In less than a week, the population of the United Kingdom will vote in a referendum to decide whether the country will REMAIN in or LEAVE the European Union. The campaign has been bitterly fought with the governing Conservative Party, under the leadership of Prime Minister, David Cameron, tearing itself apart. And this week the country witnessed the barely believable event of Labour Party MP Jo Cox, gunned down and stabbed in her own constituency in the county of Yorkshire by an ultra-right-wing extremist with links to neo-Nazi groups and a history of mental illness.
Racism, xenophobia, anti-immigration sentiment, and the very worst of humanity’s capacity to hate and to be intolerant have been on display in the last 6 weeks, mostly inspired by a right-wing media intent on supporting their owners’ selfish financial desires to turn the UK into a state without human, workers’ or environmental rights.
Is there an economic argument for why Britain should leave the EU?
In economic terms, we should be clear – and for those in doubt I highly recommend the book by former Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, “And the Weak Suffer What They Must?” – that the global economic system has been built in such a way that it is designed to fail. No one is paying attention to this fact because the media don’t want anyone to understand it because it is not in their owners’ financial interests.
But surely anyone paying attention understands that this global neo-liberal, speculation and usury-based economy doesn’t work for the entire population of the planet. Statistics such as 100 people (and decreasing) owning 50% of the planet’s wealth and 2 billion people living on less than 1 or 2 US dollars a day is enough to demonstrate it.
If you are a person who has more than this you are lucky, but at the same time the majority of people who read this will be people with debts up to their eyes; credit cards, mortgages, student loans, etc. You are literally working to pay for loans that make the banks and their owners rich.
It has been said that in a closed system (which planet Earth is) an economic plan built on the basis of financial growth is unsustainable. We have seen many times in history how this economic model blows up and causes havoc and misery to the populations affected. This model led directly to the Second World War, and it is no coincidence that the USA has been in an almost constant war since WWII came to an end. The dollar is reliant on this fact.
So, how does this affect the UK referendum?
Well we have seen during the campaign the dire warnings from both sides of the debate predicting economic doom if Britain remains in or leaves the EU, but sooner or later Britain’s economy is doomed anyway, so dependent as it is on financial services provided by the City of London – the world’s biggest offshore tax haven.
And it is interesting that in the debate, the far right-wing and the far left-wing on the traditional political scale are both calling for the UK to leave the EU, but both are doing so for very different reasons.
On the far-left, they express their genuine concerns that the EU is a project built for the benefit of the German banks and industry, and this was in fact one of the driving forces of the European Union emerging as it did from the European Coal and Steel Community. The lack of democracy and transparency in EU institutions is breath-taking, and as we have seen in the case of Greece, the EU’s economic policy is not just badly thought out, it is absolutely evil in its treatment of human beings. A monetary union without a political union cannot work as the Greeks are finding out to their cost.
The UK’s far left complains that there is not enough protection of workers’ rights, human rights and environmental rights in the EU, and they are right. The only way to correct this, they contend, is to withdraw from the EU and make UK legislation stronger in these areas.
On the far-right, they have a completely different agenda: economic enrichment for a few, and they disguise this with xenophobia towards migrants which they are dependent on in order to keep labour costs as low as possible. And of course through their manipulation of the media agenda the far-right controls virtually all the media, including the media that call themselves left-wing (such as the Guardian) and the BBC (which strives to remain neutral – but this means placing themselves in the middle of a left-right spectrum of media views that leans overwhelming to the right distorting the real location of the political centre ground).
On the far left they want to leave the EU because they are scared the EU will sign the loathsome TTIP agreement with the United States, on the far right they want to leave the EU because they are scared the EU won’t sign their beloved TTIP agreement with the United States.
But ultimately an economic debate won’t work in order to make a convincing argument, because sooner or later the system is doomed to self-explode. Staying in or out of the European Union is only a decision about the short-term impacts on the UK economy.
So what point of view should we consider when deciding to remain or leave?
Given that the economic system is set to collapse regardless of the result, then we need to look at other factors to help us decide. Firstly we have to consider, what kind of world do we want to live in? What kind of world opens the future for the development of human beings?
The European Union is very far from being the kind of union that the people of Europe want. We can say confidently that all the people of Europe (and in fact the world) want good quality health care, quality education for themselves and their children, a decent job that makes them feel like they are making a contribution to society, sufficient leisure time and security in their old age. People want to live in a world in which they are sure that future generations will have a planet that is worth living on. People want a world without wars and without violence, this doesn’t mean that there won’t always be conflict, but people want a world where conflict is resolved without resorting to wars and violence.
This kind of world, by definition, has to be an internationalist world, a world in peace with its neighbours, a world which is self-sufficient in all aspects; from the food we eat, to the components used in our mobile phones and cars. In other words, as humanity, we cannot continue to live by consuming more than what the planet is capable of providing. And if the planet cannot keep on giving us the quantities of metals and raw materials we require in order to maintain a good lifestyle, then we need to make sure we recycle every single atom and molecule of those raw materials so that future generations (and we are talking about thousands of generations here, not the next one or two) can continue to live at the same level of comfort, and surely better given the advance of technology. And of course this level of comfort that people in the West enjoy today must be extended to all human beings on the planet.
An internationalist world in peace with its neighbours needs regional coordination, and regional distribution of goods and services. Whether we like it or not the UK will never be able to make feta cheese quite like the Greeks, or parmesan, quite like the Italians. Yet the Italians and Greeks, will never be able to make Scotch whisky quite like the Scots. We live in an international world, we live in an interconnected region, and we need regional coordination bodies in order to make life as comfortable as possible for everyone.
No, the European Union is not the coordination body that the people of Europe needs, but it is what we have, and it is worth the people of the UK staying in it in order to make it better.
We live in a historical moment that is extremely dangerous; the USA is increasing global tensions and pushing Russia into a new arms race; the economic system is collapsing once more; wars in the Middle East are creating flows of refugees that haven’t been seen since the Second World War.
In fact we can say that we are in a historical moment that bares remarkable similarities to the pre-Second World War landscape. This time, of course, if we go to a Third World War, it will be with nuclear weapons, and for sure there will not be a Fourth World War, because there won’t be a human race capable of starting it.
This international tension, these wars, this collapsing economic system are not a result of the vast majority of people of the world, it is the result of a few greedy individuals who make a lot of money out of these problems and who care nothing for the wellbeing of the world’s population. Those who are creating these problems manipulate people by labelling them into different nationalities, religions, races, genders, sexualities, etc. This differentiation among people is the seed of discrimination, and this discrimination is what is being fed right now. Hatred is being stoked against immigrants from all countries of the world living in the UK, and it must be the rejection of this very feeling of manipulated intolerance that should be the key to how the people of the UK vote on Thursday.
So when voting on Thursday, the people of Britain should decide on the basis of their solidarity with other human beings. They must consider; does my choice help to build bridges with the rest of the world? Does it promote tolerance and understanding between peoples? Does is show solidarity with people from other countries who ultimately want the same things as I do?
The referendum comes down to a choice between hatred and intolerance of people from other countries, on one hand, and solidarity and a willingness to work together with people who are different on the other hand. Despite the tragic nature of the European Union today, it has got to be better than putting the UK completely in the hands of an isolationist, xenophobic, greedy, neo-liberal elite that will rush to dismantle all the remaining human, workers’ and environmental rights that have been so difficult to achieve in recent decades. Instead, the people must vote to remain and change the way the EU works so that we advance one more step towards a Universal Human Nation in which all people of the planet, and all the future generations that will live on the planet, can have a life worth living.
