{UAH} Allan/Edmund/Gwokto/Gook/Pojim/WBK: Why are Remainers so convinced that staying in the European Union is what is best for the UK?

Barry McGuinness, British person
Updated 23h ago · Upvoted by Anders Wahlberg, lives in The United Kingdom (1948-present) and Leslie Wood, lives in The United Kingdom (1934-present)

First, because the key arguments for Britain leaving the EU are false. Second, because it's become much clearer what Brexit was really about all along.

Arguments for Britain leaving the EU …

1. Taking back control?

Many in Britain believe that the EU has undermined British parliamentary sovereignty, and that leaving the EU is the only way for the British people to 'take back control', especially with regard to migration. [1]

And yet the UK has never, at any point, lost control to the EU.[2][3]

In reality, successive British governments have simply opted in to a multinational decision-making process in order to achieve certain multinational objectives, such as creating a single market, constraining Iran's nuclear programme, and collaborating to tackle climate change.

The EU is like a club, membership of which comes with certain rules and regulations — most of which simply specify how the members should co-operate as a single market and so on. By accepting the same democratically-agreed rules and regulations as other member states, the UK gets to enjoy the four key benefits of EU membership: free movement of goods, labour, services, and capital.

As a particularly strong and influential member, the UK has considerable power to steer the definition of new rules and regulations. But by leaving the EU, the UK loses this power.

Ironically, the UK is losing power, freedom, trade and influence just to gain an illusory sense of independence, or 'taking back control'.

And even more ironically, with a no-deal Brexit the UK will have to comply with trade rules set behind closed doors in Geneva by the unelected and non-transparent committees of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). [4]

2. Immigration?

The UK doesn't need to leave the EU to control EU migration. For one thing, the UK has never opted in to the Schengen Area, a border-control-free subset of EU countries, precisely in order to maintain full control of its own borders.[5]

And while the 'free movement of people' allows anyone three months' unconditional residence in another EU country, continued residence thereafter is subject to certain criteria (such as finding employment) plus the host nation's own discretion.[6][7] The UK, however, doesn't take advantage of this and seems to keep quiet about it,[8][9]probably because the UK (unlike other countries) has no adequate methods for checking immigration and monitoring migrants.[10]

Perhaps it's also because without steady immigration there would be a national labour shortage. For example, Government funding for training nurses has been cut to such an extent that the UK has to rely on foreigners to fill the gaps. [11][12]After Brexit, the UK will simply become more dependent on immigrants from Commonwealth countries.

3. Unelected Eurocrats?

Eurospectic politicians and newspapers are fond of referring to the officials of the European Union as 'unelected bureaucrats' or 'eurocrats', suggesting that these unaccountable officials make decisions that affect our lives.

In fact, the EU is run democratically by two bodies:

the Council of the EU — a regular get-together of the 28 democratically-elected presidents and prime ministers of the EU member states;
the European Parliament, which consists of 751 directly-elected MEPs representing their constituencies.
A third body, the European Commission consists of over 30,000 civil servants whose job is to administer the implementation of European laws.

While it is technically correct that these civil servants are "unelected bureaucrats", the same is true of all civil servants everywhere. What is grossly incorrect is the idea that Europe is "governed" by these civil servants. This is a silly misunderstanding brought about by the fact that it's the Commission's role to propose new legislation in order to keep up with EU policy decisions made by the elected bodies.

When the Commission proposes new legislation, the Council and Parliament debate the proposal and each takes a vote. The new legislation is enacted only if the two elected bodies jointly agree to it. The Commission then implements their decision.


But what about all those ludicrous laws imposed on the British by dastardly eurocrats?

They don't exist. They were deliberately made up by British anti-EU journalists, like a certain Boris Johnson.

From 1989–1994, Johnson was a bored young journalist reporting from the European Commission in Brussels. He soon found that he could easily make front-page headlines by portraying the European Commission as a bunch of jumped-up foreigners trying to undermine the UK. He also found that constant Brussels-bashing boosted his career prospects, as a lot of old-fashioned Conservatives back home believed every word he wrote.

