Brexitopia: what it’s really about

Some commentators, especially in the US, have pondered if the push for Brexit was fuelled by some lingering British yearning for past glory – a forlorn quest for a grand status which has long vanished.  In truth, while individuals who voted for Brexit did so for a multitude of reasons – quite a few contradicting each other and most are simply false (be it about redirecting funds to the NHS or improving the economy) – the main strategic push for Brexit came from the craving for ‘free market’ exploitation.

The ideal of Brexitopia has been relentlessly promoted by its most ardent advocates, not because it embodies a return to a ‘great’ waves-ruling Britain, but because it can bring about a future fit for exploitative profiteering on an ever widening scale.  

While they promised everything under the sun in the run-up to the EU referendum – maintaining standards, retaining levels of fundings, staying in the single market, enhancing services – all these commitments were jettisoned as soon as Brexit was voted through in parliament.  From that moment on, the Brexit advocates revealed their one and true interest as dismantling the protective arrangements against exploitation which had hitherto been in place as an integral part of EU membership.  

When they complain that the UK has not been moving fast enough to realise the ‘benefits’ of Brexit, what they mean is that the government is too slow in removing those previously EU-mandated safeguards which get in the way of callous profiteering.  Their own priorities are to:

·      Slash worker rights: weaken trade unions, lower standards for working conditions, undermine health and safety at work, and increase job insecurity to make workers more compliant and more sackable.

·      Cut environmental standards: increase the scope for making profit from environmentally harmful activities, remove requirements that curtail pollution, and cut down preventative measures that serve the public.

·      Roll back human rights: reduce protection against prejudice-fuelled abuse, facilitate the flaming of community tension, and push back arrangements designed to tackle discrimination.

·      Downgrade consumer protection: leave people to have to pay more for the same or worse service than before, open the door to less safe and poorer quality products, and allow more commercial deception. 

The above actions would enable unscrupulous profiteers to make more money from exploiting the disadvantages thus foisted on workers, consumers, communities, and the wider environment.  It is almost certain that the vast majority of people will as a result suffer in social and economic terms, with the poorest having to endure the worst.  But for the Brexitopian advocates, all that matters are the financial gains to be made by the profiteering clique.  They do not care about people’s quality of life deteriorating, instability worsening, or the economy shrinking.  So long as they can get rid of those laws that hold back exploitative profiteering (and put in new ones such as banning worker actions or peaceful protests against corporate wrongdoing), they would celebrate Brexitopia as a lucrative new dawn.