The Shock Doctrine, Post-Brexit and Where the UK Goes Now

Brexit has undoubtedly caused some grave concerns in the financial world. The pound is operating on a 31-year low, breaking records daily, and the commercial property market has nose-dived, with its ramifications for companies who have portfolios, and those who use it as collateral. All these issues have come about on pure speculation because, so far, there has been no actual, official change. One can assume, I think, that the eventual outcomes will be fairly economically problematic.

One of the best arguments for Leave, and one which my own father held in massive regard, was the plight of fishermen under the auspices of the EU. The EU have issued quotas to fishermen to create sustainability, opening up waters to allow various nations to fish where they want and land their catches where they want. Issues with discards have also been a problem, though reforms to the Common Fisheries Policy have been made and are being made in the coming years.

Interestingly, it has variously been reported that fishermen "have been warned catch quotas will not increase before Brexit is finalised and may not even grow after Britain's withdrawal from the EU." Things won't be as rosy as promised by Leave.

With promises being broken left, right and centre (think £350m per week to the NHS now reneged), Brexit hasn't quite reached the glorious expectations claimed of its proponents.

But this isn't a post about the pros and cons of Brexit; it's about what it has turned out to be, and how the conservative right will capitalise on it.

The Shock Doctrine

Brexit came as a shock. No one believed it would happen, least of all the proponents and Leave leaders like Farage and Johnson. And when it came, they jumped ship. Cameron resigned, Johnson dropped out of the leadership race for next PM, and Farage disappeared off to "spend more time with his family" whilst still drawing his Member of the European Parliament (MEP) salary. Oh the irony.

The candidates for the new Prime Minister make up a fascist lineup the likes of which is pretty dire. The old-school Tory MP Kenneth Clarke, one of the more sane of Tory MPs, made these unbelievably honest off-camera remarks (WELL worth a watch):

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"I think with Michael [Gove] as Prime Minister we'd go to war with at least three countries at once."

Gove, May and Leadsom have all got very worrying things about them that should concern voters (just see May's voting history on equalities, gay rights, human rights etc.). Theresa May, the favourite, looks sound and assured, but wants to repeal the Human Rights Act amongst other things; Gove's past experience in education and the Ministry of Justice shows he will just privatise everything and embark on ideological crusades; and Leadsom (an ex-banker who has refused to publish her tax returns, unlike the other two) has sought to abolish workers' rights for women in small and medium sized businesses (maternity pay etc.). There is much, much more to this if you care to research it.

Howard Hotson in the Guardian, with his piece "Disaster capitalism: the shocking doctrine Tories can’t wait to unleash", nails it:

One of the most startling aspects of the Brexit debate is the rapidity with which the Conservatives have set it behind them. Within hours of the result David Cameron was on the steps of 10 Downing Street, describing this slim majority as “a very clear result” and proposing irrevocable steps to set it in motion. Within days his chancellor, who had threatened a punishment budgetonly weeks earlier, was falling into line.

The referendum was manifestly won on the basis of misinformation, and puts the UK in an extremely dangerous situation, and there are several plausible scenarios for avoiding it. Yet among the candidates to succeed Cameron, even former remainers are now voting leave. “Brexit means Brexit,” Theresa May stated on joining the race on Thursday. “There must be no attempts to remain inside the EU, no attempts to rejoin it through the back door, and no second referendum.” All the bloodshed in the Tory leadership contest masks an underlying consensus: they are all determined to block every exit from Brexit....

The article goes on to exemplify scenarios involving mass privatisation (such as the railways), but more nuanced ones, such as university financing and the highly controversial ideological policy of academisation of state schooling - an effective privatisation. For example:

When the railways were privatised, the argument in favour was not merely that privatisation would save money but that it would transform our network by means of a state-of-the-art signalling system unlike anything the world had ever seen. The experts said it could not be done, but the government pressed ahead anyway. The experts, it turned out, were right. But the over-optimistic argument had served its purpose: the railways were in private hands.

How is this relevant to Brexit?

