#Analysis #Brexit: #QuestionIt: Why #Remainers insist #UK is better in the #EU! #FoxesRunningHenhouse

Why are Remainers so convinced that staying in the European Union is what is best for the UK? | Barry McGuinness, British person | 10 August 2019

First, because all the key arguments for Britain leaving the EU are false. Second, because it’s become much clearer what Brexit was really about all along.

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Arguments for Britain leaving the EU …

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1. Restricting immigration?

Yes, there will be fewer EU immigrants as a result. And it will become (even) more difficult for non-EU refugees and migrants to cross the English Channel from France. But the majority of immigrants to the UK come from Britain’s former colonies in Asia, Africa and the West Indies — two or three times the number from EU countries.[1]Leaving the EU will not affect these sources of immigrants.

Moreover, the Conservative Government has cut the funding for training nurses to such an extent that the UK has to rely on foreigners to fill the gaps.[2] After Brexit, the UK will lose those EU workers who want to do these jobs and will simply become more dependent on non-EU workers.

2. Good for the economy?

By cancelling its membership of the EU, the UK is losing all the economic advantages that come with it. These include open borders, tariff-free import/export trade, hassle-free international travel for business, holidays, studying, working, etc., and all the benefits that go with being part of the world’s most successful trading bloc.

British business will be hurt; British science and scholarship will be hurt; British workers will lose the right to work anywhere in Europe; British students will no longer be able to work or study anywhere in the EU; poorer areas like Cornwall and Wales will lose their EU grants.

Even the Government’s own forecast concludes that the UK will be left ‘permanently poorer’ by leaving the EU, and with a no-deal Brexit causing an annual loss per household of over £5,000.[3]

“The conclusions of this document are clear: none of the [Brexit] alternatives support trade and provide influence on the world stage in the same way as continued membership of a reformed EU; and all of them come with serious economic costs that would affect businesses, jobs, living standards and our public finances for decades to come. To put it simply, families would be substantially worse off if Britain leaves the EU.”

• HM Treasury analysis: the long-term economic impact of EU membership and the alternatives. HM Treasury, 18 April 2016.

Some prominent Brexit supporters are very aware of all this. People like Jacob Rees-Mogg aren’t stupid — they have been moving their own assets out of Britain to continue making profits within the EU while the UK struggles along outside it.[4][5]

3. Taking back control?

The UK has never, at any point, lost control to the EU — and that’s according to the British Government.[6]

All those daft laws supposedly imposed on the UK by dastardly eurocrats don’t really exist. They were made up by anti-EU journalists like a certain Boris Johnson.

As a bored but politically ambitious young journalist reporting from the European Commission in Brussels, Johnson found that he could easily make front-page headlines by falsely portraying the European Commission as a bunch of jumped-up foreigners trying to undermine the UK. His absurd ‘Brussels-bashing’ tales actually boosted his career prospects, as a lot of old-fashioned Conservatives back home believed every word he wrote. [7]

Almost single-handedly, Johnson created the brand of fake news known as ‘Euromyth’. It did of course mean ditching any semblance of journalistic integrity, just deliberately lying and scaremongering on a daily basis — but he managed to do it spectacularly well, and still does.

He was, however, recently caught red-handed:

(In his leadership campaign, Johnson paraded a kipper claiming that ‘Brussels bureaucrats’ impose ridiculous rules on kipper packaging. In fact the packaging rules are set by the UK Food Standards Agency simply to ensure the safety of food bought online.)

The EU certainly isn’t run by ‘the unelected eurocrats of the European Commission’ as Boris Johnson keeps claiming and Nigel Farage keeps parroting. It is actually run democratically by the 28 nations’ ministerial representatives in the Council working together with the 751 elected MEPs in the European Parliament.

• The Commission proposes possible new legislation to the Council and Parliament,
• The Council and Parliament debate the proposal and take a vote.
• The new legislation is enacted only if the two elected bodies jointly agree to it.
• The Commission then implements their decision.

The EU is like a club, membership of which comes with certain rules and regulations — most of which simply specify how the members should co-operate as a single market.

By accepting the same democratically agreed rules and regulations as other member states, the UK gets to enjoy the four key benefits of EU membership: free movement of goods, labour, services, and capital. And as a particularly strong and influential member, the UK has considerable power to steer the definition of new rules and regulations.[8][9]

But by leaving the EU, the UK loses this power. In fact, the UK will become just another external country hoping to do business with the EU’s very large and verypowerful integrated market — a market which currently buys half of the UK’s exports.