Almost single-handedly, Johnson created the brand of fake news known as 'Euromyth'. It did of course mean ditching any semblance of journalistic integrity, just deliberately lying and scaremongering on a daily basis — but he managed to do it spectacularly well, and still does. He was, however, recently caught red-handed:


In his leadership campaign, Johnson paraded a kipper claiming that 'Brussels bureaucrats' impose ridiculous rules on kipper packaging. In fact the packaging rules are set by the UK Food Standards Agency to ensure the safety of food bought online.[13]
4. Good for the economy?

The EU single market provides some much-needed cooperation, protection and resilience in the face of an unstable global economy dominated by the US and China, plus covert trouble-making by Russia.[14] Following Brexit, especially a hard or no-deal Brexit, the UK will become just another external country hoping to do business with the EU's very large and very powerful integrated market — a market which currently buys half of the UK's exports.[15]

"If you take back the right to set your own rules and standards, it will by definition become harder to do business with countries that use different ones. If you want to trade, you will probably end up following the rules of a more powerful partner—which for Britain means the EU or America—only without a say in setting them."

'Brexit, the mother of all messes'. The Economist, 17 Jan 2019.
By cancelling its membership of the EU, the UK is losing all the economic advantages that come with it. [16]These include open borders, tariff-free import/export trade, hassle-free international travel for business, holidays, studying, working, etc., and all the benefits that go with being part of the world's most democratic, diverse and innovative trading bloc.

British business will be hurt; British science and scholarship will be hurt; British workers will lose the right to work anywhere in Europe; British students will no longer be able to work or study anywhere in the EU; poorer areas like Cornwall and Wales will lose their EU grants.

Even the British Government's own forecast concludes that the country will be left 'permanently poorer' by leaving the EU, and with a no-deal Brexit causing an annual loss per British household of over £5,000.[17]

"The conclusions of this document are clear: none of the [Brexit] alternatives support trade and provide influence on the world stage in the same way as continued membership of a reformed EU; and all of them come with serious economic costs that would affect businesses, jobs, living standards and our public finances for decades to come. To put it simply, families would be substantially worse off if Britain leaves the EU."

HM Treasury analysis: the long-term economic impact of EU membership and the alternatives. HM Treasury, 18 April 2016.
Some prominent Brexit supporters are very aware of all this. People like Jacob Rees-Mogg aren't stupid — they have been moving their own assets out of Britain to continue making profits within the EU while the UK struggles along outside it.[18][19]

5. The people have spoken?

In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2007–8, the UK and many other countries went into economic recession.

To address the large deficit in government finances, the Conservative Party under David Cameron inflicted a punishing austerity programme on the less well-off, with lower public spending, welfare cuts and frozen benefits.

But this was something many Conservatives had always wanted anyway,[20] and many were quietly delighted:

"The genius of David Cameron and George Osborne was that they persuaded the country to accept the most challenging cuts to public spending in our peacetime history without [sparking] riots."

Jeremy Hunt MP, interview by New Statesman ('Jeremy Hunt: the last Cameroon'), 17 April 2019.
With growing confidence, Cameron even began hailing the austerity programme as a permanent feature.[21]


As the hardship of years of austerity took its toll, some voters did put the blame directly on David Cameron's government. The EU referendum of 2016 then came along as an opportunity for them to vent their frustration.[22]

Cameron, weirdly, appointed himself leader of a lacklustre 'Remain' campaign. The two 'Leave' campaigns, on the other hand, were well-funded, dynamic, relentless and successfully hogged the headlines (especially those of the Daily Mail). Many voters soon became convinced that their financial woes and social concerns were all the fault of the EU and immigrants.

But the Leave campaigns were also deceitful and fraudulent. In fact, the extensive illegality of the Leave campaigns[23][24] may well be the biggest ever fraud committed against democracy in modern British history.

