Hundreds
of thousands of Remainers marched through London last weekend to demand a
“people’s vote” on the European Union (EU). The call for a second referendum,
which began the day after the Remainers lost the first one in 2016, is now
going into top gear with the support of the Blairites and the rest of the
Europhile lobby, and ample funds from Europhile grandees and the Soros
foundation.
Their objective is, of course, to force
the May government to agree to a new vote or call for an early general
election. This, they believe, will result in a Labour minority government
dependent on the Scottish nationalists and the Liberal Democrats, whose support
can only be bought with a second referendum. We have to prove them wrong by
making sure that Labour gets a massive majority at the next election.
We don’t need another vote. The real
‘people’s vote’ was in 2016 when we voted to leave the EU. But now the
Remainers think that they can win a second referendum.
From the start, the mainstream Brexit
campaign has been based on anti-immigration, chauvinist and racist lines. UKIP,
and indeed some who pose as left wing, embraced these ideas. But the issue of
immigration is an entirely bogus argument. The Tory Eurosceptics see the EU as
a brake on further neoliberal policies. They also represent the section of the
British ruling class that fears Franco-German imperialism and believes that
British imperialism’s interests are best served in alignment with US
imperialism.
The bourgeois Eurosceptics talk about
‘independence’ and the burden of funding the EU, but they never talk about the
burden of financing the US Trident nuclear missile system or the American bases
in Britain because they approve of them. So the ‘independence’ that they talk about
is not genuine independence but simply about leaving the EU. They don’t talk
about independence from US imperialism. They never openly admit that British
imperialism cannot stand on its own feet.
All this has done is reinforce the fears
of the Remainers within the labour movement that Brexit will lead to further
attacks on the unions and what’s left of the ‘welfare state’. Most of the
unions have swallowed the Brussels line that the EU safeguards workers’ rights
and guarantees jobs, and this is reflected in Remainer support within the
Labour Party that goes far beyond the Blairite ranks in parliament. This view
must be challenged. But although British communists, of all hues, have long
opposed the EU and the Treaty of Rome, the left case against the EU has still
to be won within the labour movement.
The EU is essentially a rich man’s club, a
club for big business. It exists solely to operate in the interests of the big
European corporations and it is dominated by Franco-German imperialism.
Whatever minor benefits have come to workers because of these institutions
could easily have been obtained by other means. For example, freedom of travel.
Before 1914 there were no passports, no barriers. The limitations on travel are
a 20th century phenomenon and freedom of travel could have been introduced
anyway, as has often been said.
The EU is neither genuinely federal nor
democratic, and every stage of European integration has been financed by
working people through higher indirect taxes, lost jobs and lost benefits. The
EU cannot be reformed. It must be dissolved and the Treaty of Rome, which
established the Common Market in the first place, repealed.