Brexit - A failure of Democracy?

Brexit – A Failure of Democracy?

Something quite amazing happened on last Thursday 23^rd of June 2016. The United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in a national referendum. The result is unprecedented. Greenland did leave the EU's predecessor the EEC in 1985, but it was a small (in population) colonial possession which gained independence. No large state has ever voted itself out.

What is the European Union?

The EU was born after world war two of a desire to never allow the conditions for a global cataclysm like it to spring from western Europe. That's a goal only the insane can't get behind. And it's has been wildly successful in pursuit of said goal. Western european integration has proceeded so far that France and Germany have held joint parliamentary sittings.

The way that the European Union has tried to make the apocalypse unthinkable is to harmonise laws between nations. This promotes trade, because what is legal to sell in France is also legal to sell in Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands etc. Then trade tariffs are taken away, creating one market which goods can be bought and sold in with no government interference like import taxes or export duties. In short what was created was a COMMON MARKET for all Europeans.

However a common market needs a regulator. Since 1979 that has been the democratically elected European Parliament. This Parliament then elect a 28 member commission (one from each country) which serves as the executive cabinet of the EU. A President is then proposed by the council to the Parliament who vote on who will be the President of the EU. If this all sounds convoluted and slightly anti-democratic, you'd be right. But it's born out of 65 years of history and the evolving needs of the member states. No-one would propose this system for a clean slate European Union, but getting 28 member states to agree to a clean slate is probably a hopeless task now.

There is also another centre of power in the Council of the European Union, a body that represents the executive governments of the member states that kind of serves as a house of review like the Senate in the US and Australia or the House of Lords in the UK.

The end result is that the EU is clunky, sometimes anti democratic and can be a bureaucratic nightmare. But could a body that represents the interests of 28 nations ever be anything else?

Another Government

The reality of EU membership is that any nation that joins the EU has just added another layer of government on top of the national government. The EU has begun to resemble a super-state, the size and wealth of the United States, headed by an unelected, bureaucratic, anti democratic government.

Freedom of Movement

The EU was born of the idea that to increase prosperity government needs to get out of the way and let business trade unhindered with other businesses across Europe. To that end a freedom of movement and freedom of work was instituted. All EU citizens have the right to live and work in other EU nations. This is a signature policy of the EU. Borders should have no meaning. Like the States of the USA, borders are no obstacle to travel inside the EU. One nation that could not abide this borderless policy was the UK. Britain opted out the the Schengen Agreement which allows for this borderless block. This means EU citizens do have the right to live and work in the UK, but they will have to cross a border to do so.

Freedom of Capital

In a bid to allow capital to be as free as possible the European Union decided that it should implement one currency over the EU. Hence the Euro. This of course meant more bureaucracy in the name of ease of business. So the European Central Bank was created in Frankfurt. The Euro has been at best a mixed blessing and at worst a total disaster. The Greek financial collapse simply would not have happened or would have been orders of magnitude easier to deal with had they still been using drachma's. In short, when a nation can no longer afford to pay back it's debts (in it's currency) the value of it's currency collapses, severely lessening the real value of the money owed. With the Euro, this was not possible, because Greek debt, was in Euro's, which did not collapse. Ultimately the strength of the Euro was it's failing. For a time Portugal and Ireland also teetered on the edge. A domino effect was narrowly avoided. Which leads to the conclusion, that for the large highly developed economies such as France and Germany, the Euro might be a boon, but for the smaller nations, the risk is far higher. Britain of course was unhappy with the Euro and opted out. As a highly developed nation they might have been one of the great beneficiaries of the Euro, but Euroskepticism prevailed.

Brexit – A failure of Democracy?

David Cameron took a divided party to the last election in 2015. Cameron is an establishment backing conservative, who has pursued neo-liberal policies during his first term. His highlights included cutting the budget so far and so fast he sent the UK into a second unnecessary recession and backing the remain camp for the Scottish Independence Referendum. Back in 2015 David Cameron was looking to shore up support from the right of his party. He was worried about his own leadership and votes leaking to the Euroskeptic Nigel Farage. Farage's United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) platform was anti-immigration, anti-muslim and anti-europe. So Cameron pledged to hold this referendum in the search for votes. He was subsequently elected and was therefore duty bound to hold this referendum. Of course a stronger leader would never have needed to promise this referendum.

