Brexit: Out of the frying pan, into the fire

After "Project Fear" proved such a success in the Scotish independence referendum it was always going to be the case that both sides of the EU referendum debate were going to try to use emotional fear and anger based arguments to herd people over to their side of the debate; the extremely short time frame (holding the referendum less than two months after the local/mayoral/assembly elections) meant that there wasn't ever going to be enough time for a proper fact-based debate; and the fact that there are Tories on both sides of the argument meant that both camps were always going to end up slining a load of insults and lies around.

An awful lot of people are extremely disappointed with the dishonesty and fearmongering rhetoric from both sides, and desperate for a reasonably unbiased appraisal of the EU debate. I can't promise to offer a completely unbiased analysis because the only way to be completely neutral about such a serious subject is to remain entirely apathetic, which I'm not. However I will try to explain my position without resorting to the kind of fearmongering rhetoric, ridiculous hyperbole or ludicrous fantasy land promises that have plagued the referendum debate so far.

Democracy

The Brexiters' typical complaint about the 28 member European Commission being unelected is a ridiculous red herring. The UK has an unelected head of state, an unelected central bank, an unelected civil service and the most bloated unelected legislative chamber in the entire world (the 800+ member House of Lords). However, anyone with any knowledge about the "do it again until you get it right" Irish referenda on the Lisbon treaty, the TTIP corporate power grab or the appalling treatment of Greece by the European Commission-ECB-IMF "troika" will know about the contempt for democracy that runs through many of the EU institutions.

Of all of the countries in the EU, the charge that the EU institutions are undemocratic looks by far the most ridiculous coming from the UK. Our bloated unelected House of Lords is an extraordinary affront to democracy in comparison the the European Commission. The democratically unaccountable European Central Bank is mirrored by the democratically unaccountable Bank of England. What is more, the current UK government stand charged with cheating their way into power by fraudulently misdeclaring their expenses in over two dozen marginal constituencies.

Voting for Brexit because you dislike the anti-democratic elements of the EU, and in the process handing far more power to the bloated anti-democratic House of Lords and a Tory government that stand accused of unlawfully cheating their way into power makes no sense whatever.

Hard-right economics

The EU has a lot of positive aspects (things like labour rights, environmental regulations, visa-free travel between states ...) but it also has some extremely negative characteristics too, most notably the fact that it is riddled with hard-right neoliberal economic dogma like the unaccountable central bank, the policy of forcing ideological austerity onto member states, and the "competition rules" that prevent governments from nationalising industries even if they have a strong democratic mandate to do so.

The problem with voting for Brexit because you dislike the hard-right economics of the EU is that such a vote would empower the much more radically right-wing fringe of the Tory party to begin tearing up all of the good things the EU provide, whilst continuing, or most likely intensifying the fanatical Tory agenda of loading the burden of austerity onto the poor and ordinary whilst handing out huge favours to the super-rich types who bankroll the Tory party.

David Cameron and George Osborne have already distributed tens of billions worth of public property (including hospitals, schools, transport infrastructure, the Royal Mail, the publicly owned banks ...) to their wealthy mates at massive discounts, and in many cases even completely for free. Anyone who expects that an even more radically right-wing Tory party wouldn't continue, or intensify this fanatically right-wing agenda of distributing public assets to private beneficiaries must be living in some kind of fantasy land.

Austerity

The EU has undeniably been guilty of imposing socially and economically destructive austerity onto countries like Greece, Spain, Ireland and Portugal. Even when it's absolutely clear that austerity economics is causing severe economic stagnation, shocking levels of unemployment and massive capital flight the EU have pushed on with their ideological agenda.

The problem with Brexit is that it would further empower the Tories, who are the most fanatical austerity fetishists of all.

In most of the other EU countries who have suffered the consequences of ideological austerity there was at least an element of compulsion to force their government to engage in such destructive and self-defeating policies. The Tories on the other hand have engaged in ideological austerity simply because they want to. They know perfectly well that it's just a con job to rebrand the same failed Tory policies (mass privatisation, repression of wages and labour rights, the upwards redistribution of wealth & shrink the state fanaticism) as being somehow "necessary" or even "financially responsible".

The Brexit enthusiast Iain Duncan Smith has even openly admitted that the economic fallout from leaving the EU would mean even more ideological austerity from the Tory government.

