by Glenn N. Holliman
In the United Kingdom, the energies of government are absorbed with planning for the exit from the European Union. The issues of migration, terrorism and the direction of future trade agreements among nations are at the forefront. In this blog, we have presented the pros and cons of Britain's decision.
The challenges of the early 21st Century in Europe are similar to those of the United States. The uneven distribution of wealth in a global economy and the mass movements of people for both economic and refugee reasons disturbing existing domestic cultures have produced stresses on six continents.
How we as fellow human beings occupying the same planet, deal with inept governments, over population, climate change and a more equitable distribution of goods and services will determine the coming history of this century.
Our regular columnist, Terry Fields, a retired English businessman, who has domiciles in both France and the United States, shares his latest thoughts. - GNH
I put pen to paper today in part on the
subject of Brexit, and in part on matters of greater weight that have helped
precipitate it.
To some extent, I really wonder at the
value of writing anything at all in the face of the new brutalism, but anyway,
here goes.
The note posted recently by your UKIP writer
has, to my mind a rather unpleasant tone of triumphalism. Fellow citizens who
are horrified - and they are horrified - by this event are unchanged in their
feelings. The deep wounds can easily be detected across the journalistic piece
in Britain. I would say that for the people who voted against this course of
action, there is no quiet acceptance of the reality. It splits the country wide
apart, as indeed it always has been, but the divisions are now patent in a new
and quite raw way.
To suggest otherwise is untrue.
Firstly a few words on the rather odd
economic claims made.
The as-to-be-expected perturbations as a
result of the vote continue. Different elements of the economy react violently
as uncertainty strikes. To suggest or imply a trend response here in exports,
currency values, inward investment and political stability is naive.
There has ONLY been a vote. By a quite
small percentage victory, but on a large voter turnout. NOTHING HAS YET HAPPENED.
The assertion of knowing the mind of the Prime
Minster from all public statements so far is a conceit that is unjustified.
To date, nobody has suggested other than
disconnected ideas, in public, from the cabinet. What one can confidently assert, however, is
as follows.
The desire to control migration has been
repeatedly stated by this Prime Minister. The 'Brexit minister' has asserted
that there needs to be access to the single market.
These statements can be set against the
repeated assertions of the most powerful politicians in nation states and in
the Commission. The G20 repeated the position.
The Europeans have - repeatedly - stated
that the four freedoms are not negotiable in terms of single market access. A
few second and third rank politicians have suggested some softening of this,
but they are powerless; and they look to upcoming European elections when they
speak.
The British consider they can define their
needs, and indeed Mrs Merkel has said they need time so to do.
That does NOT imply a willingness to meet
those needs.
The threat of UKIP to destabilise the Tory
and Labour parties has indeed caused the Tory government to have adopted a
UKIP-light stance. To that extent they will attempt brinkmanship with Europe in
pushing border and migration controls, but doing this will be bloody for the
economy. Lack of single market access and its anticipation is causing a large
number of financial institutions to plan off-shoring activities, if the worst
case scenario - which looks probable - occurs.
The real danger is not crystallized. It
involves separation, partial exclusion, competition from more powerful states
who have since 1975 co-operated with Britain.
Many key industries - in a nation largely de-industrialised
and relatively de-skilled, de-capitalised and badly dependent on a small number
of vulnerable activities - may and probably will be severely damaged by the
action of the reality of triggering Article 50.
When that happens, there will not be
negotiations on an equal basis. The mechanism allows the remaining 27 states to
offer terms. They are 460 million of them. An integrated, high value added
power block that largely trades internally against a state of 65 million, that
trades overwhelmingly externally, and half of that via the EU, and already in
some distress.
Britain may then 'request' different terms,
but many of those states- and remember ALL need to agree - will have NO
interest in allowing a derogation of migratory and travel freedom whilst
offering single market access.
The entire mechanism of Article 50 empowers
the European Union. Not the exiting party.
UKIP and others repeatedly asserted because
Britain exports less than it imports from Europe it has 'negotiating power'.
This ludicrous assertion is at the superficial level, and when looked at more
profoundly, a sort of inversion-of-realty insanity that has characterised the
referendum debacle. Utterly lunatic. For reasons that the intelligent do not
require to be repeated.
Of course, the more extreme in such as UKIP
say they want 'free trade' and no single market. They say they will 'trade with
the world'. I suggest this is the dreams of an imagined nostalgia of very old
men.
Why? Simple. Financial tariffs are falling
as non tariff barriers are rising.
Those barriers reflect the creation of the
new power blocks, increasingly stable and distinct, and the reforming of the
old power blocks.
The US is, under both likely presidents,
going to be very much more restrictive in its import proclivities. As will the
EU. As will and as is Australia and Canada.
Of course 27 countries wish to sell goods
into Britain under better terms than the EU allows. This does NOT help a
country which wishes to sell more abroad.