Labour Party Weakness?

In the wake of the 2015 election loss the Labour Party elected a new kind of man for the job. Jeremy Corbyn was an old fashioned socialist. The type of socialist Tony Blair had tried to eliminate when he reformed the party in the late 1990's. Corbyn rejected Labour's neo-liberal policy agenda to take the party "back to the future". This put Labour in a difficult position. Labour was lukewarm to the neo-liberal agenda laid out by the European Union but pro EU in that his supported tended to feel that they were better off in a flawed Europe than outside. Corbyn completely failed to convince his parties voters to vote remain. Probably because they sensed the conflict in him.

Farage Day?

Nigel Farage campaigned strongly to leave the EU. His argument was that he wanted to take his country back. Back from unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, back from polish plumbers in Sunderland, back from radical imams spreading hate in mosque's across the UK, back from the big banks who sold Britain down the road, but basically, most importantly (but never uttered)back from the young people.

Age-The Great Divide

The one most predictive factor on how a person would vote in Tuesday's referendum was this. How Old a person was. After the age of 26 years old, a person's chance of voting leave increased. The further from 26 years old you were. The more likely you were to vote leave.

Immigration Anger/Racism- What's the Difference? Is there a Difference?

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36382199

Leave campaigners made great claims about immigration. They claimed that the UK had lost control of it's borders. Floods of migrants were coming into the country and either taking jobs Brit's could be doing or worse becoming dependent on welfare and stretching a welfare system to breaking point.

Actually Net migration into the UK was at 333,000 in 1015 which was a record. Of that 184,000 was net migration from the EU. That represents 1 migrant entering the country every year for every 192 people already in Britain. For context, a similar society outside the EU – Australia, the figure is 1 migrant for every 137 people. Australia's net migration per capita is higher.
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3412.0/

Leave campaigners claimed that the EU was responsible for breaking down the UK's borders. The current Syrian refugee crisis fueled his fear driven rhetoric. But most could not fail to notice that Polish people (for an example) were emigrating to the UK at a high rate. The jobs they were taking were low to medium skill jobs. Jobs that were becoming harder to find for native born Brits. Older native born Brits were beginning to become resentful. They saw a future where they had been tossed aside and thrown on life's scrapheap. Farage and Johnson's claims gained great traction.

Boris Johnson for PM?

In other pieces I have argued that I was not really afraid of Donald Trump as US president, because I felt he was too stupid to be elected. Sooner or later he would be tested and found ignoramus. I still hold to that and I am please he is well behind Senator clinton in the polls now. However I also suggested that there was an intelligent man out there. Someone who was watching the trump campaign and learning how to manipulate the stupidity of the masses into power. I never expected that person to appear so quickly, and i never expected that person to be British.

Boris Johnson is a Conservative Party Member of Parliament who built has career as mayor of London and delivered the London 2012 Olympics to the world. During the Brexit campaign he toured Britain on a big red bus speaking everywhere and anywhere he could in favour of leaving. The greatest lie he told was literally written on the bus itself. It said "We send the EU 350 million pound a week. Lets fund our NHS instead." The 350 million pounds a week figure fails (deliberatly) to include the 190 million pounds a week the EU delivers back to Britain in forms of subsidies etc. To imagine the NHS would see a cent of the money no longer headed to Brussels is laughable.

Boris lied and bloviated his way through the campaign, his buffoonish manner and undeniable charm while saying nothing in particular is highly amusing and watchable, and very familiar to Trump watchers. Johnson promised to bring net migration per year back to the "tens of thousands" by taking back control. How he would do this was not clear. He provided the example of Australia and it's point system, but as we've seen Australia actually has a higher net migration per capita than the UK and of course that so many of the UK immigrants come from places outside the EU. I don't accept Britain has the power to do this without causing a massive recession in Britain and possibly around the world.

Johnson is as close to a Libertarian as Britain has produced in modern times. A man happy to talk of socially liberal policies, but economically in step with big business. So why did he side against business against free trade?