Voting for Brexit because you dislike ideological austerity would be like cutting off your entire arm because one of your fingers hurts.

"Red tape"
 
One of the classic arguments for quitting the EU is that it creates too many regulations that tie up British businesses in "red tape". The problem with this particular argument is screamingly obvious. The EU represents 44% of the British export market, which means that unless British businesses want to drive themselves to bankruptcy by creating bespoke items just for the UK market, they're still going to have to make sure their products comply with EU standards, but the UK will no longer have any say in how these regulations are applied.

The idea that quitting the EU will exempt British businesses from EU regulations is staggeringly naive. If British producers want a global market for their products, they'll have to comply with EU standards, whether the UK is in the EU or not.

TTIP
 

One of the most disingenuous of all the arguments for Brexit is that the UK supposedly needs to quit the EU in order to escape the TTIP corporate power grab. The first thing to note is that various EU member states have vowed to veto TTIP. Greece have said they will never ratify it, the French have said they won't ratify it in its current form, and countries such as Ireland and Denmark would likely have referenda on it, so it's far from certain that it will ever see the light of day.

On the other hand, if the UK vote to leave the EU, that would leave the Tories in prime position to negotiate their own pro-corporate trade agreements with whoever wins out of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Given that the Tories are so fanatically in favour of TTIP that they refused to even exempt the NHS, it seems extraordinarily optimistic to think that they wouldn't cook up an even worse corporate power grab deal with the Americans, given the opportunity.

No plan

The fact that the Brexit campaign is riddled with poorly considered arguments like the ones detailed above is secondary to the fact that they simply have no plan for what a post Brexit economy would look like. As the former British ambassador to the UN Peter Marshall puts it "Brexit is not a policy, nor a programme. It is not even a scenario. It is more perhaps a protest or a grievance. That explains the emptiness of its campaign. It runs on assertion, assumption and criticism of the Remainians, rather than on rigorous or consistent analysis".

The Brexit camp have no actual policy for what a post-EU British economy would look like, all they have is a sequence of highly optimistic assertions about what the UK "could" do outside the EU. From a Tory government investing more in the NHS, to a Tory government scrapping Zero Hours Contracts, the Brexiters are prepared to promise anything whatever to convince the gullible into voting the way they want them to.Their combined unfunded spending pledges already add up to over £112billion, when the UK's net contribution to the EU is only actually £8 billion. The pro-Brexit Tory minister Chris Grayling has even admitted that all of Vote Leave's post-Brexit policies are just fictional "options".

If the leave campaigners actually had a detailed plan for what the post-EU British economy would look like it would be possible to take them seriously, but when all they've got is hot air "options" that they back down on as soon as they're challenged (like they did over their spurious energy bill claims), then nobody in their right mind would put their trust in such a dishonest bunch of hard-right fanatics.

Conclusion

An awful lot of Brexiter arguments fall to pieces upon closer analysis. Aside from the fact that a lot of their core arguments make no sense whatever, there's also the much more important fact that they have no real plan for what a post-Brexit economy would look like. It's absolutely clear that these people are willing to say absolutely anything in order to convince gullible people into backing their irresponsible calls for the UK to bail out of the EU without any plan for what comes after.

If they had an actual plan, then we could subject it to scrutiny and judge it on its merits, but since all they've got is a load of weak arguments, outright lies and and idle speculation about what they could do after quitting the EU, then the rational stance has to be "no thanks", at least until they come back with an actual plan of action.

It doesn't really matter how fond you are of the EU, because as it stands, bailing out of the EU and empowering the fanatical right-wing fringe of the Tory party with nothing but a load of uncosted "options" in lieu of anything even remotely resembling an actual economic plan would clearly be an extraordinarily dangerous gamble, and most likely end up being a classic example of jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

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OR

QE for the bankers failed, time for something else

 

 

After the 2007-08 global financial sector insolvency crisis the Bank of England began creating money via a process called quantitative easing (QE) in an attempt to prop up the UK economy. This 'new money' was distributed to the private banks that caused the financial sector meltdown in the first place. If the purpose of this exercise was to stimulate an economic recovery it was an abject failure (the UK suffered the slowest post-crisis recovery in economic history), but if the process was intended to further enrich the wealthiest people in society it was a roaring success.

