Is Brexit actually going to happen?
- Thread starter Kaka Tim
- Start date
Supine
Newt Member
I certainly see it as extremely misguided. It's the turkeys voting for Christmas.
ska invita
back on the other side
Fair enough - i likely missed that earlier part of the conversation - im very distracted at the moment. And yet i think my points stands: founding statement has fine words about class unity...in practice is supported by class nationalists. With friend like these....
and its not just the Communist party types who are going down this road - comes from some class struggle anarchists too.
If LeFT thinking is filling a gap that gap is being filled by yet more nationalism, judging by its supporters.
Proper Tidy
Arsed
I've never heard this term before, do you mean like left nationalists (english labour network/reclaim the st george cross/billy bragg etc) or like working class as a cultural identity sort of thing?
Bahnhof Strasse
Met up with Hannah Courtoy a week next Tuesday
UK state broadcaster reporting that Merkel offered Johnson an opportunity to get rid of the backstop. She did no such thing, she told him that he has 30 days to come up with a workable, legal alternative to a hard border. Muttering some vague bollocks about technology will not be good enough.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
philosophical
Well-Known Member
The link posted above from the lexit group insists that the Irish border problem can be solved by technology. Their 'proof' is a further link to a Swedish Customs expert appearing at a select committee in Parliament.
I watched it all.
The geezer said there need be no border of any kind if the level of trust either side of a border is high enough.
So there we have it.
The lexit position is the 'honesty box' position. 'Trust me guv, I promise to do whatever the right thing is'.
It is not a technological solution, and when the expert was pressed on the land border and asked to pay regard to the number of crossing points, he repeated that no infrastructure was needed if the level of trust was high enough. He said no border was possible if everybody was prepared to do the right thing as individuals.
Lexiters are effectively promoting the honesty box answer, which in my view is bollocks. Not only is it not a technological solution (do the lexiters even watch the thing they link to?), but what the lexiters point to is distainful and dismissive with regard to the Irish.
Lexit voters can dress up their stance as somehow progressive, even noble and aspirational, but the reality is they have gotten into bed with a bunch of nasty racist right wing bastards like Boris Johnson, and even seem proud of it.
I watched it all.
The geezer said there need be no border of any kind if the level of trust either side of a border is high enough.
So there we have it.
The lexit position is the 'honesty box' position. 'Trust me guv, I promise to do whatever the right thing is'.
It is not a technological solution, and when the expert was pressed on the land border and asked to pay regard to the number of crossing points, he repeated that no infrastructure was needed if the level of trust was high enough. He said no border was possible if everybody was prepared to do the right thing as individuals.
Lexiters are effectively promoting the honesty box answer, which in my view is bollocks. Not only is it not a technological solution (do the lexiters even watch the thing they link to?), but what the lexiters point to is distainful and dismissive with regard to the Irish.
Lexit voters can dress up their stance as somehow progressive, even noble and aspirational, but the reality is they have gotten into bed with a bunch of nasty racist right wing bastards like Boris Johnson, and even seem proud of it.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
That wasn't really the point I was trying to make; I was just interested in pursuing the question of how LeFT supporters might choose to vote in any pre-exit GE. If they desire a full-fat No-Deal break with the supra-state, I'm presuming that they'd more logically cast their vote for Johnson or Farage than Corbyn's Labour?
Or have I mis-read this completely?
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
soz - that is A lexit position, not THE lexit position.
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butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Is he really going to do exactly what the other one did last night?
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
if "he" is philosophical and "what the other one did" is stupid, then yes
philosophical
Well-Known Member
I have attempted to respond to the idea a (point taken) lexit group has promoted with regard to a solution to the Irish border problem. I have no idea what is meant by any other one any other night is supposed to mean.
Mind you I am well used to the condescending response I get on here, and assume it is because the judgemental high and mighty patronising respondents are some kind of vacuums in human form.
Mind you I am well used to the condescending response I get on here, and assume it is because the judgemental high and mighty patronising respondents are some kind of vacuums in human form.
Mr Moose
What the hell are we supposed to tell the kids?
I appreciate you offering a straightforward answer, but I don’t see a lot beyond rhetoric here. I can’t see from where a ‘genuine internationalism’ is to emerge from when many Leave voters are defiantly set against international cooperation (no sophistry in response please - there is no coherence in the Leave position about anything international except the movement of capital) and when many of those who may be attracted to internationalism are determined to fight Brexit. In any case, if you can build a neolib resistant internationalism powerful enough to ignore US and Chinese capital and not immediately fall over bankrupt then it could be done as well within the EU as from without and maybe take some other EU members with it. A movement that can rip up the rules is ripping up rules in or out.
