This comment was posted on the blog yesterday:
Dear Richard,
I have read a certain amount of your articles and you seem to speak with a certain amount of knowledge and authority, and therefore I wish to pose a direct question to you. Who does benefit from Brexit?, it seems clear who the losers will be but who are the likely winners?
I thought that a fascinating question, so I am offering a blog post response.
First, let's be clear that most elites very clearly did not want Brexit. Don't be confused by those business people who backed it. Wetherspoons, Timpsons and others owned by those supporting Brexit are not multinationals and nor are they at the centre of the economy. Nor are their owners part of the normal business elites. So right now it cannot be said that the elite (however they are defined) planned a Brexit win.
Nor did most unions.
Or a majority in most political parties, whatever is happening now.
And let's be quite clear that just about no one in the EU, whoever they might be, wanted it.
So who did, and why? I think it safe to say three groups wanted it. The first were dogmatic nationalists. These have always been found in the Conservarive Party, but did of course provide the foundations for UKIP. Nationalism is not rational. It is not dogmatic. The gain they secure will not be economic. Whether in that case the national pride they think has been wounded by EU membership will be healed is open to doubt.
Second there are those quite obviously left behind by society in the last thirty or so years. These are people whose skills, and the whole sectors they worked in, have been made redundant in that time. In many cases their whole communities have suffered with them. Tending to be older and more male than female on average, many have not adapted well to their loss of the status they once had. This has fuelled resentment, not least of those in any employment. They think, or at least hope, that Brexit might restore their fortunes or that of their communities. It is not clear how this might happen.
And then, thirdly there were those who more generally felt that this was an opprtunity to reject what most establishment politicians wanted on the grounds that neoliberal politicians have chosen to represent themselves and the whole political process as incompetent in the face of market forces. Many sent a rejection message as a result. I find this group, if anything, the most baffling. What gain they thought they would make from Brexit I do not know, but feel sure they will be disappointed.
So who will gain? Only the ideologues as far as I can see.
Plus those who are mobile, who always tend to be those with wealth, because they can quit and move elsewhere.
For everyone else the only tally will be of the losses. Try as I might I can't yet see an upside.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Think it was George Monbiot who wrote that most of the money for the Brexit campaigns came from the city, and he also wrote a good article on the money network Liam Fox is part of:https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/02/corporate-dark-money-power-atlantic-lobbyists-brexit
Wiping the smirks off Cameron and Osborne’s faces.
2 years ago it was looking like their boots stamping on us forever. Now there is real hope of a change of government, an end to the public sector pay cap, an end to austerity.
And it would be great to have another 5000 customs officers.
And bring on the Brexit labour shortages!
I would not have chosen leaving the EU as the means for bringing this about, but I feel a lot more positive now.
Could it be that the Westminster government now see brexit as a chance to consolidate power? Crush the rising calls for democracy in Scotland and elsewhere. Reign in the devolved areas and quash devolution? Back to the good old days where the poor folk have to doff their caps to the gentry. What does it matter to them if the UK economy crashes? They’ll hold onto their wealth even if people starve on the streets. What better way to enjoy your wealth and privilege than by gazing from on high at the paupers.
Money men always make money from chaos and crisis. There will be foreclosures, and fire sales, and people so desperate for loans they’ll pay userous interest rates. Firms will go bankrupt and be asset-stripped. People made redundant will accept jobs at much lower salaries and worse conditions. Much value will be destroyed, but the value that is left will concentrate even more in the hands of the super-rich and powerful. Many jobs will go, and tax revenue will fall, driving the fisk into free-fall, but the super-rich are insulated from all of that. Those who have financed Brexit have mostly done so out of cynical, uncaring self-interest.
Kim I couldnt agree more.
Out of chaos comes opportunity for some..They will probably change laws to enable them and their chums to bring back their untaxed money stashed in tax havens around the world without any financial penalties or proof of where the money came from and use it to buy up all OUR lovely cash strapped assets (NHS, prisons, schools etc etc) that they spent years destroying and then rent them back to us at ever increasing rates, while making a fortune on currency exchanges along the way.
I have to say I think that I now think that really is very unlikely
Someone always benefits from something like BREXIT in my view.
At home there are those chasing trade relationships outside of the EU.
Abroad will be actors who will be looking to expand their businesses beyond their shores – a quick way of breaking through any domestic constraints on growth.
