Brexit – Steven Watson

Notes from a rural pub

My daughter was playing badminton in an under-16 county match. I have spent enough time being the parent-on-the tramline, getting frustrated and trying not to coach her and interfere. After five of six years of badminton tournaments, I tend to make sure she is OK and then go and find a coffee shop and do some writing or reading. A couple of weeks ago I ended up in Costa in an artificial retail park somewhere near Ipswich (it could have been anywhere, a soulless and meaningless place). A few days later I received a bill from Euro Car Parks Limited for £90 for breaking some parking rule on ‘private’ land. Yet another for-fuck-sake moment, another site for exploitation and I hear David Harvey on YouTube telling me about accumulation by dispossession and rents.

But that’s not what I want to go on about, though it would be worthy of a post. No, what I want to talk about is the pub I went to in small-town Suffolk, not so far from Bury St Edmunds – where you can smell the boiling beet at this time of year. Like sweet public mash potato.

I didn’t want to go to a pub actually. My preference was for a safe sterile manufactured faux continental coffee shop. But the nearest one of those was in Bury St Edmunds about 4 miles away. I thought it was unnecessarily a bit far for a coffee and generic soullessness. When just 0.7 miles from the Badminton venue was a pub.

When I say small town, I guess this was a big village really. It has a secondary school, a Londis and within that, Google Maps tells me, is a Post Office. There are few new housing developments and a former council estate. The pub was a country pub, a village kind of pub, a rural pub. I knew these hostelries from my youth.

I have spent many years walking into pubs and bars on my own, but I have not done that much of it in the last 15 years, just occasionally though. But from the age of 15 to 26 I was a public house flaneur, not truly a flaneur. I would usually enter the pub as flaneur, after a few drinks I was voyeur, and then, often or not, I would strike up a conversation. A few drinks, community and conviviality, and I would be in conversation with someone or other. My brand of philosophy is forged amongst the wisdom and observation of ale drinkers on bar stools. True public philosophers, almost in the Socratic tradition.

I was more anxious today. I am out of practice. I am no longer familiar with the country pub, or indeed any pub, as I once was. As I drove into the carpark, I was trying to work out who would be in there. It is difficult to tell, everyone has newish cars these days because of the lease-buy credit racket and legislation that make it difficult to run old cars.

I felt awkward walking into the pub, what was it going to be like? Who would be in there? If it was a rural pub of my youth, it would be a mixture: could be landowning farmers, horsey types, the rural middle class. Young couples out for a quiet drink out of town. Blokes playing darts and dominoes. People at the bar. This is what I imagined.

This pub was more like a community centre with Sunday lunch-dining for families. I went into the community centre side of the pub. A father and his 8-(or so)-year-old son (weekend access arrangement?), playing pool eating chips with cheese melted on top. An older gent who seemingly came regularly for his Sunday lunch. A youngish man who put the England football match on the flat screen TV and then went off for a smoke.

I ordered a coffee and chips ‘n’ cheese. The women at the bar was very charming, very friendly and welcoming without any pretence. She was to have an important role in the pub as I will come to explain. The coffee tasted of cooking fat. A few more people arrived; alone, in couples and in groups, they had fairly strong Suffolk accents. It wasn’t the socially diverse rural pub that I remembered from my youth, but working class, with no pretence and no aspirations. That is, no aspirations to be anything other than who they were. I was a voyeur, with the cover of reading Will Davies’ new book Nervous States, looking at social media (the big psychodrama of the EU Withdrawal Agreement) and looking up at the flat screen as England played Croatia.

I considered my middle-class habitus – it must be so fucking obvious – I spend most of my life now at college dinners and engaged in academic conversation within the academy. I don’t know if I can relate to these people anymore. I spend so much time explaining to the liberal middle class about the limitations of rationality and politeness and what drove things like the Brexit vote was a resurgence of affectivity, the need for people to fulfil and to act upon their emotions and not to be afraid of their feelings. I was feeling really awkward in the situation. These weren’t the mores I was accustomed to. I wondered if I could every be part of this community.