“If you take back the right to set your own rules and standards, it will by definition become harder to do business with countries that use different ones. If you want to trade, you will probably end up following the rules of a more powerful partner—which for Britain means the EU or America—only without a say in setting them.”

• ‘Brexit, the mother of all messes’. The Economist, 17 Jan 2019.

So the UK is losing power, freedom, trade and influence just to gain an illusory sense of independence, or ‘taking back control’.

And even more ironically, with a no-deal Brexit the UK will have to comply with trade rules set behind closed doors in Geneva by the unelected and non-transparent committees of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). [10]

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What Brexit was really about all along …

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1 . Tax avoidance

Throughout Europe, corporate tax avoidance is a colossal problem. The EU’s Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive (first proposed in 2016, implemented in 2019) seeks to tackle the thriving culture of corporate tax avoidance. It affects numerous major companies in the UK accused of tax avoidance, including several football clubs, retailers, technology firms and the Daily Mail and Telegraph newspapers.

Continuing membership of the EU, or just the single market, would keep the UK aligned with this anti-tax avoidance policy. A hard or no-deal Brexit, on the other hand, would see the UK turning itself into a tax haven on the borders of Europe.

This is the plain and simple reason why so many of the most powerful supporters of Brexit suddenly began proclaiming that Britain had to leave the EU, the sooner the better. Many of the same Brexit supporters also happen to be named in the Paradise Papers (leaked documents exposing tax-avoiding offshore investors).

As soon as the EU’s tax-avoidance proposal was announced, and even more so when it was ratified, they set about portraying the EU as the great enemy of Britain, an ‘undemocratic elite’ deliberately causing misery for ordinary Brits.

Sadly, many ordinary Brits fell for it.

But then things didn’t quite work out as planned.

After she became the Prime Minister to make Brexit happen, Theresa May spent a long time working out a pragmatic divorce arrangement with the leaders of the EU.

When her Withdrawal Agreement finally came out, however, some Brexiteers were very unhappy with it. Why? Because at the back of the huge document there was a commitment by the British Government to retain the EU’s code of conduct for business taxation, including the new anti-tax avoidance laws.

May was suddenly a ‘traitor’.

But if another Prime Minister could be found … preferably an unprincipled opportunist who will say and do anything to get the job … perhaps he could convince the people of Britain that it would be best to just tear up May’s deal, blame the EU for something-or-other, and then simply wait for Britain to crash out of the EU with no deal whatsoever.

Then there will be no corporate tax laws for the tax avoiders to worry about.

But there’s more to it now than just tax avoidance…

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2. Free market extremism

In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2007–8, the UK and many other countries went into economic recession. To address the large deficit in government finances, the Conservative Party under David Cameron inflicted a punishing austerity programme on the less well-off, with lower public spending, welfare cuts and frozen benefits.

As the hardship of years of austerity took its toll, some voters put the blame directly on David Cameron’s government. The EU referendum of 2016 then became an opportunity for them to vent their frustration. I do believe that if Cameron hadn’t appointed himself leader of the ‘Remain’ campaign, the referendum result would have been quite different.

Other voters, however, had been led to believe that their financial woes were the fault of the EU and immigrants. This distortion opened up a whole new vista of possibilities for big business.

Immediately after the 2016 referendum result, the free-market think-tank the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) announced:

“The weakness of the Labour Party and the resolution of the EU question have created a unique political opportunity to drive through a wide-ranging … revolution on a scale similar to that of the 1980s … This must include removing unnecessary regulatory burdens on businesses, such as those related to climate directives and investment fund[s].“

• ‘Britain Votes for Brexit: CPS statement‘, Centre for Policy Studies, 24 June 2016.

In other words, a return to Thatcherism and Reaganomics with further deregulation of the City (London’s financial centre).

Back to the global recession:

Many blamed the financial crisis on existing soft regulations failing to control irresponsible financiers in the US and UK. Within the EU, the UK’s negative attitude to regulation was seen as a key problem. Concerned about the integrity of the Eurozone, the EU focused on more regulation to curb their activities.[11]

Brexit now promises the UK financial sector free rein by ditching those regulations once and for all. And with corporate-friendly politicians now in Government pursuing a no-deal Brexit, the UK won’t be adopting any EU-like regulations any time soon.

Quite the opposite in fact. [12]

This is why some very powerful businessmen have been sponsoring Brexit — they see it as a means to impose a more extreme free-market ideology on British society.

“There is a reason why the hard Brexiteers cannot coherently explain their vision of Brexit: their chief aim is to break as many things as possible, in the belief that from the rubble might arise a kind of flag-waving, small-state, free-market utopia that even the blessed Margaret might have found unpalatable.”