How QE for the bankers failed

It's absolutely clear that the original £375 billion tranche of quantitative easing cash from the Bank of England benefited the wealthy minority. This isn't just my opinion, the Bank of England openly admitted that at least 40% of the benefit of their quantitative easing programmes went to the wealthiest 5% of households.

Anyone who understands basic macroeconomics will know why the accumulation of the majority of 'new money' by the wealthiest minority is a poor economic outcome. The super-rich are very much more likely to hoard any additional wealth they receive than the poor and ordinary. Ordinary people are much more likely to create economic demand by going out and spending it.

 

If monetary policy results in a ten figure windfall for the super-rich minority then the majority of it is likely to end up re-inflating the property market, re-inflating the stock market or getting stuffed in secretive offshore tax-havens.

If further enriching the wealthiest minority and re-establishing the economic conditions that existed before the 2007-08 meltdown were the objective then QE for the bankers was highly successful. If the objective was to stimulate any kind of economic recovery QE for the bankers was an  absolutely appalling waste of £375 billion.

 

Alternative forms of QE

 

If the benefits of 'new money' are distributed in different ways then the economic benefits could be much better. There are two main ways in which quantitative easing can be used differently in order to avoid the situation where the majority of the 'new money' ends up inflating unsustainable asset bubbles or stuffed into tax-havens.

 
Direct Quantitative Easing

 

Instead of creating 'new money' and distributing it to the private banks to do whatever they like with it, Direct QE cuts out the middle man and directs the 'new money' towards economically beneficial projects.

There are plenty ways a government intent on creating prosperity could use Direct QE cash to stimulate the economy and make the UK an attractive place to do business. High speed broadband for every home and business in the UK, improvements to our dilapidated public transport infrastructure, investment in the education system, science and R&D, pro-active health policies to keep the UK workforce in better condition, investment in renewable energy projects and energy-saving technologies ...

 

This quote from the respected economics professor Robert Skidelsky makes the case for Direct QE.

"The only way to ensure that 'new money' is put into circulation is to have the government spend it. The government would borrow the money directly from the central bank and use it to build houses, renew transport systems, invest in energy-saving technologies, and so forth. Sadly, any such monetary financing of public deficits is for the moment taboo. It is contrary to European Union regulations – and is opposed by all who regard post-crash governments' fiscal difficulties as an opportunity to shrink the role of the state." [source]

Skidelsky is making the case that if the central bank is going to magic money out of nowhere via quantitative easing, it would be better given to the government to invest in infrastructure projects and services (creating jobs and economic demand in the process).

 

'Helicopter money'

 

The other form of QE that would likely be far better for the economy than simply handing out 'new money' to the bankers who caused the economic crisis in the first place is nicknamed 'helicopter money'.

The idea of 'helicopter money' QE is that the central bank should distribute an equal share of the 'new money' that they create to each citizen. For example, if the Bank of England creates £65 billion in quantitative easing money, then each citizen in the UK should get a citizen's dividend of around £1,000 each.

Some people might try to argue that giving an equal share of 'new money' to every person is some kind of communist lunacy, however a citizen's divedend form of QE is actually quite a free market policy in comparison to QE for the bankers (handing control over the distribution of 'new money' to an elite group of establishment insiders). In fact the nickname 'helicopter money' was popularised by the right-wing ideologue Milton Friedman.

Reforming EU policy

 

As Skidelsky pointed out in the quote above the current policy of the EU blocks the European Central Bank or the central banks of other member states (like the Bank of England) from using Direct QE to fund infrastructure projects and stimulate economic demand. As far as the EU is concerned it's only acceptable to create 'new money' if it is distributed to the banks so that it can be used to benefit the wealthy minority at the expense of everyone else.

The solution to this problem would be for the UK government to demand that EU law be changed to allow quantitative easing money to be used in ways that benefit the whole economy, rather than exclusively benefiting the wealthiest minority. However the obvious problem is that the UK government is a Tory one with no interest in doing anything but serving the interests of the wealthiest minority, (serving the interests of their wealthy backers is the central ideology of the Tory party). It's obviously an utterly ludicrous fantasy to imagine a Conservative government lobbying the EU for them to overturn a monetary policy that exclusively benefits the rich at the expense of wider society and the economy as a whole.

Tory slash-the-state fanaticism

 

Another point that Skidelsky raised in the above quote is the way that many (including the Tory government) "regard post-crash governments' fiscal difficulties as an opportunity to shrink the role of the state". It's refreshing to see an economist admit that this is what the Tories are up to.