What then about Brexit? The advocates of leaving the European Union have always claimed that it would be easy and, after a brief period of turmoil, positively productive. A vast chorus of experts disagreed. The decision to leave therefore delivered an enormous economic and political shock to England, Scotland, the EU and the global economy. Why is the government not doing everything possible to mitigate that shock?

As Naomi Klein argued in The Shock Doctrine, disaster capitalism operates by delivering massive shocks to the system and then using the ensuing period of anarchy, fear and confusion to reassemble the pieces of what it has broken into a new configuration. This is what was done in the aftermath of the financial crisis, and it is ultimately what is at stake in Brexit. The right wing of the Tory party has succeeded in throwing the UK’s affairs into complete confusion. The losses may be enormous: the preservation of the United Kingdom in its present form is far from certain. The winnings may, at first sight, seem modest: £350m a week will not be available to save the NHS; the free movement of labour will have to be conceded; and Britain will lose its place at the EU negotiating table. But the potential winnings for ruthless politicians are nevertheless enormous: the prize is the opportunity to rework an almost infinite range of detailed arrangements both inside and outside the UK, to redraw at breakneck speed the legal framework that will govern all aspects of our lives.

The Conservatives will task themselves with reconstructing the system, the economy, the politics: the narrative. What is particularly worrying is that the free-market thinktank, Centre for Policy Studies, can't get excited enough:

As Andy Beckett pointed out in the Guardian on Friday, within minutes of the BBC declaring victory for Brexit, the free-market thinktank the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) revealed the plan B that has otherwise remained hidden from view. “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].”

A week later, and this possibility is no longer merely theoretical: George Osborne has now proposed to cut corporation tax from 20% to below 15%, to staunch the haemorrhage of investment. During coming months and years, the unfolding crisis will provide countless pretexts for similar emergency measure that benefit business and roll back the state. So there will be no vote in parliament, no second referendum, no fresh elections: just the most massive legislative programme in history within the current parliament, in which the Tories command an absolute majority based on 37% of the votes cast in the last general election. So much for taking back democratic control.

I can only see one outcome from this in the immediate years - the free marketeers on the right getting their way with pretty much whatever they want.

Because there is no opposition.

Our Electoral System 

There is an irony that Leave claimed the EU as undemocratic when, on the archaic First Past The Post system used in the UK, my vote for my local MP for my entire voting life has been utterly pointless. It has had no democratic value. For those unaware of the system, if you have 1oo voters, and 35 voted for Conservative, 32 for Labour, 20 for Lib Dem and 10 for Green, with the rest in smaller parties, then in that constituency the Conservative candidate would win. All the other votes would then be thrown away. If over every constituency, Greens got 10% but no outright winner, then fully 10% of the population would not be represented in Parliament.

This is almost precisely what happened last year:

Data compiled by the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) for the Observer showed Ukip had received 3.86m votes for the one MP it had elected to the Commons. This compared with an average of 26,000 votes for every SNP MP, 34,000 for every Conservative, 40,000 for every Labour MP and 299,000 for every Liberal Democrat....

Its analysis showed that, of almost 31 million people who voted, 19 million (63% of the total) did so for losing candidates. Out of 650 winning candidates, 322 (49%) won less than 50% of the vote.

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This brings the claim of Leave into total disrepute since our own system is distinctly undemocratic in any representational sense.

UKIP, as much as I dislike them, got almost 4 million votes, and received 1 MP out of 650 MPs. Greens got 1 MP for 1.1 million. Scottish Labour and Conservative fared little better with 1 MP a piece.

The SNP decimated the Scottish Labour Party, taking 56 of 59 Scottish seats. Yet 1,454,436 was the total number of SNP votes, as opposed to 707,100 for Scottish Labour. Twice the vote share, 56 times the MPs!!!

I cannot tell you how nonsensical this is as far as democratic representation is concerned.

Firstly, this has to change.

Secondly, without a valid opposition, the government will not be held to account.

And it is on this subject of holding the government to account with a viable opposition that I will return to tomorrow.