It’s time to give credit where credit is due to the Leave EU campaign. So far, the main Brexiteers have concentrated on two things: telling lies and trying to scare people about immigration. They’ve lied about the cost of EU membership in Europe, lied about how much extra they would spend on the NHS if we were not in the EU. May I remind you that the big players in Leave want to charge for NHS services (Johnson) and think it is irrelevant in the 21st century (Gove). At least some of them, including for once Boris Johnson, have come clean.
Priti Patel wants a bonfire of EU employment legislation. Workers rights and women’s rights? Oh, we don’t need those. Let’s get rid of the entire Social Chapter, like Johnson wants to do. Regulation, you see. It stops big employers exploiting workers. We can’t be having that. As soon as we leave the EU, believes Patel and the neoliberal right, and we can set about scrapping those pesky regulations for workers’ rights.
I welcome all this stuff. The Remain group, which is not my personal choice of pro EU groups, has been criticised for running Project Fear. This would happen if we left the EU, that would happen. It can get a little wearing, but when the leavers admit in public what they believe in private, that a major financial hit on the economy would be a price worth paying, as Michael Gove got very close to saying last week, then we should welcome their candour. “You will be worse off, but it will be worth it, at least to me because it won’t affect me.”
I read a great statistic today from a Brexiteer who announced that 96% of British companies do not deal with the EU. I have no idea if that’s true, but if I look around my own village, it could well be. We have builders, barbers, accountants, Indian takeaways, a dry cleaning store, my local pub and a burger van. That is 100% of businesses in my local area which do not trade with the EU. But just down the road, it might just be a different story. Rolls Royce, BAe systems to name but two, not to mention some very big superstores which import vast amounts from EU countries (and elsewhere). It is true that we do not know for sure what would happen if we left the EU, but the uncertainty would undoubtedly shake the markets. And that’s what I’d like the Brexiteers to come clean about.
Just come clean, like Patel has done with her admission that she wants a bonfire of employment rights (and Patel would surely be rewarded with A Big Job by PM Johnson in a post EU world). Cameron and Osborne may be scaremongering over the economy, like the Outers scaremonger (and tell lies) about Turkey but don’t pretend, as they have done, by pretending they would spend £350 million a week extra on the NHS if we left the EU. Johnson, as we have already noted, doesn’t support the NHS, thinks there should be charges. Apart from this week. But don’t worry: if we leave the EU you can bet your bottom dollar PM Johnson would find a convenient excuse to implement his beliefs. (This is the same Boris Johnson who, not long ago, was strongly in favour of Turkey being admitted to the EU).
The big players in Leave are the neoliberals who oppose the very idea of any form of state run anything, in the same way they oppose the EU. It is a filthy lie for the likes of Johnson and Gove to pretend otherwise.
If you want to roll the dice with our future prosperity then that’s fine. Just say that’s what you are doing. But don’t come out with your horseshit rhetoric about spending more on the NHS and increasing the pay of ordinary workers. That’s never been your agenda: quite the opposite.
Commend Priti Patel for at least being open in her desire to free British people from basic rights at work and for Gove admitting that the GDP would be hit by Brexit. If we are going to take a leap into the dark, then at least tell us what you really, really want.
There could be a lot of people out there who think losing their employment rights and possibly even their jobs would be a price worth paying for the UK going it alone in the world. Be like Priti Patel and tell it like it would be.