These two groups see destruction as a form of creativity, a way of enabling opportunism.
I agree with your take on the first two groups you identify. As for the group that puzzles you (above). Well, this is what living without hope looks like.
I run into this thinking all of the time at work. Many no longer believe in anything to do with politics anymore.
I tried to have a conversation with a colleague about the paucity of our public sector pensions but all I got was a lecture about how private pensions were worse. Another told me that the health service needed to be cut back because too many NHS staff stand around doing nothing. Entreaties about how A&E for example needs to have people standing around waiting or that medical students of all grades need to learn on the job (thus creating the impression of too many people) fell on deaf ears.
There seems to be this hardness in many folk these days. An acceptance that this is how things are and no sense whatsoever that things could be better.
I’m trying to define this phenomenon but it us very hard. It is as if people have had their individual expectations ramped up by market thinking & culture – that peoples individual needs will be met. But real experience of public services (and some private) has proven otherwise. People are so individualised now that that they are caged by this individualism and cannot see that a solution may lie in a more collective approach or through the actions of others acting in their interests. This is made worse by the hobbling of those institutions that could help (such as Trade Unions).
It is a very sad state of affairs. Many are depressed in terms of expectations and outlook. They are depressed because they (we?) are oppressed by a capitalist system that no longer feels that it needs to provide the greatest amount of welfare for the greatest amount of people.
A lot to agree with there
PSR – I’d recognise those symptoms and as others have suggested, for me they are the result of neo-liberal thinking creeping into every aspect of our lives, as has been the objective of those behind it from the beginning. I see it as most pronounced in the Anglo-Saxon world, especially US and UK.
In contrast, Europe has gone much less far down this track and in many ways is much more ‘communitaire’. Their lack of the US/UK’s enthusiasm for privatising everything in sight is just one aspect of this. They are far more suspicious of the US’s motives
It’s why I really struggle when those on the further left complain about the EU as a ‘neo-liberal’ conspiracy. In a harsh post-hard Brexit world, I think they may discover just how much further the neo-liberal thinking can go in destroying public services and dividing people. The rest of Europe will be putting up a cordon sanitaire to avoid cross-infection. The UK will be on the wrong side of it
Robin
May I recommend Wolfgang Streeck’s last book ‘How will Capitalism End?
His acute observations on neo-liberalism in the EU (ECB) should halt any complacency about how this faulty idiotology (sic) has indeed inculcated the European project and may continue to do so.
Pilgrim
Streeck is on my (ever lengthening) reading list, though I have read reviews and summaries. My sense is that he would be at the harshest end of EU critics and reluctant to acknowledge any positives.
I’d tend to side with Varoufakis who if I’ve understood him (and I’ve been to see him speak several times), is critical of specific aspects of the EU but would prefer to change those aspects rather than throw a whole orphanage of babies out with the bath water
I found Streeck like Paul Mason: long on analysis and unconvincing on or absent of answers that satisfied
I might be wrong here but when you state the wealthy voted for brexit. If I am allowed to just generalise but London with their inflated property values and generally speaking the middle class voted to remain as well. Not that I would characterize them as the wealthy mind you as that really should be used for for the very successful pop stars and the like . The better off is how i would describe them.
I thought I said they didn’t?
The star of the Brexit movement was Jeremy Corbyn.
Voted no to the referendum in the 70s, voted against Maastrict and Lisbon Treaties as an MP. His attempt to advocate Remain as Labour leader was as wishy washy as he could make it.
Brexit may well not have happened without him.
@Tom Leonard
“Brexit [might] well not have happened without [Corbyn]”
Still recycling this old chestnut – pure tosh, IMO, and sorry if I offend, but a higher percentage of Labour voters voted Remain than did Conservative voters, while Corbyn was one of the few to advance a rational, evidence- based argument that he supported EU membership, but only if it was reformed, hence his 7.5/10 approval of the EU.
If you want to blame someone for the BREXIT vote – apart from the virulent mendacity of the LEAVE campaign, and the flaccid mendacity of the REMAIN campaign – try the clueless and unprincipled arrogance of Cameron, who was not, is not, and never will be, fit to be PM, as his bolting from office and Parliament after losing amply demonstrated.
So how do you explain JC’s long running voting record on dealings with Europe? He is the most anti-Europe leader of a major party. Far more so than Cameron or May.