There's no way that the Tories would ever adopt a policy of Direct QE because using the state to administer an economic recovery where the private sector banks had manifestly failed would be a massive refutation of their core ideology that (despite all of the evidence to the contrary) the private sector is always more efficient than the state.

It's astonishing that such a huge number of people fell for the Tory austerity con. Even when they first started with their absurd "we must cut our way to growth" propaganda campaign it was obviously complete gibberish, but after six years of it, it's now absolutely clear that the austerity narrative is nothing more than a smokescreen to cover up the same old Tory policies of distributing as many state assets as possible to the private sector and the transference of wealth from the majority to the wealthiest minority.

As long as the UK is governed by a bunch of ideologically driven right-wing fanatics we'll be stuck with their economically toxic austerity dogma and the idea of the UK government administering a direct stimulus led recovery will remain a complete fantasy.

Corbynomics

 

The mainstream press have done such a consistent job of attacking and belttling Jeremy Corbyn that very few people actually understand what his economic policies are. For every column inch written about Corbyn's plans for the economy there's doubtless been hundreds of inches of absolute drivel written about how he's scruffy, too old, too left-wing, didn't sing the national anthem, didn't bow deeply enough at the Cenotaph ...

One of the most absurd and oft-repeated criticism is that Corbyn would take us back to the 1970s when what he is actually proposing is the use of Direct QE to fund infrastructure projects, which is clearly a modern progressive policy, albeit one that is based on a wealth of evidence from economic history rather than pure ideology like Tory austerity.

The Skidelsky quote above is actually a glowing commendation of Labour Party economic policy and a blatant swipe at Tory ideological austerity. Of course right-wing austerity fetishists will resort to the age old tactic of trying to smear their critics as lunatics, however with Skidelsky it's a bit of a problem given that he's is a former House of Lords Treasury spokesman for the Tory party! It's  obviously a little bit difficult for Tory tribalists to smear someone as just a "loony leftie" when they're a respected economics professor and former Tory party treasury spokesperson.

Blairite Shills

One of the most dispiriting things of all when Jeremy Corbyn announced his Direct QE policy was the way that a number of Blairites in the Labour Party joined in with the Tory chorus of disapproval, even going as far as calling Direct QE "economically illiterate".

Some of the worst offenders were Yvette Cooper (wife of Ed Balls, the architect of Labour's disastrous 2015 austerity-lite election campaign) and Chris Leslie (Ed Balls replacement as shadow chancellor).

It was utterly bizarre to see so-called Labour Party politicians furiously attacking Direct QE (a policy of stimulating the economy by improving infrastructure and creating jobs) and defending the failed policy of QE for the bankers (a strategy that resulted in a massive bonanza for the super-rich minority and pretty much nothing good for anyone else).

It just goes to show how much work Jeremy Corbyn has got to do to turn the Labour Party into a genuinely progressive party when so many Labour MPs so clearly favour the interests of the extremely rich over traditional Labour values like social justice, jobs and prosperity for all.

Conclusion

On the positive side it's great to see Skidelsky talking a bit of economic sense. After six years of economically toxic austerity gibberish it's about time more economists stood up and proposed alternatives like Direct QE.

If the Bank of England is going to use quantitative easing to create more 'new money' then it will need influential economists like Skidelsky arguing against a repetition of the failed QE for the bankers experiment.

On the negative side the UK political establishment looks to be stuck with a bunch of ideologically driven right-wing fanatics for the forseeable future, and as long as economic policy is dictated by hard-right economic ideology, the concept of the UK benefiting from any kind investment led recovery is a complete pipe dream.

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OR

How the Vote Leave case for Brexit is an absolute shambles

It doesn't matter what your opinion on the EU is, or which side you favour in the EU referendum debate, only those suffering extreme confirmation bias could be unwilling to recognise that the official "Vote Leave, take control" case for Brexit is an absolute shambles of empty misleading propaganda, unsourced statistics, fearmongering rhetoric, misleading claims, transparent false dichotomies and outright lies.

The "£350 million" lie

The official "Vote leave, take control" document repeats the lie that the UK sends £350 million per week to the EU five times. The lie has been repeatedly debunked as a massive over-estimate based on the dodgy misuse of official figures, yet it's the most oft repeated economic claim in the primary document of the Vote Leave campaign!