It is poignant that I am reading Will Davies’ Nervous States.

As I say part of the pub has the characteristics of a community centre, where people can come along and have a drink and not feel too inhibited about who they are. I think I presented myself as something of an anomaly and curiosity in this setting. Who sits in a pub and reads a book, they might have thought? One of them was curious enough to ask me while we were urinating just before I left. “Out walking, are you?” Another man caught my eye in the pub and asked about my well-being out of friendliness and curiosity.

The main drama unfolded. The older guy was brought his roast dinner, which he began to eat at a low table by the fireplace. A middle-aged man at the bar was provoking him, clearly not trying to be friendly but not really trying to be unfriendly. It was just an ongoing: “Grandad, grandad, grandad …” baiting him. It was harassment, but also in a kind of covert and invasive way. ‘Grandad’ was getting increasingly agitated by it and protested.

The barwoman was excellent, in the way that women are often expected to be in these kinds of situation. She recognised that David, who was baiting grandad, needed attention. She knew that if she engaged with him, no matter how irritating and unpleasant he was, he would leave grandad alone. Again, this is something that women are often expected to do in order to diffuse domestic tensions. Men are likely to use force, not necessarily physical force, but confrontation. The barwoman used emotional labour, but I can’t imagine that she would get anything more than minimum wage for handling a difficult situation with such skill and intelligence. David, though, continued to harass grandad. Grandad eventually asked for his dinner to be wrapped up, so he could take it home. He was clearly distressed.

This was an everyday drama, there was nothing unusual about this in this pub.

Thirty to forty years ago I was spending a lot of time in pubs, many rural pubs. What struck me today was the class homogeneity, the middle class no longer want to be around a struggling emotionally unrestrained working class? The pub is in poor shape, it is basic. Much infrastructure remains from the past, but it is tired. Things have been replaced by cheap oddments. It’s all done on a budget. No lines of pumps with exotic ales, but a basic offering. The people are not looking toward good jobs and opportunities to enhance their lives. They are hanging on, holding on, creating and carving out a community and some form of relaxation amongst a very limited number of things to look forward to. It is really a stark monument to forty years of economic and social policy which has meant decline for so many (increased consumption and debt is not a healthy and sustainable way out of poverty). The devastation of pubs through Wetherspoonification; corporate welfare, through in-work benefits; the free market which has left behind a clear stratification of haves and have nots; and the all-round destruction of inclusive and diverse public life.

For so many people the last forty years, in terms of work opportunities, standards of living, quality of health and education, it must have felt like they have been going backward. I will give it its due, the New Labour government did try and mitigate for this decline – what was criminal is that it didn’t tackle the underlying causes.

If you really want to understand Brexit, then you should visit a pub like this. There must be thousands across the UK. Go in there, sit there and sense what is going on and wonder why we got to this.

On the EU, the Single Market and the Labour Party

The result of the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum on 23rd June 2016 resulted in 51.89 per cent of the electorate voting to leave. I voted remain.

The terms of the referendum stated clearly that the government would act on whatever the outcome of the referendum was.

There continue to be arguments about whether the referendum was merely advisory and that it should not be binding, or whether the Leave campaign lied and misled voters and leave won under false pretences or whether there was a sufficient majority or participation to make it clear.

My view is the result is what it is and that under the terms of the referendum, the result must be respected. I don’t mean that people should not continue with arguments for staying in the EU, but, in my view, the outcome, prima facie, should be respected.

During the referendum campaign I was equivocal about the EU, I see its benefits but I see its drawbacks too. On balance – and because it would be a Conservative-led departure – I voted remain.

I fully acknowledge that leaving the EU is a huge undertaking, there are many risks and the scale and complexity of the task is beyond comprehension. The constitutional lawyer, Professor Michael Doughan, sets out some of the numerous interrelated constitutional matters that must be resolved. The uncertainty of the process, the lack of planning and the lack of an overall plan, could in themselves lead to a conclusion that we should simply remain in the EU. I have sympathy with that, but I don’t agree. My two main reasons are as follows.