• ‘Rich, reckless Brexit zealots are fighting a new class war’, John Harris, The Guardian, 6 Aug 2018.

To gain public support for their project, far-right propagandists like Steve Bannon have been brought in to help demonise the EU in the eyes of British voters and to make a no-deal Brexit seem like some sort of patriotic show of strength rather than an incomprehensible act of self-harm.[13]

Not only that, but during the run-up to the referendum Facebook colluded with the unscrupulous campaign company Cambridge Analytica to target ‘persuadable’ British voters with blatant lies about the EU.

• Facebook’s role in Brexit — and the threat to democracy — must-see TED talk by investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr of the Observer.

The extensive illegality of the Leave campaign may well be the biggest ever fraud committed against democracy in modern British history.

• Facebook was fined £500,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office for its role in the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
• The official Vote Leave campaign was fined £61,000 after being found guilty of breaking electoral law during the Brexit campaign.
• The National Crime Agency is investigating evidence of multiple criminal offences committed by Arron Banks on behalf of Nigel Farage’s Leave campaign.
• The Information Commissioner’s Office is also looking into illegal data sharing between different Leave campaign groups.
• The Conservative Government has blocked attempts to reveal the source of campaign donations to their pro-Brexit allies in Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionist Party.

Because the referendum was only meant to be an advisory vote, however, there are no legal channels to challenge the result.[14]

But that’s still not the worst if it.

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3. Hedge funds and ‘disaster capitalism’

Hedge fund managers are investors who gamble on the economy. They place bets on any economic value that might rise or (ideally) fall, such as the value of sterling.

They hedge their bets to reduce risks — which is ironic, because hedge funds actually caused the 2008 financial crisis by adding too much risk to the banking system. But after all, the world is just one big casino, and any humanitarian disaster or economic crisis is simply a good bet — an opportunity to make a killing.

Some of the leading Brexiteers who have long claimed that leaving the EU will lead to enormous dividends for the UK are, in fact, hedge fund investors seeking enormous dividends for themselves.

This is precisely why they have been actively sponsoring Leave and supporting Boris Johnson to constantly blame the EU for everything and to push for ‘no deal’. They are poised to profit from the inevitable uncertainty and chaos, especially from a no-deal Brexit.

William Rees-Mogg (Jacob’s father) actually wrote a book describing how astute, self-serving investors can thrive on the opportunities provided by social collapse and economic misery. The book’s main message is that what’s bad news for most people is good news for the smartest of speculators. During the inevitable collapse of civilisation, only the ultra-wealthy will inherit the Earth.

The book makes it pretty clear why Jacob — recently promoted to Leader of the House of Commons by Boris Johnson — not only craves Brexit, but also the social damage that is likely to come with it.

• ‘How to explain Jacob Rees-Mogg? Start with his father’s books’. Andy Beckett, The Guardian, 9 Nov 2018.

Naomi Klein, in her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine, refers to this deeply toxic money-making system as ‘disaster capitalism’.

But why sit around waiting for a natural disaster or economic shock to come along when you can covertly engineer one yourself? If your initial investment is big enough, that will affect the outcome. The very act of placing a massively large bet on something failing tends to make that something seem not worth investing in, thereby creating the very collapse that hedge fund investors have bet on.

“What to do if you are a hedge fund manager down to your last billion? Answer: rig global politics in your favour. If that sounds improbable, remember we are talking about folk capable of shorting* the entire Japanese economy in response to a natural disaster. Hedge fund managers are megalomaniacs. It goes with the territory.”

• ‘Boris, Brexit and the Hedge Funds (Part 1)’ George Keravan, Bella Caledonia, 11 July 2019.

One of the new EU directives designed to regulate the financial sector, the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (2011), focused on the worst excesses of unscrupulous hedge funds. It addressed everything from their secrecy to how much managers could pay themselves in bonuses.

“The adoption of the directive means that hedge funds and private equity will no longer operate in a regulatory void outside the scope of supervisors. The new regime brings transparency and security to the way these funds are managed and operate, which adds to the overall stability of our financial system.“

• ‘European Commission statement at the occasion of the European Parliament vote on the directive on hedge funds and private equity‘, Press release (MEMO/10/573), European Commission, 11 Nov 2010.

Hedge fund managers in London, who had been used to operating as freewheeling rogues outside the system, took exception to this and began clamouring for Britain to leave the EU. This intensified in 2015 after they were fined by the Greek government for short-selling Greek bank shares, thereby intensifying doubts about Greece’s banking sector precisely when the whole Greek economy was in crisis.

