Granted that the historical precedent might be down to my own interpretation, the main reason for voting leave was political. Put bluntly, the EU enshrined the principles of unregulated capitalism within its’ structure from the very first. The type of interventionist, regulatory, people-focused polices the current Labour party is putting forward would be blocked or at least weakened by all possible means should we remain in the EU. (Look what happened when Greece elected a left-wing party). Corbyn knows this, which is why he is ambivalent on the issue. He has been anti-EU in the past, but the Parliamentary Labour Party is still largely of a Blairite ‘Tory-lite’ persuasion and pro-EU.
Yes, the world is becoming globalised, but in the wrong way. This is not a reaching out of communities of people to each other. It is a tangled mass of international corporations using financial leverage for political advantage in order to increase profits. ‘Competing in a global market’ is all very well, but will only help people who are already rich. Their insatiable appetite for yet more money will make the rest of us poorer. The cake is only so big, and now the greedy pigs are busy sweeping up the crumbs, as well as the slices!
The sad thing about immigration is that people who come from poor backgrounds with little education don’t know any better. Unlike indigenous workers, who know and believe they are entitled to a fair wage, proper hours and decent terms and conditions, immigrants think that this is all they can get. Whether by accident or design, the multiculturalism and diversity projects have made it almost impossible for immigrants to assimilate and this has further weakened the bargaining power of the working class as a whole. Freedom of movement, which is nice in principle, has been shanghaied by the corporations to create a pool of itinerant cheap labour they can move around Europe to encourage a race to the bottom in pay and conditions. The goal is not to give the mobile work-force better pay, but to force non-mobile indigenous workers to accept the lower wages the itinerants will work for.
As I said, Brexit could have been simple, but a majority remain Parliament chose to sabotage or block the process, rather then simply either implement or ignore the referendum vote. The logic of this, when both other courses were wide open, defeats me.
