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.