I was writing poetry before bed last night, as I do, occasionally. I'll spare you my efforts: the results are definitely not worth sharing. And before you get some great romantic notions, I was writing about Brexit and Ireland.
Why do that? Because like all art forms poetry is a way of trying to get a new angle on an issue. The need to find the right word is the challenge that I enjoy. In this case one word came crashing to the forefront of my thinking as a result. Brexit is, I realised, an exercise in disintegration. It's a word with few positive connotations and it works perfectly.
The EU and the UK are disintegrating.
The UK itself might disintegrate.
We are disintegrating from EU establishments.
Disintegration from European culture, values and conventions is the aim.
The economy is disintegrating right now.
Disintegration from the EU threatens to tear a community in Ireland apart.
And this disintegration is, apparently, the choice we made.
But ask yourself whether we really chose to disintegrate?
Because why would anyone do that?
Or is that goal, expressed by our politicians, an incorrect interpretation of the referendum?
And what do we do in that case?
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“But ask yourself whether we really chose to disintegrate?”
The answer to a question may be a function of the person/persons asking the question. The Uni of Cardiff has a media studies dept. It looked at MSM & the coverage given to politicos before the vote. Very roughly with respect to remain: 80% Tories & 20% Labour. One would draw a conclusion that the Tories were very keen of staying & if you hated the Tories this would be a chance to “give them one on the nose”. You might also conclude that Labour were not that keen on staying. The UK pop south of the Scottish border probably did not chose “UK disintegration” – I doubt if they even thought that far.
I watched Adam Curtis’s ‘Hyper Normalisation’ film last night – it had just been released. You might want to have a look yourself if you have the time.
Some of us did vote for disintegration as you define it – those who are angry with the EU system or who are nationalists did. Some of these people might even call themselves democrats – some Tories view Cameron in that way. But as Curtis points out, in their vision of disintegrating what previously existed, the Leave campaign did not really have a vision of what to replace it with. They were too reactionary or did not believe that they would win. Cameron did not contemplate losing either – he did not seem to have a Plan B.
The people who may really benefit from the chaos or if we leave are as you have pointed out in the past – offshore tax havens. Others too will benefit from the infighting that may well follow on.
Before we disintegrate, there will now be a substantial period of instability that power will exploit ruthlessly. Even those who fight against leaving will become part of the engine of that instability (they have no choice I’m afraid).
Curtis also talks of how modern politicians ‘oversimplify’ issues too much leading to unplanned for consequences and the way BREXIT was framed (in or out) was also an example of this.
The only thing we can do if we believe that the referendum was wrong is to fight and put those complexities back in – get the facts known. But it will not be nice and there have already been a number of fatalities (Jo Cox for one). Hence my wanting to get over with BREXIT asap. The rich and powerful are really going to enjoy us little people fighting over this one.
I still think that all of this ends up being just a way of diverting society’s gaze from what the rich and powerful are up to in a period where we know that the current broken mode of capitalism is enabling an unprecedented accrual of wealth and power to the top.
Add in some other nation States such as Russia and Syria, then we have loads of almost artificially created issues that decent people can align themselves with all whilst certain other key issues (the growth of inequality for example) have to compete with for people’s time.
To me at times we are but play things for the rich and powerful – the new Gods of Olympus. Maybe the Ancient Greeks were trying to tell us something about our future?
Disintigration is part of any transition. The transparency of the government’s post Brexit agenda offers a clear target for the left to unite against but the traditional battle between the manigerial and participatory branches remains as pertinent as ever. Articulating an alternative economic model will be a crucial plank to challenge the establishment’s There Is No Alternative worldview.
I have said all along Brexit means break-up (of the UK). The English don’t care — well, a majority of them. They’re very sure that they will be fine alone. I wish them well, but I’m happy my kids have Irish passports. An end to British, and in particular English, exceptionalism will be no bad thing. It means the Conservatives need to grow up and move on from imperial nostalgia (cf Boris’s inane maunderings about Palmerston’s map room and the invasion and occupation of 178 countries), giving up the “punching above our weight” military fantasies, and becoming a normal European democracy, like Germany. Far too much the Brexit rhetoric has been driven by smug feelings of cultural superiority and condescension toward Europe; Farage spoke for many when he insulted MEPs whom he accused of never having had a proper job. It was not not true of them and was true of David Cameron and other senior Tories. One of countless ironies is the fact that the EU will continue to work in English.
I don’t believe Brexit should be accepted. I believe it should be fought tooth and nail. It is beyond question that it was sold on a false prospectus. And the fascist tendencies of the hard brexiteers needs to be faced down as robustly as the poll tax was. Lists of foreign employees and all the rest — including the utterly vile threats of retaliation from John Redwood against business leaders who dare speak in favour of staying in the EU.
As Gramsci is so often quoted, although not always with the second part of the sentence: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
Indeed. What goes around comes around.
I listened to a member of UKIP on Radio 4 this morning. He said “Teresa May needs to walk the plank on this [BREXIT]”
Couldn’t have phrased it better myself!
I laughed at that too!
Meanwhile there’s an excellent letter from Professor AC Grayling to all MP’s that nails the case for Parliamentary control over any possible Brexit:
https://www.nchlondon.ac.uk/2016/10/14/letter-professor-ac-grayling-650-mps-urging-parliament-debate-eu-referendum-outcome-12-october-2016/