One of these hedge fund managers is Crispin Odey.

Odey routinely bets against the British economy — if UK stocks and share values go down, or if a British business goes bankrupt as he predicted, he wins.

He made £220 million after successfully betting that a Leave result would cause the pound to crash. But then, he had also donated almost £900,000 to the Vote Leave campaign to help get the desired result.

In 2015, Odey donated to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s election campaign. He also helped Rees-Mogg set up his own investment firm, Somerset Capital Management (which has virtually no investments in the UK, but large holdings in Russia).

Odey subsequently donated £10,000 to Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign. He then began publicly calling for people to support Boris Johnson’s no-deal Brexit strategy as the best possible way ahead for Britain. ‘Theresa May wasted three years,’ he says. ‘The only optimism about anything lies in supporting Boris.’[15]

Yet at the same time he has placed a £300 million bet on a no-deal Brexit leading to disaster for many top British companies — but another staggering windfall for himself.[16]

“Odey’s apparent lack of confidence in flagship British firms stands in marked contrast to his fund’s investments in other countries, including France, Germany and the US, where he is mainly backing shares to rise.”

• ‘Brexiteer Odey bets £500m AGAINST British businesses’, Neil Craven & Jamie Nimmo, The Mail On Sunday, 10 June 2018.

It’s as if Brexit is just a means for predators to separate the UK from the safety of the herd.

And with so many wealthy businessmen sponsoring government ministers to produce the hardest Brexit possible purely for their own financial gain, it really begs the question — who is the current government actually working for?

“Brexit is not a cry for help from the English underclass. It is a carefully stage-managed campaign by global finance capital in the form of the hedge funds. It is being orchestrated out of hedge fund self-interest and the greed of billionaires. Boris Johnson is their front man.”

• ‘Boris, Brexit and the Hedge Funds (Part 1)’, George Keravan, Bella Caledonia, 11 July 2019

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Conclusion

• Brexit is essentially a coup pulled off at the behest of tax-dodging
  • corporations and misanthropic investors.
  • Their only concern for ‘taking back control’ is to rid their own businesses of EU tax laws, financial regulations and employee rights.
  • They have been systematically misleading the British public to hate the EU through a constant supply of anti-EU propaganda and lies.
  • They are sponsoring their friends and collaborators in the Conservative Party to bring about a no-deal Brexit.
  • They are on course to instigate social and economic changes that will turn the UK (or what’s left of it) into an enormous cash cow for their own self-interest.
  • They are abusing democracy to create a plutocracy.

