Who are these people…

…and what do they want?

It is – I suppose – emblematic of the ‘post truth’ world in which we live that I can quite brazenly declare (as I did in my last post) that I will spare you any more of my jaundiced thoughts on the current precarious political state of the western world – only now to bring you yet another post containing just such. In my ‘defence’ I can only plead that I realised that I had not fully covered one aspect of Brexit (and beyond) that was in consequence rather letting the villains of the piece get away with things that they should not (not that they would care!).

But we wouldn’t want that, now – would we?!

I have referred more than once to the small elite who stand to gain hugely from a hard Brexit, at a cost to those more humble souls upon whose hopes and fears they have so crudely capitalised. This coterie of already rich men (some of whom are involved in politics themselves; some in the media; some in finance and the ‘service’ industries) belong to the now much despised grouping that we might for simplicity term ‘neo-liberal globalists’. With the sort of outrageous chutzpah that is typical of their breed they wave the patriotic banner and appeal to the basest instincts of the population whilst they themselves are actually citizens of the world (if of anywhere at all!) who see nations only as opportunities to enrich themselves. In truth they actually have no ties to any nation.

These people do not just want the UK to leave the European Union – they also desperately want the European project as a whole to fail. Their wish is that Europe would revert to being a continent of individual nation states doing bi-lateral deals with each other. This would give them an excuse to drive the UK to become more ‘competitive’ – by means of a bonfire of regulations, the removal of workers rights, the forcing down of wages and the privatisation of any remaining public services (including the NHS and the BBC) – in order that that we (or rather they) might benefit from the sort of cut-price deals that they would be able to strike as a result. Once the nation has been fully stripped of its assets they would simply move elsewhere and start again.

If all of this sounds familiar, then it should be. This is – after all – the same agenda that Trump is pursuing in the US and Bannon et al are hawking to fascists all around Europe.

On the subject of familiarity I would encourage the gentle reader to think back to the last era during which Europe consisted entirely of nation states intent on making deals with each other. That’s right! I refer – of course – to the decades leading up to the Great War. Perhaps a re-reading of the history of how the continent found itself sleep-walking into that most hideous and unnecessary conflict largely against its will might prove timely, though since this year marks the hundredth anniversary of the end of that war one might have thought that it would not be far from our minds. Sadly I have no doubt at all that there are some more extreme individuals involved in the current debate for whom such an outcome would not be entirely against their interests!

How is it that this small group of extremists has managed to sway so many others to support their cause, even amongst those who would themselves inevitably be the ones to lose the most. This is one of the great mysteries of our times – as is the extent of the ‘rabidity’ that these converts display. Their relentlessness reminds me of nothing so much as the assortment of flat-earthers and conspiracy theorists that I have been unfortunate enough to encounter. The Brexiteers, having spent years complaining that British jobs were being lost to immigration  – on grudgingly accepting just how badly the economy is likely to suffer in the event of a ‘hard Brexit’ – claim that the damage will be ‘worth it’ even if it means greater job losses than immigration ever caused. This simply makes no sense.

Neither – however – does the debate on democracy. It has been suggested that the current impasse may only be resolvable by means of another referendum. The Brexiteers are implacably opposed – not on the grounds that they might lose, but because in their minds this would somehow represent the denial of their democratic mandate. Surely if one referendum formed a valid part of the democratic process a further one must do also – since it would again reveal the current ‘will of the people’…

But I fear that I am now just going round in circles, which – given the very nature of the whole debate – is hardly surprising.

And with that I will now move on to more ‘important’ matters… summer & boats & music & friends & wine and so forth…

‘Nuff said!