For example, during the run-up to the EU referendum, Facebook enabled the online 'digital persuasion' company Cambridge Analytica to post blatant lies about the EU. Their sole purpose was to urge carefully-selected (i.e. emotionally persuadable) Facebook users to vote 'Leave'. [25]


Facebook's role in Brexit -- and the threat to democracy — must-see TED talk by investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr of the Observer.
See also the shocking Netflix documentary The Great Hack.
And yet despite all this, the actual referendum result cannot be legally challenged. Why? Because the referendum vote was only advisory, like an opinion poll, not mandatory.

So even though the referendum is now, in effect, 'just a massive crime scene'[26] subject to multiple criminal investigations, the result itself cannot be overturned on legal grounds because it has no legal status in the first place. Despite politicians repeatedly claiming that they've been given a 'clear mandate' to leave the EU because 'the people have spoken',[27] the Government was (and still is) under no legal obligation whatsoever to act on the result.

What Brexit was really about all along …

1 . Tax avoidance

Throughout the world, corporate tax avoidance is a colossal problem. But by far the biggest enabler of corporate tax avoidance is the UK with its global network of secretive tax-haven territories:[28]

"Britain has single-handedly done more to undermine world's tax system than any other nation, report finds… Tax haven territories linked to Britain are responsible for around a third of the world's corporate tax avoidance risk."

'UK by far the biggest enabler of global corporate tax dodging, groundbreaking research finds'. Ben Chapman, Independent, 28 May 2019.
The EU's Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive (first proposed in 2016, implemented in 2019) seeks to tackle the thriving culture of corporate tax avoidance. It affects not only some familiar major companies but also many celebrities and numerous poorer countries whose corrupt government leaders are secretively hoarding and laundering money with the help of British offshore banks. [29][30]

Continuing membership of the EU, or just the single market, would mean the UK having to adopt and enforce this anti-tax avoidance policy on its own dodgy bankers.[31]

A hard or no-deal Brexit, on the other hand, would leave things just as they are.

This is the plain and simple reason why so many of the most powerful supporters of Brexit — wealthy business tycoons — suddenly began proclaiming that Britain had to leave the EU, the sooner the better. Their ideal scenario would be for the UK to go even further, turning itself into a Singapore-style tax haven for the wealthy. This option is now being actively pursued by Boris Johnson's Government

(Many of those same Brexit supporters also happen to be named in the Paradise Papers — leaked documents exposing tax-avoiding offshore investors).

As soon as the EU's tax-avoidance proposal was announced, they set about portraying the EU as the great enemy of Britain, an 'undemocratic elite' deliberately causing misery for ordinary Brits.

Sadly, many ordinary Brits fell for it.


But then things didn't quite work out as planned.

After she became the 'Brexit means Brexit' Prime Minister, Theresa May spent a long time with other EU national leaders working out a pragmatic Brexit plan.

But when this Withdrawal Agreement finally came out, some Brexiteers were very unhappy with it. Why? Because at the back of the huge document there was a commitment by the British Government to retain the EU's code of conduct for business taxation, including the new anti-tax avoidance laws.

Suddenly, the Prime Minister was being branded a 'traitor'. A column in The Telegraph literally suggested that she was 'guilty of treason'.[32] [33]

But if another Prime Minister could be found … preferably an unprincipled opportunist who will say and do anything to get into 10 Downing Street …


… perhaps he could convince the people of Britain that it would be best to just ignore May's deal and then simply wait for Britain to crash out of the EU with no deal whatsoever.

And then, literally overnight, there will be no new corporate tax laws for the tax avoiders to worry about.

But there's more to it now than just tax avoidance…

2. Free market ideology

Back to the global recession:

Many experts blamed the financial crisis on the US and UK governments' failure to regulate the increasingly reckless behaviour of their banking and financial sectors.

To help protect Europe from the risk of such actions leading to another recession, the EU focused on tightening regulations. But then came the 2016 EU referendum result and the prospect of the UK actually leaving the EU. For some in the UK, this suddenly opened up a whole new vista of possibilities.

