has declined in power and influence.\u00a0 Germany is currently looking for partners to help it overturn the military prohibitions imposed on it after the war.\u00a0 It also wants a fig-leaf that will allow it control of nuclear weapons, probably under some Franco-German pact or EU committee.\u00a0 It will need to approach its own re-armament stealthily for fear of upsetting not just the rest of Europe but also the USA, so it will become ever more loyal to NATO.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

           <\/p>\n

          Germany has grown in influence because of its re-unification with its ability to impose its will on the Euro making it only a disguised version of the Deutschmark.\u00a0While France would love to see a dilution of the Euro\u2019s rigidity on buying sovereign debt and some occasional devaluation the neo-liberal core of Germany, Austria Holland Denmark and Sweden make this impossible.\u00a0 Besides the middles classes across the Eurozone seek financial stability in almost all countries driving wages downwards and transferring wealth to the major industrial exporters.\u00a0 Because of increasing financialisation, the relationship of France to Germany has diminished.\u00a0 It has only limited influence, diluted by economic paralysis and an enlarged EU membership.\u00a0 It may even seek to share the force de frappe in return for its partners picking up some of the costs.<\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n

          The Euro and the dollar will increasingly compete with eachother to become the main currency in a larger number of colonial and formerly colonial countries.\u00a0The dollar is already the main currency in twenty-eight countries, the Eurozone also includes, because of the French Franc, a number of francophone currencies in Africa in its orbit.<\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n

            \n
          1. An Independent Working Class Alternative. Up to now the socialist left has failed to prepare and present a working class alternative to membership of the European Union.\u00a0 It has confused this European institutionalised imperialism with a form of soft, social-democratic internationalism.\u00a0 The broken economies of Greece and Eastern Europe are invisible to their eyes seeing only migrants looking for employment in their own lands but not the organised political processes that have institutionalised a massive reserve army of labour sloshing across the continent.\u00a0 Migration is presented as a right but felt by most migrants as an obligation.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

             <\/p>\n

              \n
            1. Class Dependency. Most worryingly, the left has aligned itself with the arguments of the liberal-left.\u00a0It fantasises that there is a group of extreme right-wingers who will achieve power if the liberal-left is not given political support.\u00a0 This lesser evil approach has resulted in praise and votes being heaped on Merkel and Macron while they are painted as if they are staunch anti-fascists.\u00a0 In the UK a vote to remain on the Prime Minister\u2019s racist terms was portrayed as the lesser evil over the ridiculous leave campaigners who held no government offices or positions.\u00a0 The vote to leave was falsely portrayed as a vote for Farage, Johnson and Rees-Mogg even though they were always political outsiders.\u00a0Thankfully most people acted independently registering their vote as an expression of anger at austerity Britain.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

               <\/p>\n

                \n
              1. Guilt Tropes.The race trope if believed would have slandered enormous numbers of voters as racists.\u00a0 This may give the sanctimonious middle classes a smug feeling of superiority but was only a way of dismissing the genuine anger that motivated this vote of rejection.\u00a0 The ease by which so many remain voters sought to overturn the vote reveals a contempt not just for democracy but a barely disguised class-based contempt for working people.\u00a0 If the so-called People\u2019s Vote were ever to be accepted, it would set a precedent that would be used to stifle national independence for Scotland and, possibly, Northern Ireland.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the doctrine of vote and vote again and again until you get it right is well established in EU elite practice.\u00a0 The fight for popular sovereignty and democracy is essential.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                 <\/p>\n

                  \n
                1. SNP Misleadership.\u00a0 The SNP now displays a complete paralysis of will as sends out \u201cdog whistles\u201d to the powerful forces in the banks, business community, NATO and the EU.\u00a0 These messages preclude it from the essential mobilisations required because they may unleash demands that will alienate these elites and the corporate power they wish to extend over Scotland.\u00a0 The demand for the achievement of national independence has been eclipsed as these reassurances are repeatedly given.\u00a0 These practices are clearly the result of trying to please the powerful forces of NATO and the EU.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                   <\/p>\n

                    \n
                  1. The EU Will Dominate Future Politics. The long-term consequences for UK politics of campaigning for the various schemes to remain means that membership of the European Union will stay at the head of UK politics for perhaps an entire generation.\u00a0 It will distort and mis-shape all political activity for the foreseeable future.\u00a0 No issue such as Scottish national independence, an independent working class perspective on workers\u2019 rights, migrants\u2019 rights will be able to independently assert itself because they will all have to prismed through the demand for re-joining the European Union.\u00a0 False pictures of the rights gained by EU membership are presented.\u00a0 EU membership must come before anything else can be gained.\u00a0It will lock the left into an unnatural alliance with the corporate bourgeoisie in helping build the liberal order.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                    28.2.19<\/strong><\/p>\n