The UK could indeed be the world leader in
'free trade' since almost nobody else actually does it.
Free trade was not the economic history of
Britain - that is a populist illusion. The reality was Imperial preference. And
anyway, free trade only really works to your advantage when you are relatively
rich in all forms of capital. A far cry from the modern British state.
It is a bitter irony that - as so many of
the people who voted against Remain wished to be protected from globalising
competition - real free trade as per WTO terms will pitch the entire nation
into raw one-on-one competition against the cheapest, the most coerced, the
most un-free, the most truly wretched peoples working in the harshest
environments the globe has to offer.
As we leave a high value-added,
high-welfare, socially similar power block, with extensive protection for
citizens, as is found in the USA, the proposal is to range across the world,
seeking advantage where it can be found, and with capital in massive
concentrations elsewhere, and with passive populations capable of out-competing
the British in terms of education, work-ethic, often intelligence,
skill-levels, equipment and supportive local state power.
It is hard to imagine a more utterly
ruinous and lunatic policy. A policy right for 1860. Insane now.
Only the voice of the hordes of the
uneducated, the racist, the resentful and the brutal, egged on by simple lies
and quite disgusting poster-images - when added to the very many others who
were confused, frightened and coerced - could have produced this perverse
result. The 'high minded' ' get-our-country-back' types, in reality rode on the
coat tails of much nastier forces to win this vote. And the effects are being
felt in the race and hate violence rippling through the country today.
This event came about because of the
interplay of forces compressing living standards. One of them, additional to
the new economies, is climate change, as well as the explosion of the
populations of decertifying Mediterranean states who in desperation come now to
Europe if they do not drown in the Mediterranean Sea first.
Well water levels in many parts of the
Middle East, two decades ago at two metres depth, are now found at up to 1500
metres depth. NASA reports an alarming rise in global energy in the form of sea
and atmospheric heat, of a scale not seen for enormous periods of time.
Of
course, the deniers will say 'elites'. Just as another catastrophic populist
said 'when I hear the word intellectual, I reach for my gun'.
And the response of the UKIP leadership? Let
us turn Brexit into Clexit! The folk who denied the value of the
intellectual elites of the world. It also applies to climate change, it would
appear. If science is a problem, deny it. If science gets in the way of other
prejudices, set it aside, or modify its conclusions.
I watched the appearance of Farage at the
Trump rally. Unlike the UKIP offering in these columns, I considered it to be
as ill-mannered, unjustifiably triumphalist and inappropriate in a foreign
country as it could have been. But of course a large number of people will have
fallen for its almost messianic certainty and commanding confidence.
Rather like an equally unpleasant eruption
of spleen emitted in the direction of the European Parliament. Many liked it.
Many did not. I am in the latter category.
As to the background to this now universal
instability in Europe and the United States, it is worth spending a moment to
reflect.
The easy life of the West
is over. The
resource over-consumption, the horror of the coming change in climates across
the planet, the immense overpopulation of human beings on the globe, the
destruction of habitats and species across the planet, the dreadful reality
already experienced in many places, and the vast competitive leveler of the
new manufacturing states, the largest of which has most of the characteristics
of a slave state, together with the exhaustion of the reserves of western capital
left over from the western hegemony, do call for new strategies.
Far flatter income differences between
citizens. Strategies of co-operative endeavour in the old high-income world, a move
from consumption to technology shift, population management, concentrated
urbanisation, an agricultural and distribution revolution, highly developed
healthcare and well being management as man is forced to live less and less in
the previously open and 'natural' environments where happiness could previously
be obtained.
In all of that, the last thing needed is
the perversion of looking to a past that
was - as described by the Leave campaign - never actually experienced,
and in reality is a dream manufactured by perverse marketers with very dark
motivations indeed.
The disconnected part-working, part-educated,
part-functioning, left-aside in the rush to globalisation, are a central issue
here. The matter of greatly improved social management is, as a result of the
vote, a clear priority. In addition to providing sustenance and support to the
'excluded', of a scale never before thought to be required, the ruling elites
are no doubt considering how to emasculate the supply of false and distorted
information, and how to re-establish the authority of intelligence, previously
made safe by the operation of representative democracy, opportunistically
emasculated by Madame May, now under direct and violent attack by the forces of
mass populism.
Under Madame May, the UK is not at present
participating in this. But she is mortal, and will leave the scene one day.
I hope the rest succeed in their endeavours.
'The people'. The cry of Mao, Stalin,
Mussolini, Hitler, and now more recent contributors.
And it always ends in tears - precisely for
'the people'. As it will for Britain. A great pity, particularly for its
to-be-imprisoned young people.
Brexit may be a hiccup for
the world, whilst potentially being a disaster for the best of British.
I would suggest Trump
would be a full scale global myocardial infarction.
Terry Field,
September 2016