Free market ideologists believe that market forces and the profit motive are inherently good while any kind of government regulation or public spending is inherently bad. So immediately after the referendum result, the free-market think-tank the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) announced:

"The weakness of the Labour Party and the resolution of the EU question have created a unique political opportunity to drive through a wide-ranging … revolution on a scale similar to that of the 1980s … This must include removing unnecessary regulatory burdens on businesses, such as those related to climate directives and investment fund[s]."

'Britain Votes for Brexit: CPS statement', Centre for Policy Studies, 24 June 2016.
The vacuum of regulations that would be created by Brexit suddenly presented an opportunity to reshape the entire UK economy — minimising the public sector and giving complete free rein to the private sector.

This is why some very powerful financiers have been sponsoring and championing Brexit as a means to deregulate UK business and especially London's financial centre, the City.

"The majority of money donated to Boris Johnson's campaign [has come] from hedge fund managers and other financiers backing Britain's exit from the European Union, favouring low taxes and the deregulation of the UK economy."

'Boris Johnson accused of being 'out for himself' after receiving £43,000 for speech backing no-deal Brexit'. Rob Merrick, Independent, 4 July 2019.
Brexit now promises the City free rein by ditching EU regulations once and for all. And with City-friendly politicians now in Government actively pursuing a no-deal Brexit, the UK won't be adopting any EU-like regulations any time soon. Quite the opposite in fact, as Britain begins kowtowing to the Trump administration. [34]

Proponents of free market ideology don't even care about the damage Brexit will do. Shortages mean high demand and higher prices. Deregulation means giving the greedy greater freedom to exploit the needy.

4. Breaking democracy

"There is a reason why the hard Brexiteers cannot coherently explain their vision of Brexit: their chief aim is to break as many things as possible, in the belief that from the rubble might arise a kind of flag-waving, small-state, free-market utopia that even the blessed Margaret might have found unpalatable."

'Rich, reckless Brexit zealots are fighting a new class war', John Harris, The Guardian, 6 Aug 2018.
In addition to a free-market ideology, Brexit ties in neatly with an alt-right notion that to remake society "you first have to break it." The EU is, after all, a huge threat to fascism. All that trans-national collaboration, progress and peace leaves very little room for the sort of aggressive nationalism that gave us two world wars.

For example, Steve Bannon, former campaign advisor to Donald Trump, would like to see the EU torn down and be replaced by Trump-style nationalism and xenophobia. Despite being an American citizen, Bannon has been actively promoting far-right parties across Europe — including the UK's BNP, EDL, Ukip and anything to do with Nigel Farage. [35][36][37] It may be worth noting that Bannon is also the former Vice President of Cambridge Analytica.

Equally destructive, William Rees-Mogg (Jacob's father) actually wrote a book describing the financial benefits of social collapse and economic crisis for a few astute investors. The book makes it pretty clear why Jacob — recently promoted to Leader of the House of Commons by Boris Johnson — not only craves Brexit, but also the economic pain that is likely to come with it.


'How to explain Jacob Rees-Mogg? Start with his father's books'. Andy Beckett, The Guardian, 9 Nov 2018.
In the Information Age, according to William Rees-Mogg (or 'Mystic Mogg' as Private Eye called him), all nations, governments, social services and even democracy itself will collapse. Finally, no more taxes! No more propping up the poor and the sick! And then, out of the inevitable violence and carnage to come when the masses turn on each other, only the most capable and self-interested investors will inherit the Earth.

Naomi Klein, in her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine, refers to this deeply cynical and toxic ideology as 'disaster capitalism'.


But why sit around waiting for a natural disaster or economic shock to come along when you can covertly engineer one yourself?

5. Hedge funds: betting against Britain

Hedge fund managers are investors who gamble on the economy. They place bets on any economic value that might rise or (ideally) fall, such as the value of sterling. The world is just one big casino to them, and any humanitarian disaster or economic crisis is simply a good bet — an opportunity to make a killing.

