Little England seems to be getting smaller all the time. In this Brexit wonderland, bile and spittle seem to fly in all directions – with new groups added to the list of “traitors” on a daily basis.
For daring to suggest that British society should not regard high court judges as a threat but could perhaps worry more about billionaire media moguls – I have repeatedly been called a ‘fascist’ and a ‘traitor’.
It seems a pretty large chunk of the populace are itching to condemn a bewildering variety of groups both within and without of British society as ‘enemies’. I am not alone in wondering quite where this is going to end.
We are not even pretending to be “all in it together ” anymore. There was a time when qualities like tolerance, fair mindedness, multiculturalism and compassion were celebrated in British life – indicators of a civilised society and national pride. How far things have fallen in recent years.
As a nation we can choose which social muscles to flex and use. If we exercise our collective ability towards altruism and understanding, then our capacity for doing so increases. If we choose to neglect our better selves, then things start to fester and degrade: if we don’t exercise our better impulses, we risk losing them.
Not only is the UK neglecting its soul these days but queues seem to be forming outside the gyms where we can tone up our muscles of intolerance, suspicion and hatred. People like Nigel Farage and newspapers like The Daily Mail have a role in this but it’s too easy to blame them alone.
Michael Sandel outlined in his book “What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets” – the extent to which modern life has become a ‘market society’. The values of the marketplace can all too easily crowd out other values, often in spheres of life where they don’t belong. He suggests that we urgently need to place moral and spiritual values back at the heart of our politics and policy making.
Much of the debate around Brexit has focused on market values – and I suspect it is this wholesale neglect of moral and spiritual values that has led to a deepening toxicity within our national discourse.
Brexit is a misplaced focal point around which far more important battles are being blindly fought out in a series of misunderstood proxy wars.
What kind of society do we want to live in?
Do we want to be suspicious, resentful even violent towards people of other nations?
Do we want to live in a society in which the sick and disabled are regular victims of what Ken Loach rightly calls “conscious cruelty” ?
Do we believe in the welfare state and the NHS anymore or shall we allow the market to decide who is worthy of compassion and support?
Just how many people can one over-crowded island reasonably offer good quality of life to?
Should we shun refugees and look after ourselves first?
Shall we segregate our children at an early age so that some get better education than others?
All of these questions and many more are being interpreted by the media and our politicians in terms of market values – what we can ‘afford’ and what the market can bear. This is the real problem in Britain today – the moral and spiritual vacuum at the heart of our civic societal soul.
The man on the street may not understand the drift of modern life into a market society but he sure as hell feels the consequences of it. People feel less secure, less connected, more anonymous and lonely. The dominance of market values turns us all into units of consumption and production bereft of identity and belonging. The gaudy signs of multinational corporate domination are everywhere – even our football teams are owned by foreign capital and populated by foreign players.
In a society in which life is insecure and our sense of identity fragile, it should be no surprise that people seeking a cure for their pain seek out scapegoats and cling to symbols of a rosier past. This is what the Brexit flame wars are really all about.
In this climate it is easy for charlatans like Nigel Farage and the hard right of the tory party to pull a simple trick on the populace.
Under the guise of ‘taking back control’ from an identified scapegoat (in this case the EU) the implicit promise was that good old blighty would restore the warmth of British society and protect us from the chill winds of neoliberalism and globalisation. If that were true I would be all in favour of it, but it isn’t.
Freed of the EU, the Tories will deliver not less globalised corporate dominance but more – that is their ideological desire.
Forget about foreigners coming over here and taking our benefits; now think about multinationals cherry-picking our benefits. That trade-off isn’t rhetorical: it’s real. That money will come from our social security, our hospitals, our schools. Brexit Britain: a soft touch for corporate welfare. Is this what was meant by control?
Nissan has become the first of many multinationals who will be paid eye watering sums of public money to remain in the UK post Brexit.
Once we are out of the EU the Tories will swiftly sign up to a ‘trade deal’ like TTIP. Not for nothing has there been a quite massive grass roots rebellion against TTIP from activists within EU member states, for they recognise that it represents a huge corporate power grab at the expense of national sovereignty. Who will save us from being dominated by secret courts staffed by corporate lawyers? The Tories? Nigel Farage? Both were enthusiastically behind TTIP.
If you really care about ‘taking back control’ of your life and the soul of this nation, then your goal should be to place moral and spiritual values back at the heart of public life. As long as market triumphalism is accepted as the only set of values worthy of discussion, then the UK will continue to decline along lines that are already painfully clear to see.
The wealthy will be protected from the consequences of living in a market society – but everyone else needs to be extremely concerned by it.
Brexit is a trick, a distraction, a Trojan horse – the real fight is elsewhere. The Brexit vote offered no real choice at all – since we could only vote for free market dogma either way. Perhaps staying in the EU was the least worst option – but it represented nothing really worth fighting for.
Fighting back against the toxic ideology of neoliberalism and the dominance of corporate power are where the real battles lie – which is why the corporate media is happy for Little England to obsess over Brexit.
Brexit is an opportunity. We can make of it what we will. Since Brexit, people now realise they have real power through the ballot box. All we require is a leader to lead us to a better place.
I hate to break this to you Geoff – but the TORIES will make of it what they will, since they are in power.
My hunch us they’ll see it as an opportunity to dismantle state power and to embrace more globalised neoliberalism.
What a victory for the little guy!
”Fighting back against the toxic ideology of neoliberalism and the dominance of corporate power are where the real battles lie … ”
Errrm, ”the toxic ideology of neo-liberalism and the dominance of corporate power” are all part and parcel of the EU’s institutions and policies. Which is to say neo-liberalism and austerity forms the basis of the EU project. Please tell me how Mr Corbyn, assuming he is elected, is going to get his pet policies, e.g., rail re-nationalization, an end to ‘flexible labour markets’ and possibly even capital controls, past the EU Commission? While you’re at it tell me why you think the EU is and has been such a resounding economic success, with an average unemployment rate of 11% and a UK unemployment rate of 5%. Try asking people in Greece, Latvia, Estonia, Portugal, Spain and Italy if they think the EU is the greatest thing since sliced bread. The story is one of austerity: stagnation, low growth and high unemployment.
And then there is the geopolitics. The EU has been a stalking horse for NATO membership and NATO enlargement. NATO has doubled in size since the fall of communism in Russia and has now moved (been moved by Mr Clinton)right up to Russia’s western frontiers. Lastly the EU is having its economic and foreign policies foisted upon it by the big boss on the other side of the Pond.
But perhaps you wish to reform this bureaucratic monstrosity. I wish you luck but some political/economic systems are beyond reform. Don’t overthrow the Bourbon regime reform it from the inside. Yeah, right.
I said that “Perhaps staying in the EU was the least worst option – but it represented nothing really worth fighting for”
Hardly a ringing endorsement!
My point is that Brexit is a red herring. Handing the baton from one bunch of neoliberal charlatans to another is not a change I can get excited about.
Fair enough point, but I think that any real challenge to the EU’s strangling bureaucratic hegemony will only come at a national level since it cannot reform itself and has no intention of doing so. If a Corbyn government insists on pursuing policies which are explicitly prohibited by the EU – e.g., capital controls, trade restrictions, nationalisation, and state aid to industry – one of two things will happen: it will fold and throw in the towel as did Syriza, or it will have to leave the EU, in which case the EU will almost certainly break up.