The "Brexit Agenda": Immigration, the economy and the "small state"

A reminder of what Brexit really means for Britain is demonstrated in an article looking at the sharp rise in immigrant deportations.  The intent by Theresa May to create a "really hostile environment" for illegal migrants has now spilled over to mean all migrants, including those from the EU. Another article highlights how this "really hostile environment" has now seeped through to employers and landlords, with some jumping the gun on the issue (or, looking at it more charitably, creating certainty for themselves on the issue when there is none from the government). The facile response from the government to this alarming trend tells us how, deep down, many of them see this as a "win-win" situation.

While whose that voted to leave the EU may applaud this, it would also be useful to think about what it means to prospective foreign workers. Simply, they will be strongly discouraged from wanting to come.

Again, those that voted to leave the EU may applaud this too: more jobs for British workers, supposedly. So let's look at the "Brexit Agenda", and what the "Brexiteers" ultimately aim to achieve.

In my last article we looked at what is happening to British politics: in truth, the hijacking of the political agenda by a small group of extremists. We looked at "how"; now, let's look at "why".

Turning back the clock

In the previous article, I mentioned EFTA, which Britain joined in 1961, about ten years before we joined the then EEC. With the government making clear its intent to leave the EFTA as well, we can literally say that the government wishes to turn back the clock on Britain's relations with Europe; more exactly, we can say it wants Britain's trading relationship to be as it was during the days of the 1950s, when Britain had the Empire.

Since winning the referendum last year, the hard-line "Brexiteers" (perhaps better called "Brextremists") have done everything they can to take the lead on setting the agenda, not only on the terms of "Brexit" itself, but also trying to seep their ideology into other facets of political discourse. This was why what is happening could be called a kind of "soft coup" or "coup by stealth". This can be especially seen in how they have been keen to press on with their agenda in spite of the government losing its majority since the June election. In spite of being a small faction of a party without a majority in parliament, they are acting as though they have untrammeled power and a huge popular mandate.

But back to the main point. What do they want to achieve?

By turning back the clock on Britain's relations with Europe (and by implication of this new immigration regime, the world), it is about "British jobs for British workers". On the face of it, it is a harmless-sounding (even laudable) idea, until you look into the detail of what that really means.

Britain's job market is currently already running at close to "natural" levels of full employment, which, obviously, includes British workers. In other words, there is no problem with British workers finding a job. And if that is true, then it can't be true that immigrants are taking away jobs from British workers.

So this straightaway destroys the fallacy of foreign migrants taking away jobs from natives. And if this is the case, then what is the point of making it much more difficult for foreigners to live and work in Britain?

If there is no real economic case for this agenda, then it must be something else. And here we are in danger of "over-intellectualizing" a fundamentally-unintellectual agenda. Brexit was never really about economics; it couldn't be, when almost everybody who understood the economics couldn't understand the logic of leaving the EU. Brexit was about power.

One of the main reasons for leaving the EU was to "take back control". While this was said to mean returning powers from Brussels to the Westminster parliament, as mentioned in my previous article, it is clear that it is really about a government power grab. And again, this is a "power grab" by a faction of the governing party that supports UKIP's agenda. 

So while this faction is doing its best to gain quasi-autocratic control over vast areas of law previously ran by the EU, their agenda on immigration is really a red herring. Whether or not this faction really believe in their own rhetoric about immigration being the bane of the British worker's life is hard to tell. If they do believe it, then it is a sign that they are dangerously deluded; if they don't, then then are truly callous in their attitude to the fate of the British economy. The evidence points to it being a mixture of the two, with some "Brextremists" being bonkers in their "vision" for Britain, while others are simply sociopathic in their outlook. Theresa May seems to exhibit a little of both.

