The Brexit process is nearing its climax. With the Green Party conference meeting in Bristol this weekend, some thoughts on their and other Remainers' campaign for a second referendum on British membership of the European Union. Is focusing on a new vote detracting from at least mitigating the reality of the now inevitable post-Brexit Britain being fashioned by the Tories?
June 2018, and
by 17,410,742 - the largest vote for anything ever recorded in the UK - to 16,141,241 the decision is to exit the European
Union.
The most
appalling, elitist smears have been called down on Leave voters, making it
pretty clear that liberal democracy has in fact sparse room for actual
democracy. Not unserious demands for people over 65 to be disenfranchised feel like
a precursor to a return to the second business vote, or the reintroduction of University
MPs. Some Remainer memes and arguments have sought to count non-voters and even babies as anti-Brexit votes.The People have spoken, damn them – time to get a new People.
Claiming to
speak for the 10% perhaps rather than the 1%, a lobby of liberal professionals
who benefit quite nicely from the opportunities afforded by the EU are irate. Extremely
so. Why should their parade be rained on by an unholy alliance of Left
Behinders on their grotty northern housing estates and ageing, Daily Mail-chewing Blue Rinse Zombies
down in Brexiteer Bournemouth?
A second
referendum must be held. One to put things right.
Except that
it wouldn’t put things right at all. Aside from the fact that the polls do not
show any significant overall movement either way since 2016, what would a rerun
do?
A narrow
Leave vote would probably engender a revived UKIP, or worse, and a hard Brexit
would turn into tungsten one. A narrow Remain win would face calls for yet a
further plebiscite for a “best of three”-
and again revive Ukip, or worse, as many among the 52% concluded that voting truly
is pointless.
But, aside
from anything else, a second vote isn’t going to happen. The Tories will not
concede one and, in spite of the hype, no one is going to make them. No one
can. Not even JC at his most miraculously messianic.
Greens are
making a terrible strategic mistake in expending our limited political capital running
with Cable, his Lib Desperadoes and a coterie of washed-up Blairite chancers. If
the Leave campaign excelled in “fake news”
such as Turkey’s imminent relocation from Anatolia to Croydon, it is now
well-matched by dire warnings that by April Britain will run out of everything
from cream soda to donated sperm. Much smacks of the panicked Scottish
unionists during the independence referendum wildly warning YES voters that Doctor Who wouldn’t be on the telly any
more, while Nicola Sturgeon would be waiting at Gretna to check your car boot for anyone smuggling Tories across the border.
And no one made any distinction between so-called "hard" and "soft" Brexits until after the referendum result. Nor did anyone talk about any confirmatory referendum - neither Cameron when he called the vote, nor Clegg when he called for a "straight in/out" referendum in 2008, nor the Greens' Caroline Lucas when she proposed an amendment to a Eurosceptic backbench referendum bill in 2011.
Don’t get me
wrong: I campaigned and voted Remain. I was as disappointed by the result as
most Remainers. My support though was very much about countering the rise of racism
and more positively to fostering internationalism – but
that particular ship has sailed. We need to work out now how to heal divisions
and address the outcome rather than try to wish it away. Just as impeaching
Trump would be the biggest shot in the arm American populists could dream for,
our apparent rejection of the referendum only confirms rather than challenges
the beliefs that led to the outcome in the first place.
The
environmental benefits of EU membership are significant, but they can be
over-stated, because the economics of Europe have long been definitively anti-environmental.
The EU is one of the biggest free trade blocs in the world. How can such an institution
fit with the urgent need to develop localised green economies and sharply
reduce the transportation of “things” across our crisis-stricken planet? All the more so when its trade policies are so harshly biased against poorer states outside the Union - it is a longstanding ally of the austerity and privatisation restructure programmes of the IMF and World Bank, disrupting the ecologies of many African and other Third World states in the process.
We are
warned that apocalyptic queues of trucks will form at Dover post-Brexit. Kent
will become a giant lorry park. Bad stuff - but consider what all these hordes
of huge carbon waggons are doing day in day out right now as they carry their
cargoes from Tallinn to Truro.
In terms of
social benefits, contrary to myth, the corporatist EU does not guarantee employment
rights. Apart from the discrimination directives (which notably did not stop
the Coalition introducing tribunal fees for discrimination cases at triple the
norm), our employment protection regulations are almost entirely set
domestically. The same goes for holidays, established by UK law in the 1930s
and driven by trade unions, not by international capitalists. By contrast, the EU was
content to exempt Britain from key parts of the working time regulations.
Greens talk
of reforming Europe – but there is no blueprint for that in existence. Nowhere
in our policies is there anything beyond a bigger say for the Parliament in the
workings of the Commission. While the hard work of Green MEPs from both the UK and other EU states on social protections must be lauded, the bottom line is that zero hours contracts and the gig economy, the
housing crisis, NHS privatisation and near unprecedented social inequality have all prospered
inside the EU. There may be no Lexit
under Theresa May, but there is no Lemain
either.
We have a
historic opportunity and an urgent need to portray a post-Brexit Green society:
to promote wealth redistribution, sustainable agriculture, co-operative
enterprises, public ownership of clean energy and transport, and the
re-industrialisation of our economy using small-scale, local enterprises to manufacture
infinitely more of the goods we use. In other words, to provide an alternative
to the dark future being fashioned by the Tories right now.
Green MEPs have recognised that, while unwelcome of itself, Brexit could provide "transformative opportunities" for the UK economy.
"…we recognise that Brexit does provide some opportunities
for radical change in the UK economy, for example in trade relations and expenditure
on agriculture. The economic challenge of Brexit has shocked the government out
of the policy of austerity and offers us important opportunities in terms of
making significant and timely investments in the transition to the greener
economy that climate change demands." (Greening Brexit, Molly Scott Cato et al, November 2016)
This rather than pushing ceaselessly for a second vote should be the cri de coeur for Greens and their allies. This can be the springboard of creating at least an awareness of an alternative Brexit reality to the chaos of May, Mogg and Johnson.
Brexit will be a huge challenge, no doubt. There will be significant disruption, especially in the first few months. But much, much worse is coming very soon in any case as the environmental and resource crises deepen rapidly across the entire planet. The challenge for us is to engage with the majority who have no real stake in our society because so much of it is being accumulated by an ever smaller elite.
Brexit will be a huge challenge, no doubt. There will be significant disruption, especially in the first few months. But much, much worse is coming very soon in any case as the environmental and resource crises deepen rapidly across the entire planet. The challenge for us is to engage with the majority who have no real stake in our society because so much of it is being accumulated by an ever smaller elite.
All the liberal arguments in the world do not even begin to address the day to day lives of most people, and do nothing to resolve the barriers so many face in our current economy - a process stretching back to almost the very time we joined Europe and so not surprisingly, nor entirely inaccurately, associated with it by many. Fail to do this and, like the Russian Kadets and Mensheviks in March 1917 who fussed over the legal theories and niceties of drafting new constitutions while the Bolsheviks won the hearts and minds of the people with their demands of "Peace, Bread and Land", the momentum will stay with those who seek the harshest Brexit of all and a dystopian society for our country.
Greens and
others on the Left can squander this precious time tilting at referendum
windmills. Or we can focus furiously on advocating for the social justice, environmental sustainability
and economic resilience we need for civilised society to survive and thrive.
The choice is ours.
A slightly shorter version of this article appears in the conference edition of the Green Left's "Watermelon" journal. This can also be found on the Green Left website. Please note that this article is a personal view and not GL policy.
