In These New Times

Cailean Bochanan

26th June, 2016

Now that we have voted for Brexit we will not know what exactly the program of the Remain camp was.

However, the program of the Brexit leadership was blurted out by an emotional Nigel Farrage in the early hours of Friday morning:

“For the whole of Europe.  I hope this victory brings down this failed project and leads us to a Europe of sovereign nations, trading together, being friends together, co-operating together.  And let’s get rid of the flag, the [EU] anthem, Brussels and all that has gone wrong.”

It may come as a surprise to little englander Brexit voters that they weren’t voting to leave Europe but to destroy it. It wasn’t a vote against globalisation but for Anglo-American globalisation. Neo-conservatism, the infection that just won’t go away, is back in the form of a new unelected junta about to take control of Britain. It’s chief ideologue is Michael Gove of the neocon Henry Jackson society. According to Gove:

“For Europe, Britain voting to leave will be the beginning of something potentially even more exciting — the democratic liberation of a whole continent”

So we are to leave Europe in order, subsequently, to meddle in it.

This is Gove’s permanent revolution agenda to borrow a term from one of the neocons great inspirational figures, Leon Trotsky.

In my last article on the EU question I noted that that Cameron had failed to negotiate the opt-outs that City of London interests would require whilst at the same time Brexit would leave British banks excluded from the EU. That depended on the assumption, of course, that the EU still existed. If it could be subverted then the dilemma could be resolved.

As a Brexit campaigner from Chatham House told me it was a question of stepping back from Europe and watching it disintegrate. This implies passivity on behalf of these Brexit interests but I would suggest that in reality they would be proactive. Just as the State Department and the CIA have been proactive in destabilizing Europe’s periphery with a view to destabilizing Europe itself.

The fact that Brexit is only a trigger for “more exciting” perspectives explains many of the peculiarities of the Brexit campaign. They have done nothing to elaborate a clear alternative to EU membership, they don’t want to leave any time soon and many of their promises over the NHS and immigration have already been shown to be worthless.These things are beside the point and there will be no attempt to negotiate in good faith It also explains why 250 billion has already been “made available” to the British economy i.e. the City of London: while the revolution is awaited in Europe an interim bailout of the zombie banks is inevitable. All the talk of freeing up funds for social spending, the Brexit turn to the working class, is simply hot air. It’s the banks, silly!

Of course, Brexit brings in its stead enormous costs. We have ,at one fell swoop, thrown away all our geopolitical trump cards- cards which would have enabled us to negotiate a way out of the troubled waters of end of empire. The Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with China was of enormous potential benefit to us but was entirely dependent on our being a bridge into Europe. A deal with our largest creditor and, therefore, holder of sterling denominated assets was crucial if we were to achieve , at least, an orderly decline in our currency. It also brought with it the possibility of a new role for the City as an offshore trading hub for the Yuan and the extension of the finance necessary for national reconstruction. That is all effectively over- powerful financial interests did not want the deal and they have won out.

And yet, man does not live by bread alone. The English people have expressed a wish to regain control of their own destiny. They have every right to do so. The regional integration process which is everywhere evident, from Mercosur and ALBA, to the African Union, Asean and the Eurasian Union concerns the voluntary ceding of sovereignty not the submission to a Bonaparte or a Bolivar. It is true that the UK, in as far as it still exists, can negotiate deals with whoever it wishes without belonging to the EU’s formal structures. Were it a question, that is, simply of Brexit rather than of turning Britain into a base for a neocolonial project, for the next episode in the extension of the Empire of Chaos.

Here is the rub. Here is why the British people made a catastrophic error on Thursday, one which they will live to bitterly regret. Britain will pay a terrible price for hosting a neocon junta which is set to continue Britain’s long and dishonorable tradition of interference in the sovereign affairs of other countries. Until we remove it “the markets” will be ruthless. China who intimated back in 2010 that they were no longer buying UK government bonds, no longer have a motive to hold them or to invest them in Britain. Several hundred billion could be dumped for gold, for example, leaving sterling reeling and subjecting Britain to an apocalyptic inflationary crisis.

In the meantime events are moving a breakneck speed.

All the signs are that the Junta has already lost it’s nerve following the massive, unprecedented falls in sterling on Friday. Following Cameron’s resignation Johnson and Gove appeared at one of the most lackluster press conferences ever given. It was positively funereal. Johnson appeared to be in state of bewilderment  whilst Gove with his langue de bois makes Van Rompuy look like d’Artagnan. Significantly, Johnson blurted out some incoherences seemingly addressed to Britain’s youth implying that there would still be free movement. He knows and fears that while the brexiteers hold the cabbage patches, the youth may hold the streets.

At the same time the European leadership have shown that they are not completely inept and have seen through the game. That’s why they put out the blunt message: get out now! They know that Gove wants to string things out, a bit like Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk, scoring propaganda points whilst awaiting for Clinton and the neocon cavalry to help put the European “establishment”to the sword.

On the home front, Salmond and McGuinness, two of the sharpest cards in British politics reacted promptly and appositely. The union is now dead in the water: Scotland will begin negotiations to remain in Europe and will only be able to do so as an independent country. We will inevitably choose that option especially as the true enormity of Thursday’s aberration become evident. At the same time, there can be no repartition of Ireland now that the existing border has de facto ceased to exist.

Unsurprisingly, the Brexit vote has triggered a conspiracy to remove Corbyn from the Labour leadership.

Britain now enters into a prolonged economic and constitutional crisis. Its resolution depends most of all on the recognition of the sovereign wishes of all the nations which make up the UK and the exposure of the false position of the Brexit Junta and its neoconservative, neocolonial agenda.