Surely it's a damning indictment of the Vote Leave campaign that they repeatedly use deliberately misleading numbers as crude propaganda instead of presenting anything even remotely resembling a structured and costed plan for what would happen to the UK economy after Brexit.

What would post-Brexit Britain look like?

The Vote Leave campaign have not prepared any kind of manifesto whatever for what a post-Brexit economy would look like, preferring to proffer a series of completely uncosted possibilities like "All this money could be better spent on the NHS, schools, and fundamental science research".

The idea that a Tory government that has spent the last six years on an ideological mission to slash spending on the NHS, education and science research in order to fund vast tax cuts for corporations and the very rich, are suddenly going to reverse direction after Brexit is a pure fantasy that only the most delusional people could possibly allow themselves to believe in.

This fantasy that Brexit would save the NHS is particularly delusional given that Brexit would further empower the most fanatically right-wing elements within the Tory party, who are the kind of people who hate the NHS with a burning ideological passion because it's a glowing beacon of successful, popular and efficient socialist policy.

Possibilities not promises

"All this money could be better spent on the NHS, schools, and fundamental science research". 

The use of the word "could" gives the game away. It makes it absolutely clear that the right-wingers behind Vote Leave know perfectly well that any savings from leaving the EU will immediately be distributed to the rich, so they're only offering increased spending on stuff like infrastructure, services and scientific research as a theoretical possibility.

The hardline right-wingers behind Vote Leave know that they have no power, nor inclination to ensure greater funding for socialist projects like the National Health Service or the universal education system, but they're perfectly happy to use these possibilities as bait to hook in the gullible.
Even though Vote Leave make it absolutely clear that they are only offering increased funding for the NHS and scientific research as a possibility, not as a promise, they are perfectly happy to set it up as an utterly misleading binary either-or choice at the end of the document.

"A vote to keep sending hundreds of millions to Brussels every week, or a vote to put that money into scientific research and the NHS?"

Science

The "Vote Leave, take control" document continually claims to be championing British science, however what they completely fail to mention is that scientists overwhelmingly oppose Brexit. A survey of 2,000 EU based scientists found that 75% oppose Brexit, Stephen Hawking and 150 Royal Society scientists have claimed that Brexit would be "a disaster for British science", the House of Lords Science committee have calculated that Brexit could cost British research projects £millions in funding, and that none of Britain's most successful technology companies support Brexit.

Repeated claims to be standing up for British science when there is a mountain of evidence that an awful lot of scientists see Brexit as something that would damage UK science and technology is pretty brazen stuff. Even more brazen is the attempt by a bunch of right-wing Tories and 'kippers to criticise the EU for cuts to their science budgets when the Tory government in the UK has been savagely slashing spending on science, research and development, universities and adult education for the last six years.

The ideologically driven Tory freeze on science spending has seen the UK fall way behind industrial competitors like the US and Germany. These savage real terms cuts to UK science projects have nothing to do with the EU and everything to do with the crackpot Tory ideological austerity agenda that would be further empowered by Brexit.

Unsourced statistics

The "Vote Leave, take control" document is absolutely rife with unsourced statistics and graphs. One particularly egregious example is the claim that 74% of UK based Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) think that the UK government, not the EU should control trade policy. No source is given, no data, no sample size, nothing. The inclusion of unsourced statistics like this in a document that repeatedly claims to be championing science should be enough to cause cognitive dissonance in even the most determined of Brexiters.

There is simply no excuse for the repeated presentation of unsourced statistics, especially in a keystone document from the official Vote Leave campaign.

Who is "we"?

"We regain legal control of things like trade, tax, economic regulation, energy and food bills, migration, crime, and civil liberties."

Who is this "we" that Vote Leave are referring to in this sentence? If the UK public vote for Brexit, who will benefit from these additional powers? Will it be the man on the street? Or will it be the Tory government and the unelected House of Lords that David Cameron has spent six years stuffing full of hundreds of unelected cronies?

It's absolutely clear that "we" refers to the Westminster political establishment, not to ordinary British folk, so what would the Tories do with their "regained" powers?