But really what is this? What strategy for elections, for building a coalition capable of getting power and governing? On the Leave side, hopelessly weak set against the forces and vision of the traditional elites and their media who have skilfully employed nationalism and a distrust of socialism. On the Remain side, at this moment, electoral catastrophe. This offers zero prospect of a 'rupture with global capitalism'. It's a position that has convinced vanishingly few people since the referendum.
And it’s anything but a call for ‘unity’. It ignores the fact that most Labour voters disagree, paints them as neolib collaborators. There is no compromise offered, no suggestion of the future relationship with Europe (no-deal?). In which case it sets itself against both most members and the leadership. A recipe for fragmentation.
'The working class, in all its rich diversity' - sorry, but the diverse working classes did not mostly vote for Brexit. This is offering them nothing, no chance of winning and no defence against the terms of future deals with the US and others.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
I've clearly fucked up by posting a link rather than the actual LeFT statement.
The statement is therefore posted below. The babble on the website - which 3 posters have now seized on - is best taken up with those associated with it.
"From Amazon warehouses to Belfast’s shipyards, workers are demanding a break — a break with the failed system of austerity, neoliberalism and capitalism.
The last 40 years have been an era of declining real wages, attacks on trade union and workers’ rights, austerity, abuse of migrants, the hollowing out of democracy and an escalating environmental crisis.
Working-class people across the world are demanding an alternative to this failed status quo.
History shows that if the left does not offer a transformative alternative to capitalism in crisis, the false prophets of the right will step in with their empty promises and reactionary utopias.
To offer a serious alternative, the left must demand and lead a rupture with a system of global capitalism that is irreformable and rotten to its core.
For socialists today in Britain that means calling for a break with the EU, breaking with the logic of neoliberalism and building a radical alternative.
Leave – Fight – Transform: The LeFT Campaign is a grassroots network of socialists, trade unionists and community activists, committed to democracy, internationalism and socialism.
We recognise that the failed neoliberal economic model helped produce both the vote to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum and the surge in support for a left-led Labour Party in the 2017 general election with a radical manifesto, promising genuine change.
To develop the potential of this moment, the left must ensure the 2016 referendum result is implemented, so that the UK breaks with the treaties, institutions and laws of the EU as well as the structural racism of Fortress Europe.
These institutions promote and sustain the very system that working people are demanding a break from.
We must build a transformative movement that begins with the popular rejection of the EU within many working-class communities and that advances genuine internationalism with allies in the labour movement across the world.
To shape the 21st century in a way which advances the interests of the working class, in all its rich diversity, to begin to turn the tide on the environmental crisis, and to extend democracy into all aspects of people’s lives, the left must demand a break with the status quo. We need to leave the EU and transform society.
To join and support the campaign, or to add your name to the founding statement contact us on LeFTCampaign@gmail.com, or follow us on Twitter: @LeFTCampaign.
philosophical
Well-Known Member
I typed 'Irish Border' into the search facility on the linked site. As I said above it points to what the Swedish geezer said at the Parliamentary select committee as the solution.
If it was you who posted the link, and have posted the statement above, and if you are a lexiter, then what is your solution to the problem where the border concept conflicts with the Good Friday Agreement? There is nothing about the border in the above statement. Presumably if you are a lexiter who knew what you were voting for, you had a solution fully formed before the referendum vote took place.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
It's this bit that interests me...and no-one yet seems to have a response to my earlier questions:
From my perspective, demanding a break "with a system of global capitalism" appears naively unambitious. Exiting the supra-state will still see the class exposed to the global, kleptocracy of neoliberal capital. Also, does this LeFT position equate to support for the right's No-Deal outcome?
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Well, like all these types of statements, it's open to interpretation but that's not the reading I took from it. I read it that they recognise the vote to leave the EU as part of the dissatisfaction of people with neo-liberalism, and that it is up to the left to engage with that rejection. I don't see anything in that statement that necessarily ties it to a 'no deal break'.
These statements are always (deliberately) vague on some points and there are bits of that statement that I might take issue with but the overall thrust I am largely sympathetic to,
I've said it numerous times before but the posts over the last page with talk of elections and 'governing; show that some still don't get it - the divide is not between those that voted leave those that voted remain but those that recognise (and trust) the working class and those that fear it. A very significant proportion of the working class voted leave, socialists* have to organise around that, have to trust in the attack the working class has made on capital and to help develop routes that help further that attack. The value in the part of the statement quoted above is precisely because it does not lay out some 'strategy for elections, for building a coalition capable of getting power and governing'.