Power. There is one job Johnson clearly covets. Cameron's. With Cameron's resignation it's within Johnson's grasp. If Johnson has to weaken Britain to gain the job, he seems to have made the calculation that it's worth the pain.

Neo-Liberal Ideals

The EU is a remarkable institution, but it's also a bodge job. In itself it's founded on Capitalist-Neo-Liberal ideas, but in practice it's become a libertarian nightmare. An unnecessary layer of government coalescing into an economic superstate with ambitions to become a defacto one world government,setting standards and laws about business practices like working hours, paid leave, human rights, justice and other non-core business.

The EU is not the same institution that Britain voted to stay in in 1975. It's evolved and changed. Some changes are for the better, some are not.

World War 3

A majority of Brits voted this week that the European Union was an institution that made their life more difficult. That's a frightening idea, given the core goal of the EU. To prevent a Europe wide war. It's growth and development into a nascent one world government appears to be at the heart of it's unpopularity in Britain. It's unswerving embrace of Neo-Liberal principles is frankly at the heart of it's problems. On the other hand. Neo-Liberal principles are being questioned all over the world right now. The Occupy movement in the United States and the Trump presidential candidacy point to a failure of Neo-Liberal principles in that nation as well.

Neo-Liberal principles benefit a great many and make the rich richer. But in developed countries they also lead to a disenfranchised older less educated poor class. It's these people who voted for Brexit and who vote for Donald Trump. On the whole, developed nations need to work out how to cater for the older, the unemployed and the uneducated. Because last Thursday, those people made enough noise to damage all of us. This is the next war. It wont be fought against Islamic extremism or Communism, it will be fought by us and against us. Unless we can find a way for these people to benefit from all the good things our society has produced.

These people are afraid. With good reason. They are grabbing their pitchforks. They will come again. They will have their champions, be they Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Marine LePen, Pauline Hanson or someone we haven't heard of yet. The next time they will come for us and burn down the whole farm.

Brexit. How did it come to this?

Brexit. People Slain in the Street Over a Bureaucracy?

How did it all come to this? A Labour MP shot in the street. Jo Cox was gunned down in her constituency by Thomas Mair, a 52 year old suspected of both mental health issues and far right political ties.

Every nation has its bizarre quirks. There are always issues in that country that make no sense to outsiders. Here in Australia it's indigenous affairs. Sensible thoughtful people abandon all reason and begin shouting at each other the moment aboriginal affairs are mentioned. For the USA its guns. The Americans can't even keep AR15 assault rifles out of the hands of known terrorist sympathizers. For the British it's Europe.

Separated by 20 miles of water, Britain is in Europe, but not of it. Or at least that's how Brits like to see it. That water has always signified danger to Britain. Invaders like the Romans, the Saxons, the Vikings and the Normans all crossed the channel to plunder Britain's "Green and Pleasant Land."

Britain learned to defend that water, developing the greatest navy the world has ever seen. Napoleon learned to his detriment not to challenge the Royal Navy and Goring's Luftwaffe learnt that the the Royal Air force was adequate to the task of defending Britain in 1940.

This is how the British see Europe. Dangerous and other.

Britain and Continental Europe also tend to see their shared history differently to. For continental Europe the second world war was horrific and tragic. It was a war that raged across the European continent. The forefathers of modern Germans and Austrians started a war which shattered Poland, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Norway, etc. To say nothing of the horrific destruction rained upon the USSR. Then there's the fact of the holocaust. 6 million Jews dead.

The German and Austrian nation were wholly culpable. France capitulated to the Axis and later began to transport French Jews to the death camps with a surprising fervor. Adults in those countries today were often reluctant to ask Grandpa exactly what they did in the war. They might not like the answers they received.

Contrast that with the British view of their role in WW2. At first they were the dutiful ally protecting France. Then the lone holdout against the personification of evil, Britain was challenged almost to breaking point, but held the line, allowing democracy to survive in the western hemisphere. This was truly "Their Finest Hour."

Britain then was able to take the war back to Europe with American assistance. Liberating western europe through devastating bombing campaigns and the D Day invasion. While casualties were enormous, both allied and axis, Britain never wavered in its feeling of moral superiority. Hitler had started this war, and by God Churchill was going to finish it.

