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Brexit: A Disorganised Parting Shot for Remain

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rival-farage

I’ve been sitting on this article in Foreign Policy for a few days. It is one of the better articulations in defense of continued UK membership of the European Union that I’ve seen. It makes a lot of the points I want to make, and it makes them better.  Better written, at any rate, but I imagine that’s what comes with the luxury of time. It does hit on one of the truly fantastic aspects of the campaign just concluded:

Just as they reject historical context, lest it disturb the fantasy of their project, Brexiteers reject and ignore the problem of context in the policy debate. No complexity from the real world is allowed to compromise their unsullied imagined future.

Brexit has always been a fantasy, forwarding a purely emotional argument reliant on dodgy figures (at best; outright lies are not unknown). For every objection, they had an answer, regardless of how fanciful.  That £350 million per week we ship to Brussels?  It will go to the NHS instead.  Of course, the £350M figure was significantly exaggerated, and the leading lights of the Leave campaign have a long, proud history of wanting to degrade the Health Service or privatise it entirely. Cornwall receives a massive pile of EU cash (so too does Devon; less so than Cornwall, but one of the newer buildings on my campus was funded in part with a generous dollop of EU money) as its one of the poorer regions of the UK. Under the old EU rules, any region at less than 75% of the median income (EU-wide) was eligible for structural investment funding. Considering some of the competitors in the EU, it’s not a great sign to end up on this list. Cornwall, and parts of western Wales, did. Yet, all this cash has not prevented Cornwall from likely voting exit today. When Leave was campaigning down in Cornwall a week or so ago, they committed to maintaining this funding. Indeed, they’ve made this promise formally to all interest groups receiving EU cash.

But seriously, can we really believe that a post-Brexit Conservative government, one significantly to the right of the current well right-of-center lot, will do all these things? They’ve never been interested in ensuring adequate NHS finding before, let alone investing in the Southwest of England (but then, nobody really seems to do that bit much).

Regarding all these pesky EU immigrants . . . damn near every single economic analysis has demonstrated their positive effect on the British economy (the link is representative). Post-Brexit, while the future of these EU citizens is uncertain, equally uncertain are all the British citizens living elsewhere in the EU. While the estimates are all over the place, up to 750,000 Brits live in Spain according to the BBC. They tend to be older, retired, on pensions (in Spain) which makes sense. You’ve retired, and you’re done with the grey drizzle that typifies the British summer, so you retire to Spain, where they have this thing called the sun. EU citizens living and working in the UK tend to skew significantly younger and healthier. Go ahead, fire up your econometric models, and swap one group for the other, and grimly observe the projections.

The crushing reality of the situation is this dilemma that Brexiters face:

Having been trounced on questions of economics, the Leave campaign has, unsurprisingly, stopped talking about the economy, and instead has relentlessly pushed the immigration argument, and pushed it well beyond the truth (the Leave campaign’s website tells us, for instance, that Turkey will join the EU, which is highly unlikely). But even this supposed trump card is flawed. First, there is the problem already discussed: Being in the single market means accepting high levels of free movement, just as Norway and Switzerland have. End of argument — at least in the real world.

Of course, if the UK remains in the single market, the UK must accept most if not all of the associated rules and pay for the privilege, without membership of the Council of Ministers or of the European Parliament. Ironically, leaving the EU yet remaining in the market is pretty much the opposite of “taking back control” over anything. Yet leave the single market, you invite economic chaos and uncertainty.

I need to wrap this up and go help out with GOTV for Remain as the polls are already open.  Prior to leaving the house for the day, I will post on current polling numbers.

That said, the following is a counter-point to the Foreign Policy article linked at the top, originally a response on my fb page when I posted the article. It’s typical of the genre, and is quoted with the public permission of the author.

haha, Foreign Policy always knows what’s best(not). For instance their position on Syria is out of touch with reality and this Kafkaesque notion that some how a UK that is fully sovereign is some how ‘little’ typifies their ‘journalistic’ style. I know, maybe if the ‘leave’ campaign is ‘little England’ then maybe the ‘remain’ crowd should be categorized as the ‘no England’ group. I fail to see how English culture will endure in the long run in the face a watered down national image and unlimited immigration from the third world….huh, maybe that’s why there is a referendum in the first place. People across the Soviet Union knew there would be and economic price to pay with the dissolution of the USSR, but they did it anyway. Perhaps sovereignty and self determination are worth more than what ever threats the ‘no Englanders’ put forwards. It’s amazing to watch the elite circle the wagons…

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