Snake oil and arsenic pills: Beware the political quack doctors on both sides of the Brexit debate

Whatever your position on the Brexit spectrum, it's impossible for anyone with rudimentary critical thinking skills to deny that there are loads of obnoxious and downright dishonest people on both sides of this increasingly polarised debate, and that the further towards the polar extremes, the higher the liar and fanatic intensity becomes.

Brexit snake oil

The biggest lie of all during the 2016 EU referendum debate came from the Brexit snake oil sellers who opportunistically used the dire consequences of ruinous hard-right Tory austerity dogma as a weapon to attack immigrants and the EU with.

It's absolutely obvious that it was six years of callous and divisive domestic government policy that was causing the collapse in living standards that these opportunists weaponised to push their agenda.

• Ruinous Tory austerity dogma resulted in a massive transference of wealth from the majority to the mega-rich establishment class (who bankroll the Tory party).

• Tory wage repression led to the longest real-terms collapse in UK workers' wages on record.

• Tory vandalism of the social safety net led to massive reductions in in-work benefits for the working poor, as well as the systematic impoverishment and abuse of sick and disabled people.

• Tory under-investment in stuff like infrastructure, affordable housing, and education led to a short-term collapse in economic demand, and a long-term ruination of our future economic potential.

• Tory cuts to public services like the NHS, policing, the fire service, and local government created all kinds of devastating consequences like massive NHS queues, soaring violent crime rates, huge increases in fire-related deaths, and crumbling local services.

Far-right Brextremists (many of them Tory MPs who actively voted in favour of all of these devastating policies) cynically weaponised this collapse in living standards to falsely point the finger of blame at immigrants and the EU.

The snake oil solution they were selling was that quitting the EU and abolishing our own rights to Freedom of Movement would magically resolve all problems like stagnating wages, failing public services, unaffordable housing, violent crime, huge NHS waiting lists, and all of the other austerity-related ills caused by the Tory government's austerity fanaticism.

Sadly millions of people fell for it and bought this Brexit snake oil.

The failure of centrism

The reason that the far-right Brextremists managed to get away with flogging this ludicrous blame-switching snake oil is the abject failure of centrism to oppose this destructive Tory austerity ideology.

For five years between 2010 and 2015 the Liberal Democrats actively supported all of the disastrous Tory austerity policies that caused the living standards collapse. They couldn't very well turn around in 2016 and point out that the real blame lay with the destructive austerity policies they helped the Tories enforce rather than immigrants and the EU without demonstrating their own culpability. So they sat on their hands and just let the far-right Brextremists sell their immigrant-blaming snake oil.

The right-wing orthodox neoliberal centrist faction of the Labour Party had a very similar problem because during the 2015 General Election they adopted a ludicrous "austerity lite"  policy of pathetically imitating Tory austerity dogma rather than actively opposing it.

They couldn't reverse position completely the very next year and point out that Tory austerity dogma was to blame for collapsing living standards, not immigrants and the EU, without making themselves look like a bunch of U-turning idiots.

Furthermore any centrist conversion to anti-austerity positioning in order to undermine the blame-shifting lies of the Brextremists would have completely validated Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour-left who had opposed Tory austerity fanaticism from the very beginning.

The Labour right-wingers knew that if they admitted that austerity was a con in order to denounce the snake oil of the far-right Brextremist political quack doctors, they'd end up actively validating the man they were itching to get rid of, as demonstrated by the Anyone But Corbyn coup they launched immediately after the Brexit vote came in.

They chose not to counter the Brextremists' blame-shifting lies because their primary over-riding priority wasn't preventing Brexit at all, it was plotting their coup to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn and re-establish neoliberal control of the Labour Party leadership.

Centrist arsenic tablets

The abject centrist failure to criticise the Brexit snake oil sellers was bad enough, but now that we're stuck in the middle of this interminable Brexit farce these appalling people have actually turned to the same kind of political quack doctor tactics as the Brextremists who created brexit in the first place.

Centrists like the Liberal Democrats and the CUK squatters have now set themselves up as quack doctors too, promising that their disgusting political concoctions of neoliberalism, austerity, and privatisation are a magical cure to this Brexit ailment.

They're attempting to sell the exact policies that created the Brexit disease in the first place as their magical quack doctor cures to the Brexit problem!

There's absolutely no denying the fact that the Lib-Dems are a disgraceful bunch of pro-austerity pro-privatisation neoliberals (just look at their disgraceful track record in government voting through every nasty Tory austerity policy, every deeply illiberal Tory assault on freedom, and every rip-off Tory privatisation scam).

The CUK squatters are just as bad, if not worse. Their economics spokesperson is Chris Leslie (one of the main architects of Labour's election-losing "austerity-lite" strategy at the 2015 General Election), Anna Soubry described the ruinous living standards-wrecking policies of the coalition years as "marvellous", their Transport, Environment, and Energy spokesperson is the private water industry lobbyist Angela Smith, and they've just hitched their boat to the pro-privatisation neoliberal EPP group in the European Parliament.

What makes CUK perhaps even worse than the Lib-Dems  is that they know perfectly well that they're pushing "more of the same" - more austerity - more privatisation - more neoliberal orthodoxy - more imperialist warmongering - but they've given themselves the Orwellian reality-reversal of a name Change UK.

The centrist Lib-Dems and CUK squatters are selling the austerity arsenic tablets that actually cause Brexit in the first place as their wonderful miracle cure to the Brexit problem!

Anyone who falls for this quackery because they love their soothing mouth words about opposing Brexit is wilfully drinking this toxic centrist arsenic pills even though their hair is already falling out and they've started pissing blood as a consequence.

Avoid the quackery

Fortunately there are other political parties opposing hard-right Tory Brexit besides the neoliberal arsenic pills quacks.

The Greens, SNP (Scotland), and Plaid Cymru (Wales) have all vehemently opposed austerity fanaticism, privatisation mania, public service cuts, and the rest of the hard-right economic vandalism that caused the Brexit vote in the first place since long before the 2016 EU referendum.

Their policies on Brexit is pretty much identical to the Lib-Dems and the CUK squatters, in that they want another roll of the dice in a do-or-die final say referendum showdown between Remain and a hard-right Tory administered Brexit. But they come with the added bonus of opposing ruinous austerity fanaticism.

Perhaps putting Remain up against a hard-right Tory version of Brexit will increase the chances of a Remain win, perhaps it won't, but the possibility of creating a devastating and inescapable double-mandate for Brexit can't be discounted, especially given the complacency, condescension, and downright incompetence of the remain campaign back in 2016.

Labour's position is different. They want to create a fail safe Brexit with access to the Customs Union and Single Market, no border in Northern Ireland, and cooperation on science, the environment, and security. Once they've disarmed Brexit to make it as economically harmless as possible. Then they're willing to put it to a final say referendum against Remain (which is a policy agreed on at Labour Conference and supported by the majority of Labour Party members).

Labour have changed direction dramatically since the unbelievably inept austerity-lite betrayal of the Labour centrists in 2015. The two chief architects of this nonsense are gone (Ed Balls lost his seat and Chris Leslie is dictating the economic stance of the CUK squatters), and Corbyn has moved Labour to an economically literate anti-austerity, pro-investment economic position.

So if you're going to vote against the far-right Brexit snake oil salesmen in the upcoming European Parliament elections (like you should), make sure you choose sensibly, and try to avoid actively endorsing the equally repulsive arsenic tablet vendors on the Remain side of the debate.

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