Trade: The Tories are massively in favour of the TTIP corporate power grab, so anyone who thinks that they wouldn't cook up an even more terrifyingly pro-corporate "trade deal" with the US after Brexit is guilty of fantasy land thinking. Donald Trump has indicated that a post-Brexit UK would not be pushed to the back of the trade-deal queue were he to become President. Can you imagine how dangerously pro-corporate/anti-worker/environmentally destructive a trade deal drawn up between the likes of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson would be?

Tax: The EU doesn't actually exert that much control over the UK tax system. There are EU rules on VAT, but there is still a lot of variance in VAT rates and applications across Europe. The EU has not prevented the Tory government from repeatedly slashing the rate of UK Corporation Tax over the last six years so that the rate of Corporation Tax tax rate for multinational corporations (the ones who actually pay their tax) is now below the basic rate of income tax for their workers! The UK government retains autonomy over all kinds of taxes such as Corporation Tax, Income Tax, Inheritance Tax, Council Tax, Stamp Duty, Fuel Duty, tax rates on alcohol and cigarettes ... so it seems that the word "tax" has only been included in the above list to make it seem longer and more impressive.

Economic regulation: On several occasions the Tories have wasted taxpayers' money trying to defend the interests of their rich mates in the City of London from EU regulations. Remember the time when George Osborne was the only finance minister in the entire EU to oppose the plan to cap bankers' bonuses at 200% of their annual salary? Vote Leave clearly want to help the Tories tear up EU regulations that impede their mates' financial sector profiteering.

Energy bills: Remember when Ed Miliband proposed a government cap on energy prices and the Tories lined up to shriek "communist" and "price-fixer" at him? Remember how just a few weeks later the Tories signed up to a ludicrous price-fixing deal to pay EdF (85% owned by the French state) and the Chinese government twice the market rate for electricity for 35 years? If the Tories are given more control over the energy market, they'll simply hand more of it over to Chinese communists and state operated energy companies like EdF in line with their crackpot ideology that the French, Chinese, German and Dutch states are more capable of running UK infrastructure than the UK state itself.

Food bills: Vote Leave don't bother to explain the means by which the UK government will gain additional powers over food bills, however it seems fair to guess that a Tory government would set up their own system of landowner subsidies to replace the subsidies distributed by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy. If the new Tory landowner subsidies are higher than the current EU ones, food prices would probably fall, but taxpayers would foot the bill, if they are lower than the current ones then food prices would rise. The idea of the Tories scrapping landowner handouts in line with their free-trade mantra is completely unrealistic. Farmers are such a loyal Tory demographic that Brexit would probably result in a large increase in free handouts to major landowners from the Tory government.

Migration: For the last six years the Tory Home Secretary Theresa May has been conducting an economically insane war on non-EU migrants, including migrants who are married to British citizens (the most likely of all to assimilate, contribute and stay long-term rather than working in the UK a while then extracting their wealth), non-EU students (a vital source of income to British universities, and a net positive to the UK economy) and non-EU workers who earn less than £35,000 per year (the average UK wage is £26,000). Anyone who thinks that such malicious and economically incompetent Tory immigration policies would just stop after Brexit is wandering into post-Brexit fantasy land again.

Crime: Again, Vote Leave offer no detail whatever on what they mean by "regaining local control of .... crime". In fact this sentence is the only mention of the word "crime" in the entire "Vote Leave, take control" document! Since Vote Leave are totally unwilling to specify what crime powers they think the UK needs to repatriate from the EU, it's fair to assume that it's simply another word added to their list seem longer and more impressive.

Civil Liberties: Given that the current Tory government are intent on scrapping as many civil liberties as they can get away with (the right to free speech, labour rights, the presumption of innocence, the right to privacy, the entire Human Rights Act ...) it's an utterly bizarre item to add to the list. Essentially what Vote Leave seem to be saying is that it would be a good thing if the Tories gained even more capacity to scrap any of our human rights that stand in the way of them doing whatever the hell they like.

Eurozone Austerity

One of the most bizarre things about the "Vote Leave, take control" document is the way that it tries to portray the dire consequences of ideological austerity in the Eurozone as a reason to vote for Brexit. Of course anyone with any macroeconomic sense should be appalled at the way the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF have colluded to force socially and economically toxic austerity on countries like Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, but using that as a reason to support Brexit is utterly illogical. It's illogical because the Tory government are even more fanatical about ideological austerity than the EU, in fact, George Osborne even found £10 billion in British cash to hand over to the IMF in order to go around forcing austerity onto other countries.

