More on Brexit
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Does this represent the Russian view on Brexit?
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/449133-uk-brexit-democracy-eu-money/
I wouldn’t have thought it was their official diplomatic position, although Russia would benefit from the UK leaving the EU as this would remove the state most in favour of sanctions against them.
The rant itself could have appeared in the Communist Party’s paper, the Morning Stair. Perhaps it did or will.
The physical-force Irish Republicans’ contribution to the Brexit debate and its implications if the Border between Northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland has to be re-erected:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-46934277
Whatever they say, this is bound to affect the thinking of UK MPs on the matter, and presumably was designed to. Should make no-deal even less likely.
More on the absurdity of “the Border” (and of all borders) from this article from March last year:
https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-03-19/city-northern-ireland-brexit-big-headache
Some people are playing with fire just to further their political ambitions.
According to this, Rosa Luxemburg would have favoured Brexit because she was opposed to a capitalist United States of Europe:
Since she rejected the so-called of “rights of nations to self-determination” as irrelevant and as the “right” of a capitalist class to have its own state, this would be strange. But then the ex-RCPers around Spiked are continuing the tradition of the RCP’s Living Marxism (known to us as Dead Leninism) of being deliberately provocative.
So can we also assume that Trotsky would have been a Remainer having written United States of Europe
And not just a Remainer but, with his talk of “ a closely consolidated military and economic union” and call that “the customs barriers must be thrown down”, up there with the founders of the EU like Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman who did, after WW2, what he is saying here should have been done after WW1,
He wasn’t wrong of course that a large tariff-free market was good for capitalist development, which is why the UK breaking away from it and re-erecting tariff barriers (which is unlikely as not even the extreme Brexiteers want this) would have the opposite effect.
To continue recording what the various Leninist groups are saying about Brexit, here’s an extract from yesterday’s issue of the <News Line (yes, it’s still a daily):
It has become crystal clear that carrying through Brexit will take an explosion of working class anger and a workers revolution.
Which planet are they living on?
This news item could have been posted in the populism thread but it does speculate on the future of the EU after Brexit
“…as the UK lurches towards Brexit and nationalists look set to make sweeping gains in EU parliamentary elections…In the EU elections in May – the first that will not include Britain – most observers predict a rise in support for populist, nationalist or anti-immigration parties. Many of them have made significant gains in national elections”
The group of 30 writers, historians and Nobel laureates declared in a manifesto, that Europe as an idea was “coming apart before our eyes”
“…the EU elections will be “the most calamitous that we have ever known: victory for the wreckers; disgrace for those who still believe in the legacy of Erasmus, Dante, Goethe, and Comenius; disdain for intelligence and culture; explosions of xenophobia and anti-semitism; disaster”. [had to google Comenius]
While I may respect the intentions of those intellectuals, I wonder just how true their claim is
“Despite its “mistakes, lapses, and occasional acts of cowardice”, Europe remains “the second home of every free man and woman on the planet” ”
Perhaps their view from the lofty ivory towers does not permit them to see the walls of Fortress Europe against non-Europeans
Worse case scenario – British troops on the Irish border according to Irish PM.
According to Sinn Fein – A United Ireland referendum
But a rare moment of consensus
DUP MP Gregory Campbell called the taoiseach’s comments about a worst-case scenario as “deeply unhelpful”.
Varadkar’s claims were condemned as “reckless and irresponsible” by Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald.
Continuing what others are saying about Brexit, here’s the position of the Anarchist Communist Group from the latest issue of their paper Jackdaw, very similar to what we say :
The European Union seems some sort of advance on a stand-alone UK. Free movement of people exists within its borders. And its laws offer some limited but nonetheless real benefits to working people. But how long will these benefits last? Given the pasting given to Syriza in Greece and recent threats of the same treatment to Italy, the answer is ‘not long’. And such freedom of movement applies only to Europeans – the EU’s whites only Fortress Europe policy accounts annually for the deaths of thousands of helpless migrants.
Why should we be interested in their trading arrangements, the relations between their governments, the ‘deals’ they make between themselves? Our business is what concerns us, our lives, where we live and where we work. In or out we will still be under the thumb of our bosses. In or out, the destruction of the National Health Service will continue. In or out, sickness and unemployment benefit will continue to be eroded. The only fair and sane deal is the destruction of capitalism and all states — including potential super-states such as the European Union. We should settle for nothing less than this.The Polish View
900,000 Polish nationals live in Britain, the largest group of foreign nationals in the UK, and Polish is the second most widely spoken language in Britain after English. In a survey of 600 Polish business owners in the UK, 45% said they were considering moving back to Poland or to another country due to Brexit, while 30% said Brexit had already directly affected their relations with the surrounding community. Many cited a rise in hostility towards migrants in the wake of the referendum result. Rising living costs in the UK and a steep fall in the value of sterling is also making Britain a much less attractive proposition.
If people or their children experience some kind of prejudice, it affects them very deeply, says Bartosz Kowalczyk, of Polish Business Link, which conducted the survey. “The mood is very tense.”
“One moment May tells them that she wants them to stay, the next moment they hear of all these different conditions,” says Niko Cichowlas, who moved from Poland to the UK in 1981 and runs a construction company in London with a large proportion of Polish employees, many of whom have returned since the referendum. “They are feeling lost.” Cichowlas says: “When I hear the guys talking, they feel that the British are turning against them, they feel this rightwing antagonism, and some of them end up becoming quite anti-British themselves – the process works both ways. They feel under attack, it is very sad.”
“When I came here I was like: ‘Wow, the English are so tolerant,’” says Sławomir Kaczyński, 34, “But after five minutes they start crying that they pay for everything and that foreigners steal their jobs. After Brexit the country showed its true face.”
Putting the fear of no-deal into people?
The Sunday Times cited unnamed officials as saying the government had been examining the powers at its disposal if a no-deal Brexit resulted in civil disobedience, including martial law, curfews, and the use of the army to quell rioting.
The recipe for populism?
Sixty-nine per cent of respondents said they felt their fellow citizens had become “angrier about politics and society” since the Brexit vote in 2016, Forty per cent of people think others are now more likely to take part in violent protests,
65% of Britons think the country is “on the wrong track”, the survey suggests. Amongst remain voters the figure is 82%, but even among leave voters the figure is 43%.
Or an opportunity for revolution?
72% of respondents said they thought life in Britain was unfair, 68% said they wanted to see change, and 53% said they thought the socio-political system was failing them.
The fear factor
Not just troops on the streets but empty shelves in the shops
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