Patrice Riemens on Mon, 4 Feb 2019 19:25:47 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> Paul Mason: Britain's impossible futures (Le Monde diplomatique, English edition)


On 2019-02-04 15:48, David Garcia wrote:
Paul Mason wrote:

The left at a crossroads

By the end of February it is likely that May’s attempt to
renegotiate Brexit will fail, stockpiling of food and medicines will
increase, and sterling and growth will fall sharply. In an
atmosphere of crisis, May’s bluff will be called. It is unlikely
that all her cabinet members would remain in office if she sets her
sights towards the finishing line of a No Deal Brexit.

To prevent No Deal, the cabinet is going the have to pull the plug
on Article 50, or on May herself. For either May or her replacement,
the option then would be to embrace Labour’s proposal of a customs
union plus single market alignment, to get Brexit through with
Labour votes. That would split British conservatism strategically,
probably for decades.

There is however another an equally plausible scenarion which is that
after May’s latest attempt to re-negotiate fails she will continues
to pander to the Rees-Mog’s (ERG) hard right wing of the
Conservative party (which is supported by the bulk of Conservative
party members) leading her to grit her teeth and go down the
hard-brexit “no-deal” rout and take us over the edge.

Why would she do that? A clue lies in May’s ’sisterly’ advice
she gave when she sacked former Chancelor, George Osbourn on coming to
power. She advised him that if ever he wanted to become PM he should
go out and “get to know the party”. This offers an important
indicator.. that it is not the MPs that matter most to her (or even
economic future of the country). Her emotional priority is staying
close and true to the instincts and prejudices of the dwindling
population of of Tory members (about 124,000 members) in the country.
This group are far more in tune with Reece Mogg, Johnson and yes
Farage than they are with the majority of Tory MPs who fear what the
reality of a no-deal Brexit would mean. In the end she might well
calculate that either way the party will split but the split might be
worse if she betrays he instincts of the Tory grass roots. So it may
be the moment for us locals to start stock-piling...

For the Labour party the dillema is precisely the opposite as Mason so
eloquently describes..

In the article Mason argues that it is not classic leftist arguments
against the EU that determined his ‘luke warm’ attitude to a
public vote that his party agreed to at Conference
but his belief that the moral authority of the refferendum result
could not be dismissed. My memory however is that Corbyn was equally
luke warm to the remain cause during the
refferendum campaign itself.. when asked out of 10 how enthusiastic a
member of the EU he was ? He replied “7". True he participated in
the campaign and showed up on the hustings
but if you compare it to the energy of his campaign for the party
leadership and the general election he never really looked like he had
his heart in it.

But othere may disagree on this...


Nice and quite credible viewpoint / analysis (immo), David. At least as far as Theresa May is concerned. As she behaves in a fairly inscrutable way your take is as good and probably better than another. Regarding 'Jeremy' it is in a sense even more inscrutable, and reminds me of what Joan Robinson once said bout he Indian economy: "anything you may care to say about (it) is true - but so is its opposite".

To me the most amazing, and truly 'fresh approach', element in Paul Mason's piece was the reference to the new, 'global' UK defense policy.

Meanwhile, 'Bruksel' must still be completely perplexed at what the (Dis)United Kingdom, or at least its current government, really wants. Over and above that the said government doesn't appear to have a clue itself.

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