Brexit is More Sinister than the Sales Pitch

Tweet Follow @RPJblog
By Jason Michael

In the EU referendum the UK was sold a vision of Brexit that was a fraud, but behind the scenes was another plan voters would never support. This plan became the payload in the populist Brexit England and Wales lapped up.

Britain’s Conservative political establishment is hell bent on making Brexit a success. This is entirely curious because the woman in the driving seat – Theresa May – campaigned to Remain in the European Union during the EU referendum. Given that the responsibility of an elected leader is to govern as much as it is to represent the will of the people, it is interesting that Mrs May has adopted such a hardline Brexiteer position when, if her EU referendum statements were sincere, she is persuaded of the economic and trade dangers posed by leaving the EU. Insisting now that she is merely delivering the will of the people, she appears to be doing so in full knowledge of the fact that this is a bad move for the United Kingdom. Surely this is a failure of her duty to govern?

Not everything the people want is good for them. The economic crisis precipitated by England and Wales’ decision to leave the EU; with the collapse in the value of the pound and the rapid decline in imports, is proof – even before Britain’s EU exit has become a reality – that Brexit is not good for Britain. Yes, at least in theory, this may be the will of the British public, but competent leadership in a democracy exists to strike a balance between the will of the people and the national interest – what the state needs as opposed to what its citizens want.

Few would suggest Theresa May is an intellectual heavyweight. She is far from that, but she is not stupid. May knows Brexit is bad for the UK – even potentially disastrous. The recording of her meeting with Goldman Sachs in London a month before the referendum, leaked to the Guardian, only confirms this is be her understanding. So why, we must ask, is the Prime Minister pursuing a departure from the EU she herself knows will undermine the UK’s best interests?

#Brexit supporters like to blame EU for neoliberalism. This is from the Conservative manifesto for GE 2005. It is t… twitter.com/i/web/status/9…
—
Immigrant Dr. Humbug (@ToruOkada69) September 10, 2017

In answering this question we must first recognise that Mrs May is not in charge. No elected head of government is ever in charge. Heads of state and heads of government in democracies are only ever temporary employees of the state. Giving the lie to at least the sort of democracies we have, it is the unelected senior civil servants behind the state who are always and everywhere in charge in the modern bureaucratic state. In every democracy this is the obfuscated centre of power, and in Britain we can safely assume that this deep state is the real driving force of Brexit.

The Brexit voted for in the UK is most certainly not the Brexit for which people thought they were voting. There are in fact two Brexits – the real Brexit concocted behind the scenes and kept a country mile from public scrutiny and the counterfeit sold to the public during the referendum campaign. We know, owing to its complete irrationality and to the lies on which it was based, that the latter could never have been the real Brexit. Leaving the EU was not about sovereignty and control over borders. Those things were already well established and legislated for in EU law. Had the UK wished greater control over who entered the state and took up residence all it needed to do was implement those laws already available to all EU member states. It never did this.

Making this fraudulent argument and propagating it with the help of vast sums of dark money and media and social media manipulation was always about giving life to the real Brexit; a plan for the economic remodelling of the UK the public would never have supported. We do not know the details of this plan, but we know that it is so important to those in the hidden spheres of power in London that it trumps even the personal misgivings of the Prime Minister. We can also make some pretty educated guesses as to what this plan entails.

Britain’s hidden bureaucratic establishment is neo-Thatcherite to its core. Driven by so-called anarcho-capitalist libertarians, this neoliberal agenda has always functioned to push the UK towards what has proven to be an uncritical and often dangerous alignment with the United States; both its foreign policy objectives and its economic worldview. This is and has always been the UK’s real issue of independence. It is entirely subjugated to the whims of the White House and the Washington consensus by the ever-changing terms of the “special relationship.”

It is in recognising this – a geopolitical reality that has been played out time and again in the UK since the Suez Crisis in 1956 – that we get our best indication of the true nature of Brexit. Our departure from the European Union is – and has to be – all about better serving the interests of the US’ global strategic objectives. Brexit, one can only suspect, is the beginning of our final transformation into a US satellite; a military, economic, and political hub for Uncle Sam at the edge of Europe.

As such, and May has already suggested as much, the UK will be no different from any other entrepôt in the international network underpinning Washington’s as yet uncodified doctrine of global dominance. In this scenario – in many respects the most logical – Brexit is a coup d’état. The continued assaults on civil and human rights, making way for the increased financialisation of the economy and the creation of tax haven Britain, only mirror the developments of other US overseas economic dominions. This also goes some way to explaining the heavy investment of US backers in the Leave campaign. Russia, with its own agenda, looks to have supported Brexit as a means of destabilising both the UK and the EU.

Brexit is most definitely not what it says on the tin. We do not – and cannot – know with absolute certainty what its real purpose is, but there is now no denying it had nothing to do with asserting British independence or the best interests of the state. There is enough evidence, should we care to look for it, to suggest that this is a hugely important project for those in power, and no matter where this is heading we can be sure it is for the benefit of those in charge and not the rest of us.