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  Further reading

  • EU referendum: Hedge fund managers backing ‘Out’ campaign set to make millions from Brexit. Michael Bow, The Independent, 25 Oct 2015.
  • Brexit is a monumental act of self-harm which will bewilder historians. Paddy Ashdown, The Independent, 29 March 2017.
  • Margaret Thatcher didn’t cause Brexit – but Brexit will bring back Thatcherism. Andy Beckett, The Guardian, 1 July 2016.
  • Disaster capitalism: the shocking doctrine Tories can’t wait to unleash. Howard Hotson, The Guardian, 4 July 2016.
  • Brexit: disaster capitalism. Richard North, EU Referendum, 13 July 2017.
  • How Brexit Was Engineered by Foreign Billionaires to Bring About Economic Chaos – for Profit. Graham Vanbergen, Global Research, Oct 2017.
  • No wonder John Redwood backs Brexit. He will make money out of it, after all . Joris Luyendijk, The Guardian, 14 Nov 2017.
  • Five Times Millionaire Brexiteers Advised Businesses On How To Get Round Brexit. Owen Bennett, Huffington Post, 28 June 2018.
  • Trump’s visit marks the start of shock doctrine Brexit. Adam Ramsay, OpenDemocracy, 13 July 2018.
  • Downing Street Denies Being In Rees-Mogg’s Pocket After Accepting Hard Brexit Changes To Trade Bill. Owen Bennett, Huffington Post, 16 July 2018.
  • Why Brexit is really about competing visions of capitalism. Craig Berry, The Conversation, 26 July 2018.
  • Rich, reckless Brexit zealots are fighting a new class war. John Harris, The Guardian, 6 Aug 2018.
  • The most important book you have never heard of, may explain Rees-Mogg love of hard Brexit – Alastair Campbell (alastaircampbell.org), 13 Aug 2018.
  • Hillary Clinton: ‘Brexit could be biggest self-inflicted wound in history’. Patrick Wintour, The Guardian, 10 Oct 2018.
  • How to explain Jacob Rees-Mogg? Start with his father’s books. Andy Beckett, The Guardian, 9 Nov 2018.
  • Hedge funds make big bets against post-Brexit UK economy. Jasper Jolly, The Guardian, 10 Dec 2018.
  • Britain’s Brexit crisis was entirely self-inflicted. Catherine Haddon, Washington Post, 14 Dec 2018.
  • Why disaster capitalists are praying for a no-deal Brexit. George Monbiot, The Guardian, 7 Feb 2019.
  • The Disaster Capitalism Club part 1: Vote Leave Backers Who Made Billions from Brexit. Peter Jukes, Byline Times, 13 March 2019.
  • Brexit – Now Just a Massive National Crime Scene. Graham Vanbergen, Global Research, 17 April 2019.
  • Why are so many Brexiteer politicians cosying up to this Armenian oligarch? Thomas Rowley, OpenDemocracy, 24 May 2019.
  • Threat of no-deal Brexit ‘like shooting your foot off’. The Irish Times, 14 June 2019.
  • Brexit has heaped pain on UK economy and more damage is highly likely, researchers warn. Olesya Dmitracova, The Independent, 24 June 2019.
  • The return of disaster capitalism. Grace Blakeley, New Statesman, 3 July 2019.
  • Boris, Brexit and the Hedge Funds (Part 1) George Keravan, Bella Caledonia, 11 July 2019.
  • Boris Johnson’s vow for a ‘no-deal Brexit’ is a complete fallacy – we would need deals galore just to keep afloat. Ed Davey, The Independent, 14 July 2019.
  • How Boris Johnson’s Brussels-bashing stories shaped British politics. Jennifer Rankin & Jim Waterson, The Guardian, 14 July 2019.
  • Project fear? The last three years have been more catastrophic than even the most pessimistic Remainer predicted. Jonathan Lis, Prospect Magazine, 19 July 2019.
  • Boris, Brexit and the Hedge Funds (Part 2). George Keravan, Bella Caledonia, 22 July 2019.
  • The disaster capitalists are lurking over No 10. Peter Geoghegan, The National, 28 July 2019.
  • Cambridge Analytica worked on Brexit campaign, emails claim. Rowland Manthorpe, Sky Nrws, 31 July 2019.
  • Academic warns of a ‘furnace of ultra-neoliberal free trade deals’ after Brexit. John McEvoy, The Canary, 2 Aug 2019.
  • New trade minister Liz Truss had private talks in US with libertarian groups. Michael Savage, The Observer, 4 Aug 2019.
  • Boris Johnson’s donor Crispin Odey eyes Brexit jackpot with £300m bet against British firms. Caroline Wheeler and Rosamund Urwin, Sunday TImes, 4 Aug 2019.

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  * Shorting explained:

  Short selling or shorting is an investment tactic whereby –

  1. An investor expects the price of certsin stocks or company shares to drop radically in the near future.
  2. The investor borrows those stocks or shares from an existing owner, promising to replace them at a future date.
  3. The investor sells what he has borrowed at the current market price.
  4. If the investor has gambled right, the market price soon drops radically. The investor now buys up the cheaper stocks/shares, gives back what he originally borrowed, and pockets the difference.

  The hope behind shorting is that the stock price will collapse and/or that the company will go bankrupt — leading to total ruin for the equity holders.

  Footnotes

  [1] Migrants in the UK: An Overview – Migration Observatory

  [2] Why Britain needs the immigrants it doesn’t want

  [3] HM Treasury analysis: the long-term economic impact of EU membership and the alternatives (Archived)

  [4] The Brexiters who put their money offshore

  [5] Jacob Rees-Mogg shared an article about investing in London and everyone made the same point

  [6] The Government’s Brexit Plan Basically Reveals The Reason For Brexit Isn’t True

  [7] Opinion: Boris Johnson in Brussels — visibly invisible | DW | 20.07.2019

  [8] EU facts behind the claims: UK influence

  [9] European Single Market – Wikipedia

  [10] Criticism of the World Trade Organization – Wikipedia

  [11] https://assets.publishing.servic…

  [12] The UK’s new trade secretary met with US pressure groups to discuss weakening regulations

  [13] New Evidence Emerges of Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica’s Role in Brexit

  [14] Vote Leave broke electoral law and British democracy is shaken

  [15] ‘Back Boris over the EU’, Crispin Odey tells Remainer bosses

  [16] Boris Johnson’s donor Crispin Odey eyes Brexit jackpot with £300m bet against British firms

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  source: Why are Remainers so convinced that staying in the European Union is what is best for the UK? | Barry McGuinness, British person | 10 August 2019

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