The first is that ignoring the referendum result would result in a crisis of democracy, perhaps even a constitutional crisis. People having made their decision and voted accordingly would rightly feel cheated if the result were overturned. Moreover, it would add to a growing sense of mistrust in politics and politicians. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer 2017:

Among the least well-off 25 per cent of the population, trust in government has fallen to just 20 per cent, one of the lowest figures ever recorded in the history of the Trust Barometer. This might not be surprising, but the sickly condition of trust seems to have infected even the wealthiest tiers of British society: last year 54 per cent of the wealthiest said they trusted government; this year that figure has plummeted to 38 per cent¹Edelman Trust Barometer 2017, Crisis of Trust in post-Brexit Britain, p. 2

It is imperative that we uphold democracy. Although a worthwhile purpose in itself, it is of particular importance when it is the far right who would capitalise: the nationalists and xenophobes who trade on people’s emotions under conditions of democratic deficit and lack of opportunity.

Liberals may say that the trade off is not worth it. Sterling is falling, private debt is rising, growth is slowing and EU workers, as a consequence of uncertainty, are leaving the UK. All this, they might say, is reason enough to stop Brexit.

I disagree. While I agree with some of the above concerns; some, such as falling sterling are not as serious as is suggested. But central to our economic woes is austerity. This has the overriding influence on our economy. That is not to say our relationship with the EU and our trading arrangements is not a factor, but primarily we have to look at domestic fiscal policy as well as our own industrial strategy to see the principle drivers of our economic problems. And this is my second main reason for upholding the referendum result, political economy.

It is the UK’s commitment to liberal economics, over the past 40 years, that has put us in our current economic spot. It is based on the belief that a freemarket, with minimum regulation, generates wealth and this rising tide will float all boats. It hasn’t. Thomas Piketty’s analysis demonstrates the growth in inequality over the last few decades in the UK, Europe and in the USA. And although some centrist governments have made greater commitments to public spending, liberal economics has been prioritised. This means a minimal role for the state, the reductions and minimisation of public deficits and controls on nationalised industry and services. Furthermore the liberalisations of finance to permit the growth in private-sector debt.

These conditions, often referred to as neoliberalism, have been the defining features of political, economic and social conditions in the US and Europe. The EU, as a supranational organisation, is of this, it has grown under these conditions, its constitution is based on the principles of liberal economics and the freemarket. The Maastricht Treaty and the Single Market are there to engender free trade, the harmonisation of regulation and law across boundaries.

Generally, the principles of the EU are intended to serve humanity and protect and represent the people of Europe fairly and with respect to human rights. But there is a fundamental clash. A clash between the liberalisation of markets, as a priority, and the needs of those who have limited representation and minimal power. We see capital within the European Single Market privileged over and above the rights of workers.

We can look at the EU as a monument to multinational liberalism, a great achievement. But, at the same time, we cannot ignore its limitations in terms of political economy. The power it has been granted means that the centre of gravity within its operations favours freemarkets and capital, over labour and workers.

The Tory vision of Brexit means one of two things, or even a combination of the two. 1) Sovereignty, returning law making and decision making back to the EU, so that the UK elite have unfettered right to exploit the working class of the UK. 2) A reduction in corporation taxes to attract business to exploit UK labour and compete with the EU.

The Labour approach is nuanced. It respects the importance of trade with the EU and the complex supply chains that exist within and without of UK territoires. Trade with the Single Market is of major importance to the UK economy. At the same time, it is important that a UK Labour government has the freedom to have a democratically agreed industrial strategy. This might require nationalisation or state aid. This has the potential to clash with the principles of the EU. It is necessary that the UK remains open-minded in its negotiation with the EU over its membership of the Single Market and the Customs Union.

It is important to be reminded that although Labour did not win the General Election in 2017, its showing was significant in both national and international politics. What the Labour Party has demonstrated is that it is in a position to win a general election with a manifesto that represents a break from neoliberalism. It has a commitment to Keynesian economincs, using public spending to create full employment and manage demand and distribute prosperity more widely and fairly.

