{"id":1852,"date":"2020-01-24T02:05:55","date_gmt":"2020-01-24T02:05:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=1852"},"modified":"2023-01-22T22:26:41","modified_gmt":"2023-01-22T22:26:41","slug":"brexit-where-are-we-headed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=1852","title":{"rendered":"POLiTiCS: Brexit – Where Are We Headed?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Holocaust,
Recently read and reviewed.*<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Over on my wargames\/models blog, I just reviewed a book about The Holocaust (read the review and comments here<\/a>, if you’re interested), pictured above. A passing statement at the end of my review drew down the ire of one of my occasional followers\/readers.<\/p>\n

I didn’t want to respond in depth on the review post. I try to keep that blog relatively apolitical. But here, on my more personal blog, I’m happier to enter into potential debates. So, here, in fuller terms, is my response:<\/p>\n

Entrusting the decision about our place in the EU to a referendum was always first and foremost a populist ploy by the Tories. Many of the prominent Tories who’ve ‘masterminded’ the whole debacle, or banged on about ‘getting Brexit done’, from Bojo to Cameron and beyond, have at numerous points in time pointed out many reasons why leaving the EU might not be in our own best interests.<\/p>\n

The electorate should, both in theory and in practice, elect a body – they’re called the government – to make these decisions for us, based on the vast amounts of expertise required for such a complex issue. The fact that the muppets many in the UK voted into office (not me!) chose to ‘delegate’ this responsibility – abnegate<\/i> is a better more accurate word – is only further evidence of their unfitness to govern.<\/p>\n

Asking the public to decide this issue is like asking a taxi-driver to perform brain surgery.<\/p>\n

Most members of the public – and that will include both me and you, I would hazard to guess – haven’t got the faintest idea about all the many and varied ways in which we and Europe interact. We may know little bits here and there. But it’s far to big and complex for the ‘man in the street’ to know sufficient about, let alone judge competently. Especially not the man on the street indoctrinated by TV news and The Daily Mail, et al.<\/p>\n

The right wing in both the US and the UK, who are unquestionably in the ascendant politically, have been using race and populist fears around race issues – immigration in particular, but also everything from the whole anti-semitism thing (completely hypocritically, in the case of the whole Corbyn farago, as plenty of Tories are happy to be photographed dedicating statues to known anti-semites like the Astors) to denigrating whole racial groups (both Trump and Bojo have done so many times) – to bolster their positions politically. And they do all this backed by the billionaire owned gutter press, and loathsome bile-merchants like Piers Morgan, whose personal vendettas are somehow turned into daily ‘news’.<\/p>\n

The EU – like the NHS (also under attack from these same right wing hooligans), and like so many post-WWII collective endeavours – was a direct response to WWI and WWII, and was formed very largely out of a desire not to let petty nationalism usher in WWIII. The UK’s abandoning of this project most emphatically does<\/i> bring us closer to atomised nation states potentially in conflict.<\/p>\n

Leaving the potential break up of Europe aside momentarily, Brexit is also threatening the United Kingdom’s integrity – Scotland, Wales and Ireland were all overwhelmingly remain, and this is currently being ignored in a cavalier and blas\u00e9 way by our Tory government – meaning further breakdown, within a once United Kingdom, never mind within Europe, is entirely plausible.<\/p>\n

And, beyond our own rather pathetically parochial island-mentality back garden, there is clearly a rise across not just the US and the UK, but also very clearly in Russia and throughout Europe, of racially motivated right wing nationalism.<\/p>\n

The Tories will see their recent election victory – and it’s already being openly stated by them – as a mandate for pushing through their more ‘radical’ goals. These are essentially to dismember and flog off anything they can profit from, the NHS being very high on that list (already brutally butchered by the 75% Tory time in govt since 1945). All of this is returning both Europe and the UK to a situation that is more like the 1930s, politically, than the 1950s or after.<\/p>\n

Fortunately we don’t have – as far as I’m aware? – a racially monomaniac Hitler type figure in the mix. But Trump and Bojo are amoral\/immoral opportunists, both of whom have been accused of lying and financial fraud. Any electorate handing people like them the reins of power is asking for trouble.<\/p>\n

\n

Having got that lot off my chest, I can now raise my sights and consider something a bit more potentially personal: when I’ve attended wargaming or model shows in the Brexit-era, I’ve seen t-shirts proclaiming such things as ‘leave means leave’. I think I may even have seen whole stands devoted to the subject. I’ll also, at these same events, have noticed some Europeans, and perhaps even folk from further afield.<\/p>\n

I strongly suspect, on the basis of this visual evidence, that there’s a pretty conervative element within these hobbies. But it’s also possible they’re just a more than usually bellicose minority.  The truth is, I don’t know! I felt like I ought to wear a pro-European T-shirt. But I didn’t.<\/p>\n

The guy whose comment on my review promoted the above post describes the EU as ‘odious’. To my mind Farage, Boris and Brexit are what’s odious. I’m sure the EU is imperfect. Large bureaucracies always<\/i> are. But the impression I’ve long had is that a number of the key\/major benefits of belonging were around issues like worker’s rights and human rights. Rather than leaving the EU empowering many ordinary UK subjects – we are cituzens of the EU, but subjects of her majesty’s government (I’d rather be a citizen than a subject) – we will be forfeiting rights.<\/p>\n

Toryism is, and always has been, all about getting rid of that troublesome red tape that uppity-commoners want to introduce to protect them from the age-old robber barons riding roughshod over them to the bank.<\/p>\n

\n

* The picture of this book cover underneath the post title is, I know, a provocative combination. However, whilst I am<\/i> saying Brexit takes us several steps toward WWIII (nevermind anything else it signifies), I’m not<\/i> saying Brexit = Nazism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over on my wargames\/models blog, I just reviewed a book about The Holocaust (read the review and comments here, if you’re interested), pictured above. A passing statement at the end of my review drew down the ire of one of my occasional followers\/readers. I didn’t want to respond in depth on the review post. I … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “POLiTiCS: Brexit – Where Are We Headed?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paGwUa-tS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1852"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1852"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8184,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1852\/revisions\/8184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}