Niall Crowley – The Echo Chamber Club

Backing Brexit

Niall Crowley — Sun, 03 Dec 2017 08:00:20 +0000

A good king or a bad parliament?

Here is the news. Brexit is to blame for everything bad in the world. Everything bad that ever was, is and will be. All down to Brexit. I might be wrong, but the only bad news this week I’ve not heard blamed on Brexit is the Bali volcanic eruption. Today, for example, it’s Alpine skiing (a great British invention) that’s ‘on a slippery slope’ due, in-part to Brexit.

There’s an almost irrational fear of all things Brexit that’s growing ever more shrill. Take this revealing, some would say xenophobic verbal attack by “Remainiac” Alastair Campbell on German-born former Labour MP Gisela Stuart, a prominent Leave campaigner.

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The constant wall-to-wall negative carping about the horrors and potential horrors of Brexit are enough to get anybody down. So here are two big-thinking, pieces that’ll hopefully cut through the Remainer ‘Red Mist’. Regardless of your views on Brexit, both articles offer a far less mainstream, but for me, compelling take on why the referendum result was so important, and what’s possible in post-Brexit Britain.

Old ideas – still relevant today

For democracy and freedom – vote Leave

“The main point is that we are voting about democracy, and democracy is about freedom, and democracy and freedom matter.”

“…a vote to leave is the democratic thing to do, and will be of great significance. The demos can strike a blow against the collusion and entanglement of the UK with a very undemocratic institution, and can land a blow on those ‘mind forg’d manacles’ too. Settling for a good king rather than a bad parliament should, now we have been asked, be turned down.”

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We have nothing to fear but the fear of Brexit itself

“The British people did not vote to leave the EU with a proviso that there would be no economic costs. In fact, the case for remaining, in both the government’s official communications and in much of the general campaigning, focused almost entirely on the alleged economic damage that would result from leaving.” …

“People heard these ‘economic’ arguments and yet a majority still voted to leave. This means a huge number of people rejected the economic case, either as exaggerated gloom-mongering and/or as a risk worth taking. What is clear from the vote is that, to a very significant section of the electorate, improving our democracy by bringing political decision-making back home was more important than the possible impact of Brexit on their living standards.”

Tony Benn on democracy and the EU – 20th November 1991

“Some people genuinely believe that we shall never get social justice from the British Government, but we shall get it from Jacques Delors; They believe that a good king is better than a bad Parliament. I have never taken that view. Others believe that the change is inevitable, and that the common currency will protect us from inflation and will provide a wage policy. They believe that it will control speculation and that Britain cannot survive alone. None of those arguments persuade me…”

Read Tony Benn’s speech here

Recent articles

Is there anything to recommend here? Many remainers think that Brexiteers can’t possibly still be in favour of Brexit – would be good to prove this point wrong

Cheer up Remainers, Brexit will be a liberation

“Everything to do with Brexit is axiomatically catastrophic [according to Remainers]. The British economy is keeping its end up at present with exports increasing and GDP gently growing? No, cry the Remainers, the economy has already collapsed! Unemployment is at a 42-year-low? No, penury beckons! The number of EU-born workers in the UK rose last year after the Brexit vote? No, we’re slamming the doors in their faces!

Every obstacle the EU is placing in Britain’s way is deemed to be further proof of Brexit imbecility. The Irish border is currently being presented as an insoluble problem. Yet as the former Northern Ireland secretary Owen Paterson has observed, this is nonsense. Only five per cent of Northern Ireland trade goes across that border; neither north nor south wants a “hard” physical border; and existing electronic measures can be made to solve the problem.”

The elites are in revolt against the people

“The EU oligarchy, desperate to soften the mass democratic blow that 17.4million Brits delivered to it last June, is marshalling the Irish to its low, shameful cause. It is cajoling the Irish government to make its nation, and its border with the UK-ruled north of Ireland, into a stumbling block in the Brexit talks. And the Irish political elite, craving the political blessings of Brussels far more those of its own people, is playing along. It has decided that being a patsy of the EU will bring it political benefit. Which it might in the short term. But it forgets at its peril the strength of democratic anti-EU feeling among its own populace.”

