Why Brexit is the Biggest Con Since the ‘NHS is Safe in Our Hands’ Promise

By Political Provocateur

“Capital will draw all money to itself and government’s role is to prevent this and use that money for social purposes.” – Adam Smith

As pretty much a lifelong campaigner against neoliberalism – aka extremist, country-killing, inhuman, over-gentrified capitalism, I don’t share everyone’s delight at last weekend’s crowds. Revoke Article 50 and ‘blind’ Remain, is as bad as a neoliberal-driven Brexit and the atom bomb.

I still think there is a lot to draw from Brexit and austerity in terms of wisdom. An extension to Article 50 would serve us better. We are learning a lot about our corrupt establishment whilst Brexit is going on. Many of the cons that have been bestowed upon us under Thatcher and her neoliberal predecessors are being exposed and brought to the surface. What I find hard to deal with is that everyone in that huge crowd on the weekend was either too rich to give a stuff about neoliberalism, or seemed to have no clue that it’s our main enemy.

Brexiteers, let’s start with you. How the hell can you trust a bunch of politicians who worship at the altar of Thatcherism/neoliberalism to run a movement that wants out of a neoliberal federation? Brexit was just another desperate ploy to keep the Tories in power so as to secure further deals with their corporate partners in what has been described as the biggest sell-off of state assets in the history of this country. Everything was pretty much flogged off at a discount (look at Royal Mail). This was a heist, as are most of these boom and bust/PFI pension-robbing schemes that Tories appear to preside over.

May is holding on to a deal that no one agrees with, to kill time – under the advice of her bosses in the corporate world. Whilst the Brexit parachute is gently steered to remain, and all the market volatility caused by the uncertainty is just open season for market speculators and hedge funders like her husband. The biggest nest egg for any self-serving politician (and most of those historically reside in the Tory party and on Labour’s right) is working in the EU. The average administrator working in the EU gets more money and a better pension than our actual cabinet MPs. So there is no reason for them ever to get rid of this holy grail and pander to a load of peasants who have never been their prime concern, as readily evinced by the consistent Tory class war/austerity policy.

Most of us over 40 witnessed the destruction of the character of this country and watched neoliberals over-manage and rip the heart out of our communities. A Thatcherite public service announcement in the 1980s was even quoted as saying: “there is no such thing as society”. So why trust any institution that believes in no community? Don’t be fooled. Every problem can be pretty much traced back to our neoliberal ethos. Yet somehow there’s a carnival atmosphere about blindly just going back into the EU – the biggest emerging neoliberal establishment in the world.

Must we really return to dancing around a casino-capitalist Ponzi scheme that poses as the City – with banking cartels fixing recessions every ten to fifteen years in order to take back assets from you and me? And all of us collectively acting as if every con that goes wrong is somehow an act of god that the working class and the poor have to rally to fix? While the rich and the corporate world enjoy massive subsidies and tax breaks, an uncaring state that operates as a corrupt extortionist gangster in the sixth richest world economy, tossing the crowd a few baubles from time to time to keep them quiet. That’s neoliberalism.

Why is there not a national conversation about reforming this EU? At the very least we should be asking questions on the big stage, and having the EU answer those questions before we go straight back in like lemmings. The truth is though that the EU needs neoliberalism because all of its economies conflict too much. Many countries in the EU still have oligarchs. Thatcher and Reagan’s system made the EU fit together like lego, with almost no red tape; that’s why they don’t want to ditch it. The end game is a more streamlined version of America, in which we can look forward to expensive health care, extortionate public services and even more of a rip off economy. A system so ravenously capitalist that you have to pay to get into a church to pray to your god!

So, you Europhiles – under the impression that you are swimming on your own – the sad truth is that you are being dragged away by the current. And you are paddling against the fast-flowing river created by the banking/corporate, neoliberal establishment and their puppet media. There’s a reason the establishment has painted the hard Brexiteers as pantomime baddies and then called them grand wizards. Think about it. This is all theatre; May has had no intention of taking the country out of the EU. Her husband and character villains of the piece like Rees-Mogg have made millions from the volatility of the markets. May’s calamitous speeches have not been made from a standpoint of stupidity. If we fall for this interpretation, we really do need to brush up on what hedge funding and speculating are all about.

Let’s have a look at the reasons for voting Leave:

There were people who were dubious about the way we were conned by neoliberals into being part of this EU federation, considering it was meant to be a simple trading zone. There were people who felt their towns were being swamped by mass migration, people who were scared of terrorism, people who were worried about the lack of democracy. There were fishermen who got screwed over; people who saw politicians who went into the EU with passion, but came out tamed and non-representative because of the money they were being showered with. There were many different people with different concerns regarding the EU, probably only a third of whom are what remainers like to call gammons.

It is worrying that the UK’s establishment media have created a two-sided battle – the “gammon” versus the “snowflake”, and they have continuously run with this black versus white terminology when in reality there are many unrepresented grey areas in between. By creating this basic two-tier divide and then baiting the crowds with alarmist headlines (like Jon Snow’s ‘too many white people’ comment) the possibility of any real national conversation has been all but destroyed. What remains from such division are the lemmings who fell for it screaming in each other’s faces, flag-waving furiously – with no real clue who is controlling this whole Brexit process. Both sides are good people. Both sides have got something to say – but you will only hear the extreme right and the extreme left’s arguments. Can you not see that Brexit is a con?

Whether you are capitalist or socialist, remain or leave – after this – at best, you should be demanding a socialist system that covers basic living needs, makes a man’s home his castle again, and ensures that job security is a certainty. We need our NHS to be secured from vulture capitalists; education too. Even something like the Nordic model allows for a bit of capitalism so that we can still compete on the world stage effectively. Maybe take away the class system and the pigs’ trough from those in the corporate world who drain our taxes and don’t pay any taxes themselves.

Britain: come on, you can do better than blind flag waving and joining the in-crowd. Ask some bloody questions. Britain could emerge from all of this the envy of the world, with a brand new system that everyone around the world will want to adopt. But at the moment it sadly appears to be that, post-Brexit, we will just all be told to “go back to work and shut the hell up”, when in fact we had the biggest window in the modern age to change our world for the better without interference from vulture capitalists.