In Continental Europe a consensus soon formed around the idea "never again." It's a wholly understandable formula born of a feeling of moral failure and guilt, with a great deal of practicality thrown in. Five short years after the war the European Coal and Steel Community united Belgium, France, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands and Luxembourg in a common market, synchronizing their laws to make trade simple and easy between those nations.

The philosophy behind the European Economic Community as the union became known after the 1957 treaty of Rome was to unite the nations in trade, creating wealth for all, but also an interdependence between nations so that a holocaust like World War Two could never again spring from a European well. It worked. Extremely well. The EEC continued to grow adding Ireland and Denmark in 1973. But the largest market added in '73 was Britain.

The campaign to join was fraught and a referendum to leave was held in 1975. You could consider it Brexit 1. The stay campaign won handily. This was a nine nation EEC composed of developed nations.

The EU has of course developed massively since 1975. It has expanded from nine members to twenty eight. Herein lies the problem. The EU has developed a Parliament, and has started to look like a superstate coalescing from the disparate nations of Europe.

Also of concern is the freedom of movement granted to all European union citizens. This was fine when all member nations maintained a high standard of living, but the addition of former Warsaw Pact nations with substantially lower wages creates a serious issue. The fact that EU citizens from nations like Romania and Poland can now legally move to the UK is disconcerting to British people who are concerned that these people come to UK, either take British Jobs for lower wages, driving down wages for low paid work or end up on welfare, stretching an already tight budget tighter.

Those people displaced by low wage workers are mostly those who will vote for a brexit. Frankly these people are voting for their own interests. I completely understand why people in these circumstances would vote to leave.

Herein lies the problem. Right now the needs of the less educated and poorest of society are not being looked after. This is not just a British problem. In the USA those people who vote for Donald Trump look very familiar to those British political watchers. They are the poorly educated, the white poor who have been the losers in the new world ushered in by modern Neo-Liberal philosophy.

So here we come to the crux of the matter. Neo-Liberalism is causing a crisis in our society. It is leaving behind a large section of the population of developed western nations. The continued globalisation of our world means that the factory worker in the Birmingham England or Birmingham Alabama are both in competition with the worker in Guadalahara Mexico, Guangzau China, or indeed Poznan Poland.

In this wage competition between the developed world and the developing world there can only be one winner. The developing world. Of course they will make items cheaper than their counterparts in the west.

The "other" tends to be a whipping boy for all the problems (real or perceived) that poor disempowered people experience. Whether that be the recent immigrants or the Jewish people of Nazi Germany, in difficult economic times it's always the "other" who suffer.

Demagogues like Donald Trump or Nigel Farage are always waiting on the sidelines to whip the fear and hopelessness into anger and hatred. I think we can add a new name to this group. Boris Johnson. These types are the real villains of this piece. They are the exploiters of fear. They manipulate people for their own ends. For Trump and Johnson, the top job beckons to them and they intend to ride a wave of hatred to the Prime Ministership or the Presidency.

History provides the greatest warning possible about these types. One such Demagogue blamed Communists, Socialists and Jews in Germany during another economic crisis during the late 1920's. History records his ascension to Chancellor in January 1933. Soon he was not being called Chancellor, but Fuhrer.

What's wrong with US Democracy and How to Save it

What's Wrong With US Democracy?

Donald Trump's Presidential candidacy has been hilarious, but it's become quite terrifying. The Presumptive Nominee of the Republican Party for the Presidency of the United States of America, Donald Trump has attacked American Veterans, Mexican Americans, Mexicans and Mexico in general, Chinese businesses and lately Muslim Americans.

Sadly all this is quite predictable. During difficult economic times democracies usually turn to the radical far right for solutions. Of course this has a very low success rate.

Many of you I'm sure will be thinking that actually things are actually not that bad in the USA right now, and you have the figures to prove it. Lets go through them:

The unemployment rate is now at 5%. That's quite low and down from a high of 10% in October 2009. So why are we seeing this kind of political instability in the land of the free?

