The Brexit Game
People keep asking me about Brexit, so here’s my view.
Let’s consider this all as an elaborate political game that got out of hand. Cameron wanted a way to divert attention away from internal Tory dissent, so he proposed a referendum on the EU.
The Labour party, seeing how daft this was, found themselves caught. They didn’t want to vote “Leave” but then they certainly didn’t want to be seen as supporting a Tory initiative by urging “Stay”.
What should they have done? Possibly they should have protested loud and long that a referendum such as this would be a farce. But they didn’t. It didn’t seem like it was their fight – and anyway perhaps it wouldn’t happen…..
Well, it did.
What we might want to bear in mind is that it exposed the real problems. First, that Cameron’s government has done nothing to address rural poverty and the creation of jobs (hence the right wing anger at so-called “foreigners” taking “our jobs”). The government has done nothing to address the erosion of health and social services (which are stretched to the limit by all these “foreigners”). Third, nothing has been done to alter the recurrent tendency to favor the very wealthy at the expense of the less wealthy — this time actual foreigners have been actively encouraged to buy housing as a way to park their cash while not in fact living in the housing, nor paying any taxes. This has created acres of super high priced developments with no one in residence. Londoners can no longer afford to live in London. You can see how well that would go over with the right wing. Meanwhile, fourth, no one has done anything about the refugee crisis.
Do you see a pattern here?
It is, truly, a crisis around what to do about “foreigners” but it’s been couched as a deceptively simple question: “Should we get them out of here?”
It makes about as much sense as responding to a twisted ankle by amputating the entire leg.
Cameron hoped no one would notice that he’d done nothing about serious issues. He simply waved a diversion flag at us.
Now he’s resigned. Or perhaps not, as he’s still in number 10. And we’re out of the EU. Or perhaps not, because no one has triggered article 50. And the referendum itself wasn’t legal. Or perhaps it was. No one’s in charge; no one’s admitting responsibility; nothing’s happening — apart from an increased lack of confidence in the pound and a threatened recession.
Despite all this I am not pessimistic. Good old British indecision and obfuscation will cloud the waters and about six months from now we’ll notice that the UK will still be in the EU, where it will remain.
I write this on the hundredth anniversary of the first day of Battle of the Somme: arguably the most costly day in human lives in military history, and nothing gained. It seems fitting, somehow.