In this way, it becomes clear that "taking back control" was really about the "Brextremists" taking autocratic control of Britain. They were horrified of the idea that the EU could dictate law to the UK, regardless of the fact that those laws were designed to improve many aspects of life in the UK, as the UK was part of the EU. While the EU, as in any huge bureaucracy, has its problems, the benefits for most people clearly out-weigh the drawbacks. The problem for the "Brextremists" was about feeling powerless. As with any Populist movement, Brexit was driven on the idea of the "losers" of the current status quo rising up against a distant, uncaring elite. However, we have seen how this lie can be used by the real, home-grown elite that supports a return to to earlier age when they ruled the country in a much more autocratic fashion. The "Brextremists" of today are simply using time-honored strategies to turn the clock back to a time they look back on with wistful nostalgia: the Britain of the British Empire, before its disintegration, when the establishment ruled with an invisible hand.
Put in this context, the idea of turning Britain into a place hostile to immigrants may then serve a double purpose. First of all, it gives the "losers" who voted for Brexit a real sense of there being an identifiable change to the make-up of the country; of the country becoming more visibly "British". In this way, it makes them feel as though their vote truly "made a difference", and thus cements their connection (i.e. loyalty) to their "Brexiteer" rulers. This manipulative use of "culture war" then gives greater leeway for them to take their agenda to its conclusion (see below). 

If the economy thrives or fails as a result of this strategy is not a real concern for this "Brexit elite". In any case, they wouldn't be the ones that suffered. As we have already seen, some that voted for Brexit believe that an economic downturn is a price worth paying if they "take back control" (regardless of how horribly deluded they are in this). This mentality of "groupthink" makes it even easier for the "Brextremists" to charge ahead with their autocratic agenda.
Those that do suffer from any self-inflicted economic mess will be given the sinister, outside forces of "Europe" to blame. Like with the dog-whistle use of immigration, the scapegoating of "foreign powers" that don't want to see Britain succeed would be the next part of the plan. As with the earlier example of employers nowadays that are "jumping the gun" on immigration, this is a "win-win" situation for those in charge. This is simply another version of the strategy of "divide and rule". 

"A bonfire of red tape"

The other main reason given for leaving the EU was due to the stranglehold that European "red tape" was apparently having on business. Regardless of the fact that few people who supported Brexit could actually point to any particular regulations they found so onerous, the "red tape" was there to improve the conditions of life in Britain, as a member of the EU. Of course, some of the regulations led to absurdities, but the vast majority left people's lives better, such as through safer products they used or safer living and working conditions. 

The "Brextremists" resented these regulations as they reduced the amount of power they had. Using accusations of the "nanny state" is as old as the hills, and this loss of power to the EU ties in with the theme of "taking back control" that we looked at earlier. Again, the motivation of the "Brexit Agenda" is to have fewer controls on business, giving them greater powers to exploit their workers and reduce costs (such as by relaxing safety standards). In this way, "Brexit Britain" will more closely resemble the working conditions found in developing countries, with things like" Zero Hour Contracts" becoming ever more commonplace, and more and more companies compelling their workforce into being an army of the self-employed. Likewise, this "race to the bottom" would result in fewer protections for workers, leading to more and more unstable social conditions. 

This is the vision of the "small state", as the "Brextremists" see it: a kind of Libertarian dystopia. Apart from the "reforms" they would like to see to working conditions, there is the vision they have of the welfare system (and have already partially implemented thanks to Iain Duncan Smith). This is making "welfare" seem more like a punishment than a human right, where the individual is devalued and dehumanized at every opportunity, and a callous system that finds any small reason to withdraw its support, leaving them to fend for themselves. As the government only has respect for money and success, it follows that this philosophy makes the poor and the vulnerable feel like social failures. This is a system of "Social Darwinism" that punishes those on the lowest rungs of society, regardless of the reason. The government isn't there to help the weak, but to make them suffer for their weakness. The same strategy has already been applied to other areas of policy, such as immigration and the settling of the government's own subjects.

Is the ultimate aim here the destruction of social fabric of civilised society? Like with their vision for the economy post-Brexit, it is either bonkers or callously-brutal. It is like they literally do not care, and are so off-the-wall they cannot see how mad their ideas really are. Taken to its logical conclusion, such policies would result in chronic deprivation among the working class, like hasn't been seen since before the Great Depression. And with deprivation and gross inequality comes social breakdown and crime, providing the "Brexiteer" elite with yet another set of scapegoats to use.
But as we have already seen, their "Brexit Agenda" seems to be the restoration of the socio-economic order of Britain prior to 1945, regardless of its effect on society. It about the destruction of the "post-war settlement" for good; a "Counter-Reformation" of the establishment against the welfare state, masquerading as a social revolution.

Brexit is simply the way they seek to achieve it.