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Editorial Remainers lack credibility on reforming the EU

IF a parliamentary coup to reverse the Brexit vote gathers collaborators beyond the neoliberal political elite, left-wing supporters of Britain's membership of the European Union will find themselves under an obligation to map out how their desire to transform the capitalist superstate might come about.

It is a big ask. The ideological contortions that this entails was shown by one strong Labour activist, sympathetic to Corbyn's leadership: “I am not going to abandon my ideal of Europe just so we can renationalise the railways” she exclaimed before the full understanding of what else she was abandoning dawned on her.

This illustrates the truth that — aside from the Blairite cuckoos who still feather their nest in the Parliamentary Labour Party – many people across the board have great reservations about the nature of the EU. They oppose its anti-working class legal institutions, hate its neoliberal straitjacket, deplore its treatment of Greece, are shocked by the racist Fortress Europe migration regime and earnestly desire the abandonment of its neo-colonial trade treaties.

They desire controls on the untrammelled movement of capital and want state aid to rejuvenate Britain's industry. They condemn the inhuman conditions in which many migrant workers are forced to live and labour.

We know that a natural revulsion against the racism, xenophobia, crude “free market” economics and deregulation manias of the Brexit plutocrats drove many people to vote Remain even though they have few illusions about the nature of the EU.

They are not in the same camp as the big business interests, bankers and bureaucrats whose political representatives have now boxed in the bourgeois Brexiteers. But without Corbyn’s steady realism they can slip into a collective act of denial about the neoliberal essence of the EU and a collective fantasy about the prospects for change within its structures.

Sunday sees the fascist thug and convicted fraudster Tommy Robinson – now almost an honorary member of Ukip's leadership – bidding to head a popular movement against Brexit betrayal.

Robinson is no intellectual giant but he counts on some serious far-right support. His puppet masters know full well that an unresolved national conversation about migration — which cannot be conducted without examining the real-life effects of the EU's “four freedoms” of capital, labour, goods and services — provides the fascist fringe with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reach beyond its normal territory.

Analysis of voting in the referendum showed both Remain and Leave supporters prioritising migration and national sovereignty but with Remain supporters putting immigration first.

This demonstrates that the Brexit cleavage does not run along traditional left/right lines. Unless progressives in British politics find a way to give decisive political expression to their common interests our ruling elites — even though they themselves are divided — will retain forever their profits, power and privileges.

How to overcome the European Union’s democratic deficit is the core of this problem. The EU parliament cannot make laws and two-thirds don’t vote. European electors treat the parliament with the same contempt as do the real powers in the EU.

Simply to ask Tony Benn’s six questions – What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? How do we get rid of you? – illustrates that while formal veto powers reside in the unelected European Commission and in the Council the real class power resides with the banks, big business and the military security lobbies.

Negotiating a progressive post-Brexit transformation of our relations with the EU demands an answer to these questions and without it left-wing Remainers risk political redundancy in the margins of working-class politics.

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