Read more by Brendan O’Neill in spiked

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My fellow dons tolerated us leavers, until we won

“But I’m not a victim and we shouldn’t blame Oxbridge for the Brexit blues”

“The real lesson of the Brexit referendum is that the UK faces a crisis of social disintegration. Those who can afford to do so are isolating themselves from the rest of society. Big social institutions, such as political parties, labour organisations and the National Health Service, were traditionally points of interaction for people from different walks of life. They no longer serve this integrative function and it is difficult to say that there is any sort of common outlook among UK citizens. Brexit has revealed the gulf that exists between the different sectors of society and the lack of empathy on the part of those who are accustomed to getting their own way.”

The post Backing Brexit appeared first on The Echo Chamber Club.

Is Brexit Good for the People of Europe?

Niall Crowley — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 15:00:59 +0000

Democracy for the demos

Is Brexit good for the european people?

It’s a simple, obvious question you’d think, but in the mass of articles generated by the referendum result of 23 June 2016, it’s one that surprisingly few have bothered to consider. Even when asked directly, many can’t answer the question. For example, the pro-Remain Financial Times asked eight of its journalists ‘Is Brexit good for Europe?’. Guess what? Not one of them had a thing to say about the people of Europe, but focussed almost entirely on the fate of the EU and its institutions.

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It’s the same story across the pro-Remain media. They are far more concerned with the fate of EU and its institutions than with the European demos. But enough of the anti-democrats. Let’s take an alternative look at the EU and what the significance of Brexit might be for the people of Europe.

The people of Europe

A European spring?

Frankfurt-based writer Matthias Heitmann firmly believes that Brexit is good for Europe and its peoples. Here he argues that: “in 2016, we witnessed the first signs of a revitalisation of the European political landscape” and that: “the British referendum was like a warm river flowing over formerly frozen ground”.

The European Union has failed: it’s time to leave

James Heartfield, author of ‘The European Union and the End of Politics’, argues here that a true union of European peoples would be a good thing, but that the current EU is actually a barrier to that ever happening.

“If Europe were one Republic arguing about its future, it would make sense to have a European Parliament, with legislative powers. But if that singular polity were to emerge, it would have to overthrow not just the nation states, but the European Union, as well.”

The elephant in the referendum

Throughout the referendum and its aftermath, an invaluable resource and alternative voice to the Official Leave campaign has been the blog: ‘The Current Moment’. This is written by a collective of academics; Lee Jones, Chris Bickerton and Alex Gourevitch.

Here, they turn on its head the view of many in the Leave campaign that the EU is a superstate that bosses the member states around.

“Eurosceptics running the Leave campaign try to sell us the illusion of the Brussels superstate, but their claims amount to no more than rhetorical assertions.”

Instead, they argue that the ruling national elites use the EU to insulate themselves from their lack of authority with their own electorates. “European political leaders look to each other as a source for the authority to rule, and they do this through their intergovernmental collaboration in the EU.” In other words, the EU and its institutions are an anti-democratic shield used by political elites against the demos.

You think the EU is progressive? Take a look at Greece

Academic and commentator on Greek politics Nikos Sotirakopoulos examines the devastating impact that enforced ‘economic reforms’ have had on the people of Greece and argues that: “what matters most to Brussels is not the restructuring of Greece to improve its economic health, but rather putting Greece on continuous life-support in order to keep it in the Eurozone and avoid further compromising the EU political project.”

Europe in revolt

Finally, Chris Bickerton argues that Brexit represents something far more than a purely British phenomenon, and that a political ‘void’ is opening up across Europe between people and their governments.

“Politicians insulate themselves from public disaffection by making policies at the European level. They rely on the complexity of the EU’s institutions and on the technocratic language used by its officials to depoliticise even the most controversial of issues. Successful for many years, this strategy adopted by Europe’s elites has now begun to unravel. We see this most obviously in the UK but, not far beneath the surface, it is happening across the continent.”