BREXIT
Received wisdom has it by now that the 52% of Brits who
voted to leave the EU are working-class punters who are dissatisfied with
EU-style migration and subsequent lack of jobs for themselves. The more
sophisticated 48% lot on the other hand recognize the economic benefits that a
corporate Europe bestows on the UK, hence voting for remain. The problem with
this scenario is that the 52% were mobilized by a far-right conglomerate of
lunatics that make the EU/UK political party machine look like saints who in
fact are also wolves but in sheep’s clothing. As such it looks like a fight
between two factions of a corporate elite who use the electorate for their
nefarious purposes. Reduced to Gibbonesque personalities, Cameron and Johnson/Farage
– and with a Corbyn not knowing whether to look left or right – the outcome was
not a great surprise. The oratorical puns to seduce the electorate were always
going to be with the great communicators, what with dire warnings about hordes
of Muslim immigrants, German Huns and French Frogs taking away control from
honest and hard-working Brits. If you’ve got Merkel as a friend, who needs
enemies?
A critique of the EU from a benign left-wing point of view,
as for example à la Yanis Varoufakis, entails the idea that the EU is worth
saving from itself. We just have to get rid of this insane corporate overlay,
and voilà, we have a Europe that is founded on the principles of the French
Revolution. Brexit forestalls this solution, for Brexit entails a another
French solution, namely the Ancien Régime, or as the Sex Pistols equivocate for
the UK: the Queen and her fascist regime. If a Nigel Farage (with a little help
from a renegade Tory) can get his way this way, we have a long list of
continentals to follow in his footsteps: Le Pen, Wilders, Petry, Klaus, Grillo,
Michaloliakos and so on.
Then those on the hard-left also feel that the EU is a lost
cause, precisely because of its inherent capitalist ideology, hence we have to
wait, not for the French Revolution but for the Russian Revolution (or is it
the Cuban Revolution?). Or what about the Bernie Sanders US-style
semi-socialist movement grinding to a halt while we wait for Brexit-fan Donald
Trump to take over and really suck it to us?
Is Brexit history in the making? Are the clouds gathering
again over Europe and the rest of the world? Is it just a storm in a tea cup as
the Brits are fond of saying? Will we need another Gibbon to give us a
fantastic run-down of the movers, shakers and shape-shifters that shaped the History of the Decline and Fall of the World,
sub-titling the first volume, as he did The Turn of the Tide?