A bunch of hard-right Tories who have voted for one appalling austerity policy after another in the UK for the last six years using austerity in the Eurozone as an argument for Brexit is a display of the worst kind of unprincipled opportunism.

Uncertainty

During the 2014 campaign for Scottish independence the right-wing media constantly attacked the Vote Yes campaign and the SNP government for perceived flaws in their detailed plan for post-independence Scotland. During the 2016 campaign for the UK to quit the EU, swathes of the right-wing press have been completely silent on the total lack of an actual plan for what a post-Brexit UK economy might look like.

As far as the right-wing press seem concerned "we'll cross that bridge when we get to it" is a viable economic strategy for a stable transition out of the European Union!

It's incredible that swathes of the right-wing press were so desperate to fearmonger about the uncertainties of Scottish independence, but less than two years later they're supporting a Brexit campaign with no detailed plan whatever for what comes next. 

Economic chaos

The lack of anything resembling a coherent plan for what comes next is certain to cause economic uncertainty if Vote Leave win.

It doesn't matter how much froth and bile Brexiters like Michael Gove, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Andrea Leadsom spit about expert interventions, financial institutions like the Bank of England would be utterly reckless if they were to fail to point out the obvious fact that Brexit with no strategic plan of action from the people who are promoting it would be extremely likely to cause severe economic turmoil because financial markets generally don't like uncertainty and instability.
  An unjustified and unjustifiable conclusion

"A vote to leave is the safer option"

There is absolutely no effort to justify this conclusion from an economic, political or security perspective. 

Economic: I'm not one to take the utterances of financial institutions like The Bank of England, IMF, OECD or private banks at face value. These are the institutions that failed to see the 2007-08 global financial sector insolvency crisis coming. However, the underlying justification for their pessimistic projections about the economic consequences of Brexit seems sound. The Brexiters have outlined no real plan for Brexit and seem to think "we'll cross that bridge when we get to it" is sufficient. This mens that severe and sustained economic uncertainty is inevitable given the total lack of strategic planning. Under these circumstances anyone who tries to claim that Brexit is economically safer than Bremain is playing you for a fool.

Political: Post-war European co-operation came about as an effort to prevent another massive conflict between the European powers. Given that the first half of the 20th Century featured the two most deadly industrialised wars the European continent had ever seen, it is worth celebrating the fact that there have been no wars between EU states since the era of European co-operation began. It would be the worst kind of fearmongering to suggest that Brexit could lead directly to war, but it's difficult to imagine how it's possible to justify any claim that voting for the UK to remain in Europe would make the UK politically safer.

Security: Despite all of the Britain First style fearmongering about refugees from the Syrian civil war being terrorists, it remains an incontestable fact that all of the deadly terrorist atrocities carried out on British soil since the 1950s have been perpetrated by people born in the British Isles. The idea that withdrawal from the EU would make Britain safer from terrorism is the worst kind of counter-factual nonsense.

It beggars belief that high profile Brexiters like Michael Gove blubber away about the unfairness of fearmongering rhetoric from the Bremain side when the official Vote Leave document ends with an unjustified and unjustifiable assertion that voting to remain in the EU is somehow more unsafe than voting to leave.

Conclusion

The EU is far from perfect, I've been criticising it for years, but the official "Vote Leave, take control" document is an abject demonstration that the official Brexit campaign is a complete shambles run by people with no strategic plan whatever, who think that a garbled mess of fearmongering rhetoric, unsourced statistics, shocking opportunism, misleading claims, blatantly false dichotomies and outright lies is sufficient to convince anybody of anything. 

Essentially the whole "Vote Leave, take control" document is a demonstration of the utter contempt that the hard-right Tories and 'kippers behind Vote Leave have for the general public. It's a demonstration that they believe that people are so ill-educated and lacking in critical thinking skills that they'll simply uncritically rote learn the abject mess they've presented as their keystone document, then trot off to vote for Brexit.

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The annihilation of PASOK in Greece

The Greek legislative election on Sunday 25th January was extremely interesting for several reasons, most notably the rise of the radical left party Syriza from an extremely minor player in Greek politics just a few years ago to the outright winners of the election.

