Jeremy Corbyn has always harboured deep suspicions about the neoliberal and neofascist leanings of the EU. His lack of candour about those doubts (and the behaviour of Brussels of late) will prove a millstone too heavy on June 8th…and condemn Britain to a truly awful Conservative government.
I’m sure I’m not the only one to have noticed that, while the charade we’re going through is often referred to as “the Brexit election”, not a single Party in contention includes the B word anywhere in its headline sloganising.
Here are some simple facts:
- The latest poll shows that, as of last week, 67% of Brits want a clean Brexit.
- I’m not sure anyone’s ever said this before, but after much click-slogging, I can reveal that in the 45 years since accession in 1972, the UK has enjoyed positive trade by value with the EU in just one fiscal year:
There it is….all alone: 2001 – A Case Oddity.
In 44 years out of 45, we lost money.
3. According to the EU’s own data, we have in addition contributed roughly £540billion net in fees, running costs and subsidies over the 45 year period.
4. Since its rebranding as the European Union (18 years ago officially) not a single approved third party audit of EU costs has been undertaken. That is to say, not one auditing firm anywhere on the planet is prepared to sign off the accounts….so riddled are they with unexplained sums and dodgy payments.
5. The EC, Eurogroupe and ECB actions in relation to Greece and Cyprus were – and this is fact based on laws and the Lisbon Treaty – illegal. No ifs, no buts: illegal, period. The ECB’s subordination of bondholders at the second Greek bailout was illegal. In the interregnum before that, Greece was in default, but the ECB said it wasn’t – illegally. What made all this not just illegal but hypocritically amoral was that Luxembourg was up to everything Cyprus was, and much worse. But it got off scott-free. The tax-evasion pimp in charge of all that was Jean-Claude Juncker. He is a mendacious drunk, and the unelected EC President.
At last over the last few weeks, the spineless prancing, scheming, demanding and fear-fantasies of the EU have made a clear majority of Britons aware of the real, depraved nature of this US/NATO puppy and its sick delusions of grandeur.
But here’s the rub: the only way now for Brits to have any chance of leaving the EU is to vote Conservative. And the Conservative “remedy” for Britain’s problems is a mindless, half-baked neoliberal economic nightmare every bit as pernicious in its globalist greed as anything the EU might come up with.
So here we are are again, happy as can be: “You can be taken over by the Soviets or the Nazis… which one do you prefer?”
Here’s my one insight this evening: if Jeremy Corbyn had come out and said, after Brexit, “Actually, I’ve always had my doubts about the EU and now I’m sure we’re better off out of it” he would be winning this election.
I’m not saying that would be an unqualified boon for Britain, because Mr Corbyn comes with tired, stained baggage, and some pretty hopeless people around him. But he would have a majority behind him: the old Labour heartlands, the decent spectrum disgusted by Toryism gone mad, the lower paid being screwed by immigration, young couples desperate to find somewhere to live….and the more traditional British who remain proud of the NHS and determined not to see our old and otherwise vulnerable citizens going to the wall while while a privileged few flout the law and become obscenely rich.
Ultimately, he was always going to face an uphill task – because there is that background feeling among most Brits over forty that Britain is not a Socialist country, and the two key Shadow posts are held by an incompetent and a Marxist respectively. But when the numbers are being counted and the activists have gone home to mutter in their beer, it will be the European Union that has done for what Britain so badly needs….an Opposition that can stand up to a dangerously rigid Conservative Party.
That is an irony, but it is neither delicious nor bitter. It is tragic.
The Slog 