Courtesy of The Automatic Earth.
Marion Post Wolcott Coal miner waiting for lift home, Capels, West Virginia 1938
George Osborne declared on Monday that the UK “is in a position of strength” (he meant the economy, not the football team). No, it is not. That’s why he and his ilk lost the vote. But Osborne’s actually thick enough to look in the mirror and tell himself he did a good job. Utterly blind to the people he keelhauled over the past 6 years.
And no doubt while he’s at it, he’s at least tempted to label all 17 million Britons who voted ‘Leave’, uneducated racists. George’s well-to-do friends may be in “a position of strength”, but the British people who paid for these friends of George’s to be comfortable, are nowhere near “a position of strength”.
The only way to protest the wringer they have been put through was to vote against anything Osborne and Cameron represent. And so they did.
Most of the “Brexit is the end of the world” claims that have followed Friday’s referendum result are as stunning as Osborne’s blind spot for this own people (who he doesn’t even see as ‘his own’). And most of them come from people who until recently claimed to detest ‘Gideon’.
In the eyes of a vast majority of commentators, all hell is busy imminently breaking loose in UK society and its economy because those 17 million dumb racists voted No to the EU, which was in reality simply a No to Osborne and Cameron -and Juncker et al-, and all they stand for, something just about entirely overlooked; for most of these voters, it was not a Yes to anyone else, just a NO!.
At the same time the Leave campaign claims endless streams of milk and honey are in the offing, an equally unlikely proposition (is it perhaps an idea to not only talk about money or race; how about physics?).
Fact is nobody knows where Brexit will lead, for the simple reason that there are no precedents or other comparisons. Everybody on all sides just makes things up. Since most of the media outlets that have any pretense left of serious journalism are on the Remain train, it would be easy to be fooled by them.
The whole ‘discussion’ -it’s more an endless parade of monologues- has turned into the metaphorical hammer looking for a nail in embarrassing ways.
Who do all these people have to blame but themselves? Weren’t they the ones who felt up to the very last moment that there would be no Brexit? And isn’t that why they decided to keep calm and carry on? Let’s see some denials of that, please.
The “I was asleep but that’s not really my fault, is it?” kind of thing. Bring it on. The Guardian has the audacity to ask for donations from those who “appreciate their Brexit coverage”. Granted, they publish some 826 pieces a day on the topic. But I’d consider paying them just to stop doing that.
Hillary Clinton’s reaction to Brexit was to call for ‘steady, experienced leadership’. Which sounds sort of reasonable but is in reality just another way of saying ‘more of the same’. And that in turn happens to be exactly what Brexit was a reaction against.
Clinton’s simply and obviously aiming for those Americans who are afraid of change. But that doesn’t mean she has the power to prevent it. Nor that it’s a wise track to be on, given that Trump is where he is because so many people clearly want change, not ‘more of the same’.
European Parliament president Martin Schulz was quoted as saying: “The British have violated the rules. It is not the EU philosophy that the crowd can decide its fate.” Still wondering what the source of that quote is. Saw Prof. Richard Werner quote it, but without the source.
Jean-Claude -‘You have to lie’- Juncker told European Parliament members yesterday that he has imposed a ‘Presidential’ ban on EU commissioners holding informal or secret talks with the British about the country’s exit from the EU, until the UK government formally invokes Article 50. I bet you he’s holding secret talks right now.
A Bloomberg headline: “EU Chiefs ‘Held Hostage’ by UK Tell Cameron to Spell Out Goals”. Err, guys and dolls, Cameron resigned. He’s in no position to spell out anything, and he wants it even less; Georgy ain’t even touching that hot potato just to pass it on. He’ll take a pig’s head any day.
As Jeremy Corbyn faces a Labour Party rebellion, George Monbiot says “I fear that may be the end of the Labour party. Just when we need it most.“ No, that’s not what you need, George, you need a party or other organization that stands up for you and ‘yours’. And when’s the last time Labour has done that for the majority of British people?
Also, beware of economists who talk politics; they think these are separate fields. Some even think there’s science involved. Brexit is not “Britain’s democratic failure”, as economist Kenneth Rogoff suggests, that failure came a long time ago, when corporatism fascism came in, first through Labour’s own Tony Blair, and was subsequently perfected by Cameron and Osborne.
If anything, it’s the opposite, that is to say, Brexit is Britain’s democratic resurgence, though it has arguably come in a repulsively distorted shape. But perhaps that is inevitable once real democracy has had its head held underwater for so many years.
Through all the insistence that Britain must stay inside the EU, I can’t help wondering when ‘Britain can’t stand on its own two legs’, which is what all these commentaries come down to, came to be perceived as a winning argument, but all but a few ‘expert voices’ insist this is true.
‘Britain faces an uncertain future’. How awful is that? Still, I bet you, when next time it sounds even halfway convenient, uncertainty will get to mean ‘opportunity’. Oh, and don’t you, too, hate the implications of a word like ‘nervousness’, as in: “everyone’s nervous”? Well, unless one’s favorite musician or athlete talks about the ‘healthy nervousness‘ necessary to perform well.
Much respected economist/writer Edward Harrison says on Twitter: “.. this is the part I HATE. We are, what, 5 days into this. No one knows how severe the Market reaction will be. It’s ludicrous..”
And I’m like, chill, mate, why is it ludicrous that you can’t predict what ‘The Markets’ reaction to something, anything will be? If that’s something you HATE, maybe you should not be in the game, or in the kitchen for that matter.
The markets are not supposed to be predictable, and when they are, it means someone is manipulating them, and someone else is paying for that predictability, and that second someone is invariably not in on ‘the game’.
Kids say the darndest things. So do investors and economists.
Just because you want want certainty, doesn’t mean you have a right to it, democratic or not. And neither does anyone else. But if you want some regardless, here goes: you can be certain the economy will collapse at some point. That’s not the certainty you were looking for, is it? So what would you prefer, accepting that certainty, or to let someone tell you that this negative prediction is still uncertain? I’ll give you a few minutes to think about it.
Mariana Mazzucato, another economist, says:
The third challenge is green growth. EU legislation has improved the quality of British beaches and the air we breathe. But green policies will also form the next industrial wave that will lead to future prosperity. Today green spending is an option for governments and businesses; soon it will be a necessity. Those who have chosen to invest will be in a strong position.
And I’m thinking: where to begin? A wave of future prosperity? You mean as in Elon Musk prosperity? Using public money to blow pipe dreams? Green spending is a big ruse meant to allow the formerly rich -yeah, that’s you- lay their worried consciences to rest, and pay for it through their noses.
But there is so much debt burying us all, inside our own societies, that we will never be able to afford any transition to a green economy, even if it were possible from a physics point of view. Which it is definitely not. All the rest is just propaganda.
Our future consists of using a lot less energy -try 90% on for size-; how we get there is partly up to us -but only partly-, we can do it wisely and voluntarily or stupidly through hard set limitations, but that’s the only choice we have. We will never replace even a fraction of fossil fuels with wind or sun or algea or project X.
That same species of certainty applies to the European Union, even if it may appear -even- less obvious. The grandiose EU project of an ever closer union is running into the limits of economics as well as physics. European nations can work together, but not when they’re forced to give up their sovereignty, their independence and their livelihoods.
That will lead them to turn on each other. There’s no escaping it. The EU is the sack the cats will fight in.
The EU is a monstrosity with no parallel in modern times, as evidenced in how it bulldozed the Greek economy, and in how it allowed many hundreds of promising young lives to drown in the Mediterranean, and you Britons want to not just belong to that monstrosity, you’re willing to fight one another over the privilege?
I’m afraid I don’t get it.