*I'm going to use this term rather than 'the left' as I think that latter term is pretty useless
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Or as I'm just about to start Workers and Capital I'll quote Tronti
Mario Tronti said:
Proper Tidy
Arsed
Lots of the signatories are prominent Corbyn supporters, quite a few with roles within the formal structures of the labour party and trade unions, so think it's a given they'd not lend their votes to Johnson to get a no deal scenario tbh
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
At this point the aims are plainly simple.
1. That the central motivation driving the vote to leave the European Union was working class dissatisfaction with the present. This dissatisfaction takes on many forms - unemployment, precarity, low pay, housing, diminishing futures and collapsing public services.
2. To build support and draw awareness to the fact that there is a network of socialists, trade unionists, community activists and others - who are internationalists, who want to build solidarities, who want to support and facilitate working class agency and who want change’ – and who recognise the necessity of leaving the EU trading bloc.
3. That this network recognises that all of these aims are disrupted and weakened by the EU. That ‘remain and reform’ is impossible due to the political economy of the EU, its treaties and the control exerted by the ECB, IMF and the EU based on the single market project.
4. That it is essential that we leave the EU and do so on the basis that we seek to transform Britain in the process. The first step being the election of a Labour Government committed to a social democratic programme but a much longer term process and set of ideas needs to be developed through dialogue and building networks.
5. That if the left fails to provide rational, progressive solutions to economic and social traumas then the far right will inevitably provide further irrational ones.
6. To provide ideas, space and a network for those who wish to support these aims
7. To provide support for working class struggle and unity
In terms of your paragraph about ‘unity’ I think two responses are necessary. Firstly, 35% of labour voters, who voted Labour in the 2017 GE, did vote leave. These are disproportionately clustered in specific areas mainly in the Midlands, Wales, the North, the coastal areas and what Guiluy has described as the ‘peripheralised zones’. Peripheralised in terms of jobs, services, amenities and futures, located close to but in a different world to, the nearby cities. Now, if you add in Labour voters from 1997-2015, who didn’t vote Labour in 2017, but did vote for Brexit then the numbers in these peripheralised zones starts to rise to at least 60% in some of these areas. It is possible to argue, as Paul Mason has, that these areas and communities needs to be effectively abandoned to the far right and be left trapped in a culture. Or you can argue, as I do, that recovery work for progressive politics is of critical importance in these areas. There are no short fixes, no easy routes. There needs to be a long term refocussing and rethinking. Where do we start? You can see already in America with Warren and Sanders and with McDonnell here the basic social democratic ideas – investment, intervention, improved pay, job guarantees for young people, improved amenities, moving beyond the reflexivity of neo-liberalism – that offer a base from which to start. Where we end is part of the discussion.
Second, a lot of labour remainers have confused being pro-Europe and being pro-EU as being the same thing. Given the long run nature of the discussion about Europe – which will take decades - this group, who largely share the impulse for change described above, will increasingly see the contradictions between the trading bloc they currently support and their wider interests and ideas about change.
Your last paragraph (4) is factually incorrect. The diverse working class did, in fact, vote for Brexit. But we can (and probably have already have) argued about what the data tells us so let’s leave this for another time.
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Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
Me too. Delighted to see it published.
Proper Tidy
Arsed
And fwiw I think it's all a bit late really. I think a working class based leftwing anti EU campaign from 2015 (or earlier) onwards with some actual clout and prominence could have had a big impact on the imagining of a post ref post EU UK. But all we got was that shitty far left campaign that made zero impact on public or political class (although they stuck an impressive number of stickers on lampposts tbf, mostly now covered with Bollocks to Brexit ones), a few unorganised scatterings here and there, and fucking labour leave, a shitty dodgy grouping with the politics of Spiked, and the ground was completely ceded to the right's business over labour vision. Fuck knows, probably wouldn't have changed anything but at least it could have
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Thanks for reply.
It was these words that led me to believe that a 'No-Deal" exit was being advocated/preferred:
Any exit based on a WA & Future relationship deal would certainly involve engagement with the treaties, institutions and laws of the neoliberal supra-state.
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
I agree completely.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Agreed, it might be a given, but logic would suggest that if they really desire a clean break from the supra-state they might cast their vote differently? Corbyn's BRINO would never bring about the detachment that they espouse.
Proper Tidy
Arsed
I think within this grouping there is a belief that Corbyn/those people are fundamentally opposed to EU and an acceptance that they have to get elected and in, which means playing a game to build a coalition. I think this belief/acceptance thing applies to more than just EU too. Timing of statement looks more like a grouping designed to stop labour left, Corbyn, McDonnell etc going too heavy towards remain
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Too late for that, surely?
That's Corbyn's only hope of electoral success now, isn't it?
Proper Tidy
Arsed
Probably, yeah. More tightrope walking I suppose
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