This represents a challenge to the EU consensus. I imagine not an unwelcome one in many parts, since there must be recognition of the limitations of the EU’s economic liberalism and the problems and inequalities that has created across Europe.

Given the complexity and scale of the issues within nations and across them. It has to be welcomed that the UK Labour Party is looking to try to negotiate productively and fairly with its neighbours. It has opted to be open minded, but is committed to fundamental principles of social justice, equality, fairness and functioning democracy.

It is disappointing that fifty or so Labour MPs, including my own, supported Chuka Umunna’s amendment to commit to the EU Single Market last week. While we must not rule out such a membership, we have to commit to a more nuanced position. And, while still encouraging debate, I suggest that Labour MPs prioritise party unity. They need to be ready to govern and ready to have some grown-up discussions and debates with the country and with our EU neighbours.

References

Why I think we should leave the EU

I voted to remain in the EU on 23 June 2016. If there was another referendum I would vote to leave. I have two main reasons for this. The first is that I understand more about macroeconomics. This is through reading in the period subsequent to the referendum. Classical economics has failed to make accurate predictions about the national, regional and global economics. While heterodox economics, like Modern Money Theory or Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), post-Keynesian post-Marxist has been much more effective in predicting the 2008 crisis. Part of the reason for this is that it does not assume that people’s decisions are rational, it considers the role of power and hegemonous groups.

Central to MMT is idea that a nation state, with its own sovereign currency, cannot become insolvent, it is solely responsible for creating its own currency and for spending that currency. There are other provisos, like for instance, a nation’s currency must not be pegged to another nation’s currency. This is the problem with the Euro and for those countries that have this currency. None of which are able to use fiscal policy to ensure that their economy works for their own people. In fact the European Central Bank (ECB) imposes austerity, it limits the extent to which each country can invest, through deficit spending. This is why Modern Money Theorists like Steve Keen and Bill Mitchell are eurosceptic. They predict that at some stage the eurozone will come apart, with considerable political and potential social upheaval. In the end, the UK is best out of this close economic union, even though it is not part of the Eurozone. According to Bill Mitchell, it is not brexit that is the problem it is austerity. That’s why those of the left should stop rerunning debates about the legitimacy of the referendum and focus attention on exposing the Tory government on its horrendous record on managing the economy. It’s not just their record on managing the economy, its the corruption also, they have abused their power by lining the pockets of their backers by giving them access to running state services for profit and through favourable taxation

My second main issue with the EU is its response the fascist coup in the US. The Donald Trump administration decieved the US voting poblic and persuaded them to put it into power. The US now has a dangerous far-right authoritarian and racist government. There are many who see the EU as an allience to counter the rise of fascism. I have little faith they will do this. The EU has failed to address the rise of the far right within its own borders, it is institutionally powerless. The reason for this is that inspite of being formed to ensure peace between European nations, its development as an economic block has turned neoliberal. The EU, by having the Euro, runs an economic system that minimises state intervention, encourages outsourcing and deregulation. It forces other nations to do the same. The EU will primarily protect its favoured form of political economy. And what we have seen with neoliberalism of the last 30 years, is rising inequality, unemployment or underemployement and stagnating wages, except for the wealthy. This is fodder for the far right, the same conditions that led to Trump in the US. The EU is wedded to neoliberalism, it will defend this and the Euro ahead of anything else, there are too many vested interests to counter any demise. And while the EU is a neoliberal institution, it is part of the problem and not a solution.

Two illustrations: A Labour MEP holds up a sign ‘He is lying’ while British fascist Nigel Farage speaks in the European Parliament. The EU leaders gather in Malta and issue a joint criticism of Trump. Both of these are platitudinous. The antidote to fascism (based roughly on Arendt) is through the public sphere. In Europe this would translate to radical economic and democratic changes, an end to neoliberalism; universal basic income and/or job guarantees; improvements in civic, institutional and workplace democracy; and progressive taxation. Fascism is overcome by empowering people to overcome it. I do not see any of this happening in the UK or Europe. Platitudes and indifference will have dangerous consequences.