His ‘pro-EU’ messages during the referendum were so limp, it sent a message his heart wasn’t in it.
That does not seem to be anything like where he is now
And maybe that indicates where he was too
This is an abstract argument – Corbyn was simply absent and for days Labour had no policy on Brexit. This could not have motivated sufficient people to vote no.
..vote leave…
Oh do come on Tom. Really…………
BREXIT was kicked off by the Tories for the Tories and it really had nothing to do with Corbyn. It wasn’t Corbyn telling lies on the sides of buses. Nor was he putting up posters of queues of immigrants to wind up the easily led and angry.
The Tories also wanted to make any potential opposition leader look weak and anti-BREXIT along with their big mates in the MSM. So Corbyn kept his head down. Just like May. Where was she?
He and the party are beginning to play their hand albeit cautiously. But why not? What do people want – another 1992 election result where Labour thought they were going to win and ended up looking like idiots? It might make a good story but it was disaster for the country.
Corbyn is in opposition.
He is not running the country.
The nasty self interested effing Tories are.
Corbyn bashers all to often talk about him as if did! Wake up! He does not. Point your ire at those who do. Please!
Richard, I think you pivoted about halfway through from identifying those who may benefit from Brexit to identifying the motives of those who voted for it. These are not the same things, since many people voted on the basis of expectations or promises that cannot be met.
The groups that may benefit in some respect – particularly from the harder types of Brexit – would seem to be a) free-market, low-regulation capitalists, b) xenophobes and c) Putin.
I would imagine that many those who voted Brexit were the ones for whom the entire concept of any kind of “upside” in their fortunes was as foreign as the workers they perceived themselves to be competing against.
Perceiving themselves as having nothing left to lose, voting Leave was a chance to kick the smooth-faced, insouciantly cosmopolitan, smugly moneyed, liberal elite (who appeared nightly on TV, spreading fear and gloom to a population who were already experiencing it every day) where they knew it would hurt them the most.
An indiscriminate cry of anger, or for help, perhaps, but the fallout has been astonishing; the resignation and sacking of the seemingly unassailable Cameron/Osborne duo, the eventual exposition of the vanity and vacuity of their replacement, the possible permanent loss of the Tory Party’s (ever disingenuous) claim to be the “natural party of government”, and best of all, the ascendancy of Jeremy Corbyn to a position that has forced the Overton Window of acceptable debate to shift sharply leftwards, to the point where even May’s government is having to announce reviews of policies that were at the very foundations of Osborne’s austerity legacy.
None of this would have occurred had Remain won the EU Referendum.
Whether or not a future Labour Government will make the most of the possibilities that an exit from EU Treaties could allow is as yet unknowable, but if so, then that’ll be the upside that you may be looking for.
I feel there are one or two sections of the global population that you may have left out, Richard. Perhaps US business interests might benefit as the UK turns more to them for trade deals, including those wanting to speed up various privatisations, such as the NHS. It’s also possible, although I might be reaching a bit far here, that the Russians might have wanted a Brexit, knowing it would be a long-lasting shambles that would weaken the EU, and that they may be able to get some advantage there. There are some commercial and city interests who might have felt that a Brexit would lower UK “red tape” and taxes, but who probably didn’t factor in some of the more unstable factors such as a falling pound; but for these, they can move their operations with more ease than most, so maybe it was just a trick worth trying, with not much to lose if it went wrong.
Why people vote the way they do?
We live in a sham of a democracy: first past the post with big constituency sizes. Have you noticed how the government want to increase the constituency size thereby strengthening the two party system?
With so many people’s vote being meaningless at a general election, with increasing amount of people voting against their preferred party it isn’t too surprising, when given the chance to vote down a PM and maybe even chancellor that some took that option! Especially when the PM says he won’t step down if he loses (thereby adding to the obvious lies in the EU campaign).
I, for one, had a lot of false logic in my head around the time of the referendum.
I felt the result would be close. I also felt a close leave vote would be better than a close remain. Not primarily because the PM would go but because if it was a close leave vote then there would be a quick re-negotiation with EU, having established what the UK people wanted. [past referendums in Europe had indicated this was the norm]
The UK government could have used the vote to their and our advantage, instead of triggering the article, they could have pointed to the vote and noted that many, if not most, people in the EU like the EU but think it could be reformed for the better.