After four long years of ideological austerity imposed on Greece from abroad by the troika (the European Commission, European Central Bank and the IMF), a sizable proportion of the Greek public have had enough of failing public services, widespread poverty and 50%+ youth unemployment, all imposed by a group of unelected foreign institutions in order to protect the financial interests of the private banks that recklessly lent Greece so much money in the first place.

For the last two and a half years this destructive, troika imposed ideological austerity agenda has been administered by a coalition of the two rival establishment parties who swapped power regularly between the end of the military dictatorship in 1974 and the Greek debt crisis in 2011. This austerity coalition has been led by New Democracy (the Greek Tories) and propped up by PASOK (the Greek Labour party).

PASOK (The Panhellenic Socialist Movement) look paid an incredibly heavy price for openly siding with their right-wing arch enemies in order to enforce ideological austerity against the Greek people. PASOK were the party of government in Greece as recently as November 2011, but they won just 4.7% of the vote this time around, which is less than the Golden Dawn fascists, the Greek Communist Party or the newly formed centralist party called The River.

Between 1981 and 2011 PASOK never achieved less than 38% of the vote in legislative elections and held power for 22 of those years. Now the party is in ruins taking less than 5% of the vote and just thirteen seats in the parliament of 300. In a few short years they have gone from the party of government to a bunch of also rans, reduced to the 7th biggest party in Greece.

PASOK are very much like the UK Labour Party by virtue of the fact that they are both clearly socialists only in name these days, having bought into right-wing economic dogma many years ago. The willingness of PASOK to prop up the government of their traditional political enemies as they enforced the ideological austerity agenda of the troika was the final nail in the coffin for them. There was absolutely no way that their core left-wing demographic were going to accept that kind of betrayal, especially given the rise of several alternative left-wing parties, including eventual winners Syriza.

The lesson to the Labour Party in the UK couldn't be stronger, but they are almost certainly far too strategically inept to heed the warnings from Greece.

The electoral bloodbath for Labour in Scotland, where they lost all but one of their 41 Scottish seats to the the anti-austerity SNP is another clear demonstration that Labour are playing an extraordinarily dangerous game by cuddling up so closely to the Tories and parroting their right-wing economic austerity agenda.

Another crystal clear warning about the dangers of siding with the Tories can be seen in the catastrophic decline of the Liberal Democrats from 23% of the vote in 2010 to just 7.9% in 2015. Since jumping into bed with the Tories in 2010 the Lib-Dems have lost 49 of their 57 Westminsrer MPs, 10 of their 11 MEPs, slumped from the 3rd to the 6th largest political party in terms of party membership, lost hundreds of local councilors and lost their deposits in almost every by-election they've contested.

The Labour leadership don't seem willing to heed any of these warnings, and in early January 2015 they openly endorsed George Osborne's failed austerity agenda by voting in favour of his plan to send the UK economy back to the 1930s with even more ideologically driven austerity cuts.

By explicitly endorsing George Osborne's ideological austerity agenda in this way, Labour have sent out a clear message to all of their left-wing voters (who are still their core demographic despite the fact that Labour hasn't been a left-wing party for over two decades) that a vote for Labour will be a vote for more ideologically driven right-wing economic policy.

The big difference between Labour and PASOK is that in the UK there isn't a single unified left-wing party like Syriza for anti-austerity voters to unify behind. Instead the UK has the SNP in Scotland, Plaid Cymru in Wales, the Green Party across the whole UK, and a number of other minor left-wing parties too, meaning that even though the Labour Party is riddled with right-wing politicians like Ed Balls, Liam Byrne, Yvette Cooper and Jim Murphy (who would all clearly be more at home in the Tory party), Labour are clearly the only political party that can prevent the Tories getting into power.

Labour may be the only party that can keep the Tories out of power, but a huge proportion of their core demographics (especially in Scotland) have come to realise that voting Labour to defeat the Tories is almost pointless if the Labour Party that replaces them adhere to exactly the same right-wing economic ideology as the Tories do.

It remains to be seen whether the annihilation of PASOK in Greece and the Scottish electoral bloodbath will be warning enough to convince the Labour Party to distance themselves from the Tories and abandon the right-wing economic ideology they've been pushing ever since Blair and Brown usurped the party in 1994, or whether Labour will carry on regardless and make it very much more likely that the people of England and Wales will do like the Scottish and consign the pointless red Tories to electoral oblivion too at some point in the near future.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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