                     <\/p>\n

                     <\/p>\n

                    Notes<\/p>\n

                      \n
                    1. The vote held on 23rd<\/sup>June 2016 produced a result of 17,410,742 (51.89%) for leaving the European Union against 16,141,241 (48.11%) to remain.\u00a0 Nine out of twelve regions voted to leave while 270 voting areas voted to leave out of 382 voting areas.\u00a0 It was achieved on a turnout of 72.21% from a total of 46,500,001 eligible electors.\u00a0This is more than most Westminster General Elections.\u00a0 It would be necessary to go back to the Westminster General Election of 1997 for a comparable result (71.3%).\u00a0 The electorate entitled to vote was decided by the same criteria as General Elections.<\/li>\n
                    2. Comment from Jeremy Harding, London Review of Books, Volume 38 Number 14, 14 July 2016.<\/li>\n
                    3. Comment from T.J. Clark, ibidem..<\/li>\n
                    4. \u201cBrexit Blues,\u201d John Lanchester, London Review of Books, Volume 38 Number 15, 28 July 2016.<\/li>\n
                    5. p127, Nigel Culkin & Richard Siummons, Tales of Brexits Past and Present, Emerald Publishing, 2019.<\/li>\n
                    6. \u201cIn a Hole and Still Digging: the Left and Brexit,\u201d Wayne Asher International Socialism Issue 161, January 2019.<\/li>\n
                    7. \u201cThe Internationalist Case Against the European Union,\u201d Alex Callinicos, International Socialism Issue 148, October 2015.<\/li>\n
                    8. Comment from Daniel Trilling, London Review of Books, Volume 38 Number 14, 14 July 2016<\/li>\n
                    9. http:\/\/www.yourharlow.com\/2016\/07\/05\/essex-police-reveal-hate-crime-spike-since-eu-referendum\/<\/li>\n
                    10. The official campaigns were the Britain Stronger in Europe, and Vote Leave promoted by Conservative Eurosceptics; there was also Leave.EU supported by Nigel Farage. Vote Leave was designated the official campaign by the Electoral Commission which gave it \u00a37,000,000, a free mailshot, TV broadcasts as well as \u00a3600,000 of public funds.\u00a0 Non official organisations would still be able to campaign but could be at risk of being sued by the other campaigns or fined by the Electoral Commission if their funds breached the rules after they were aggregated into the spending limits that were imposed.\u00a0 This had happened previously to independent anti-racist groups that stood no candidates in by-elections where racists and fascists were in the contest.\u00a0 In this way, the appearance of choice was only yet another expression of the lack of choice.<\/li>\n
                    11. Under the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investor Partnership that the EU was promoting with the clear blessing of the governments of the UK, France and Germany clauses on investor-state dispute settlement would allow companies to sue governments outside national courts for loss of profits resulting from new regulations including health and safety regulations to limit the use of known dangerous substances such as asbestos or tobacco.<\/li>\n
                    12. Gaby Hinscliffe, \u201cSeven weeks before we leave the EU \u2026 has anyone seen David Cameron?\u201d The Observer, Sunday, February 10th<\/sup>, 2019.<\/li>\n
                    13. https:\/\/www.resolutionfoundation.org\/<\/li>\n
                    14. Luke Raikes, \u201cA jobs boom in some northern towns makes real inequality across the UK,\u201d The Guardian Tuesday, January 15th<\/sup>, 2019.<\/li>\n
                    15. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=CjFboRwGiqc<\/li>\n
                    16. pp304-305, Tony Connelly, Brexit and Ireland, Updated with a new chapter, Penguin, 2018.<\/li>\n
                    17. \u201cBrexit Blues,\u201d John Lanchester, London Review of Books, Volume 38 Number 15, 28 July 2016.<\/li>\n
                    18. Commonspace \u201cSNP members deserve better than this\u201d Scottish CND criticise SNP response to UK Govt Defence speech, Monday, February 11th<\/sup>, 2019.<\/li>\n
                    19. Kathleen Nutt, \u201cSalmond: now is the best time for indy fight,\u201d Monday, January 21st, 2019.<\/li>\n
                    20. Comment from Daniel Finn, \u201cWhere Are We Now? Responses to the Referendum, London Review of Books, Volume 38 Number 14, 14 July 2016.<\/li>\n
                    21. Figures from the Northern Ireland Statistical and Research Agency cited p44, Tony Connelly, op cit.<\/li>\n
                    22. Cited in Connelly ibidem, p68.<\/li>\n
                    23. pp106-107, Connelly ibidem.<\/li>\n
                    24. From the Spanish newspaper El Pais cited in Blue Water Empire. The British in theMediterranean Since 1800, Robert Holland Penguin Books, 2013, p348.<\/li>\n
                    25. ibidem, p203.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
                        \n
                      1. ibidem, p241.<\/li>\n
                      2. ibidem p 304.<\/li>\n
                      3. Leon Trotsky, \u201cDisarmament and the United States of Europe,\u201d Pathfinder Press, 1927)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                        _________<\/p>\n

                        also see<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                        Murdo Ritchie, a contributor to this blog, who has been an advocate of a Leave vote, argues what a Leave vote represents.   WHAT VOTING HAS REVEALED   The loud vote of no more in the United Kingdom against remaining in the European Union has been one of the most successful protest votes in history.1\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1843,1847],"tags":[1626],"class_list":["post-12934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-capitalists-organise","category-the-eu","tag-author-murdo-ritchie"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"views":2383,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12934"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12997,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12934\/revisions\/12997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}