One factor is income inequality. I believe income inequality is the number one driver of political instability in the USA. Income inequality is a good and necessary part of the capitalist system. However when wages in real terms have not risen since 1975, but productivity has risen exponentially we are talking about the slow undermining of the American middle class. The non partisan Pew Research Center have studied this issue for a long time.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

The implications are bleak. In a world where your salary remains stagnant in buying power, but productivity increases exponentially, I think we need to ask where all the money is going. How is it that 40 year old mothers and fathers are forced to work in the fast food industry, where wages are eye-wateringly low and impossible to live on. How is it that full time Walmart employees cost the Government $6.2 Billion in food stamps, Medicaid and Public Housing?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/04/15/report-walmart-workers-cost-taxpayers-6-2-billion-in-public-assistance/

The answer is of course that all the money has risen to the top. That the masters of the universe have never had it so good, while the ordinary people struggle to put food on the table. Indeed one study has rated America's inequality as higher than Ancient Rome.

http://persquaremile.com/2011/12/16/income-inequality-in-the-roman-empire/

My next question to ask, what was the outcome of the high inequality in the Roman times. The answer might sound depressingly familiar. The Senate became highly polarized between a political party of capital, the Optimates and a party of the common man, the Populares. (Not that they were parties in the modern sense of the word.)

The workings of the Government slowly ground to a halt as the constipated Senate failed to do it's job and instead focused merely on members careers and power. The Optimates rigged elections, and had reformers ultimately put to death to maintain the unequal status quo.

Such legislative deadlock was ultimately unsustainable and ancient Rome fell into a period of turmoil known as the social war. This was a bloody civil war that set the stage for Julius Caesar to rise to power in his own civil war. The Roman Republic did not survive Julius Caesar.

Am I saying that the USA is going the way of the Roman Republic. Well no. Not yet. And it doesnt have to. However I would say that the American electoral system needs a great deal of reform to avoid the historical pitfalls of a great power with a massive and restless underclass.

It's very clear that the US Congress like the Roman Senate before it works for no-one but it's members and the mega rich. Here is what I propose:

A Non-Partisan Electoral Commission.

Most advanced democracies have one of these. They are impartial and draw the districts for the lower house. The reason that most of the US House of Representatives members are so batshit crazy is that they do not fear the voters. Both Republican and Democratic Party interests are served to have as few as possible seats in actual doubt. That way they don't have to spend money on the race and can keep it for the Presidential and Senate Elections. This is why although Barack Obama won the 2012 election by a large majority by popular vote, in the House of Representatives the Republicans were able to maintain power. In effect most candidates are more afraid of the Primary elections in their own party than that of the general election by the population at large. Of course the people voting in the primarys are mostly the most devoted and extreme. which is why we see government of the people, by the extremists, for the extremists.

This obviously won't remove the money from US politics, but maybe it won't have to. We've seen that massive amounts of money spent by the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Addleston have spectacularly failed to move the electorate one iota. In fact the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court has more successful at moving the electorate to the left than towards mainstream conservative ideas.

A political body that doesn't fear it's electorate won't respond to the needs of the people. The US district boundaries are broken due to a corrupt and craven system controlled by the two parties for their own needs, not the needs of the people.

A legislative body elected to serve the needs of the people, not the mega-rich would actually respond to the people on the street. The ones actually hurting. Not the uber-rich, but the millions left behind in a globalizing world.

Donald Trump is the inevitable manifestation of the fear and anger of the people. A people who have been ignored for too long by a political system who doesn't understand them, and doesn't have the time or will listen to them.

I think Trump will actually lose this election. But don't for a moment think that the issues he's tapping in to will magically solve themselves. Things are going well in the economy but people are still angry. They will remain angry until their issues are addressed.

I'm not actually that afraid of Trump. He's an idiot. A second rate narcissist-megalomaniac who has the gift of the gab. What terrifies me is the next Trump. I believe a highly intelligent man (or woman) is watching the freak show that is the 2016 Presidential election with great interest. He is learning from Trump how to manipulate the fear of the average American. He's the one I fear. The megolamaniacal despot who is absorbing the lessons of 2016 and will apply them in 2020 or 2024.

The way to prevent it is to reform Politics. Now. Don't wait, because we don't have the time.