Some of the leading Brexiteers who have long claimed that leaving the EU will lead to enormous dividends for the UK are, in fact, hedge fund investors seeking enormous dividends for themselves. They are poised to profit from the inevitable uncertainty and chaos, especially from a no-deal Brexit.

This is precisely why they have been actively sponsoring Leave and supporting Boris Johnson to constantly blame the EU for everything and to push for 'no deal'.

"What to do if you are a hedge fund manager down to your last billion? Answer: rig global politics in your favour. If that sounds improbable, remember we are talking about folk capable of shorting* the entire Japanese economy in response to a natural disaster. Hedge fund managers are megalomaniacs. It goes with the territory."

'Boris, Brexit and the Hedge Funds (Part 1)' George Keravan, Bella Caledonia, 11 July 2019.
One of the new EU directives designed to regulate the financial sector, the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (2011), focused on the worst excesses of unscrupulous hedge funds. It addressed everything from their secrecy to how much managers could pay themselves in bonuses.

"The adoption of the directive means that hedge funds and private equity will no longer operate in a regulatory void outside the scope of supervisors. The new regime brings transparency and security to the way these funds are managed and operate, which adds to the overall stability of our financial system."

'European Commission statement at the occasion of the European Parliament vote on the directive on hedge funds and private equity', Press release (MEMO/10/573), European Commission, 11 Nov 2010.
Hedge fund managers in London, who had been used to operating as freewheeling rogues outside the system, took exception to this and began clamouring for Britain to leave the EU. The clamouring increased in 2015 after they were fined by the Greek government for interfering with the struggling Greek economy.

One of these hedge fund managers is Crispin Odey.


Odey routinely bets against the British economy — if UK stocks and share values go down, or if a British business goes bankrupt as he predicted, he wins.

He made £220 million after successfully betting that a Leave result would cause the pound to crash. But then, he had also donated almost £900,000 to the Vote Leave campaign to help get the desired result.

After Theresa May's downfall, Odey donated £10,000 to Boris Johnson's leadership campaign. He then began publicly calling for people to support Boris Johnson's no-deal Brexit strategy as the best possible way ahead for Britain. 'Theresa May wasted three years,' he says. 'The only optimism about anything lies in supporting Boris.'[38] Yet he has placed a £300 million bet on a no-deal Brexit leading to disaster for many top British companies — but another staggering windfall for himself.[39]

"Odey's apparent lack of confidence in flagship British firms stands in marked contrast to his fund's investments in other countries, including France, Germany and the US, where he is mainly backing shares to rise."

'Brexiteer Odey bets £500m AGAINST British businesses', Neil Craven & Jamie Nimmo, The Mail On Sunday, 10 June 2018.
It's as if Brexit is just a means for predators to separate the UK from the safety of the herd.

And with so many wealthy businessmen sponsoring government ministers to produce the hardest Brexit possible purely for their own financial gain, it really begs the question — who is the current government actually working for?

"Brexit is not a cry for help from the English underclass. It is a carefully stage-managed campaign by global finance capital in the form of the hedge funds. It is being orchestrated out of hedge fund self-interest and the greed of billionaires. Boris Johnson is their front man."

'Boris, Brexit and the Hedge Funds (Part 1)', George Keravan, Bella Caledonia, 11 July 2019
Conclusion

Brexit is essentially a coup pulled off at the behest of tax-dodging corporations and misanthropic investors.
Their only concern for 'taking back control' is to rid their own businesses of EU tax laws, financial regulations and employee rights.
They have been systematically misleading the British public to hate the EU through a constant supply of anti-EU propaganda and lies.
They are sponsoring their friends and collaborators in the Conservative Party to bring about a no-deal Brexit.
They are on course to instigate social and economic changes that will turn the UK (or what's left of it) into an enormous cash cow for their own self-interest.
They are abusing democracy to create a plutocracy


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