I was also convinced that the UK parliament would not role over to the result of a farcical referendum especially as they knew it was a farce. [Nearly 500 voted to accept it, that is the collective action of sheep not of shepherds.]
The first thing that should have happened when the vote closed was the setting up of a body to review the result, the people’s view, why they voted, the legitimacy of the result and more importantly the role of referendums in the UK and the rules of engagement and penalties for breaching the rules.
Instead here we are 15 months later and we are none the wiser as to why people voted the way they did except for our speculation.
Thanks
Only one point – I think the electoral reform has been abandoned
I’d have thought those with offshore tax avoidance schemes will feel less likely to face hindrance or investigation outside the judicial riggers of the EU
Mr Knopler I really think you have got it arse about face there. Juncker has been one of the leading tax avoiders in the world and has positioned his extremely small country Luxembourg to become the richest in the world. He did this by selling out to globalist interests and allowing them to rape the UK and other European states for their true tax dues. Looking at this process in detail made me realise the EU edifice with him in charge is so corrupt I had to vote to leave it.
The EU is not one man
You are quite right Richard the EU is not one man. Unfortunately there is a whole raft of them of that ilk including the state leaders who put him in that position. I have no time for David Cameron but at least he opposed Juncker’s appointment.
I agree with @David Knopfler
Cui bono? Who stoked the fire?
http://www.sub-scribe.co.uk/2016/09/the-press-and-immigration-reporting.html
http://news.sky.com/story/express-owner-desmond-hands-300k-to-ukip-10379137
David
Its long been my theory that Brexit was born out of a need to avoid prosecution by OLAF and the ECJ for world wide endemic tax avoidance and its facilitation, mostly via British financial services and British owned offshore tax havens…You only have to google the Tory and UKIP backers names, most of the arch Brexiteers and their links to the “Panama papers” become apparent. Only a pet theory of mine but there seems to be a lot of coincidences when you start to look!
I think ou may be over exercising your imagination
My hunch is that the right wing don’t like the EU because it’s too left wing and the left wing don’t like it because it’s too right wing. Thus the centre (Remainers) have been ambushed by a pincer movement of anti-EU factions from the wings. There appears to be almost no economic gains for anyone, but politically there are plus points for people wanting to move our direction of travel.
I’d suggest that London provides some of the answers but not in the way it is usually presented. The stereotype (see above) is that London is wholly populated by wealthy folk and oligarchs. A bit of research shows that its population is much more about Grenfell Towers than Canary Wharf. London has much higher poverty rates than the rest of the UK (28% vs 21%) and those high property prices are a massive disadvantage to most people as they mean high rents or massive mortgage repayments. Only my grandchildren will benefit from my lifelong contributions to the finance sector, just to put a roof over my head
London I suspect has the highest levels of migration (I don’t have a figure) and yet it’s voters chose not to blame their woes on migrants as they were encouraged to do. Places like Lambeth had some of the highest votes for Remain – and London is Labours heartland these days. If you think that’s because Londoners are all property owning middle- class, you need to get out more!
Others have done the analysis to show that levels of Brexit voting are pretty much inversely correlated with levels of migration. Yet people were persuaded that their problems were caused by migration and that the EU was the root cause. I was brought up in Cumberland (where we think places like Manchester and Leeds are in the Midlands…) and am a regular visitor to Lincolnshire. I’m well aware that there are some pretty unreconstructed views around. It’s partly why I chose to live firstly in South London and now further out.
So perhaps it would help to understand why most Londoners, who are not wealthy oligarchs or middle class, chose not to blame their problems with poverty, housing, education, health, on migrants and the EU, and why they voted Labour (with a Labour, Muslim mayor). That might provide we a better understanding of how to persuade others to do the same.
This not some kind of special pleading for London. If the initial analysis is wrong (‘the problem is London’), then the diagnosis and cure will be wrong too
I attended a presentation by Lord Flight, a Tory finance spokesman in the House of Lords, to a pensions conference. His brief was to put the positive case for Brexit. The vision for a utopian UK offered was as an extremely lightly regulated tax haven. I think I can see winners and losers in that.
Precisely what many of us suspected was the agenda of those with the power and money behind Brexit, all along. Immigration was just the dog whistle and a diversion to attract votes
Those who voted for Brexit hoping for better jobs, housing, and public services will be sorely disappointed