War of Nerves Laurie Penny, March 29
Brexit, Pursued by Despair
Brexit is just the latest alibi to mask the austerity con
https://thebaffler.com/war-of-nerves/brexit-austerity-penny
Brexit is just the latest alibi to mask the austerity conThe referendum
was the flame; Article 50 is the fuse. Today, after months of
recrimination and fear, the deed was finally done. Britain�s unelected
Prime Minister triggered Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, setting the
legal machine of international relations on an unstoppable course
towards Brexit. Britain was committed to the complex and painful
operation of leaving the EU within two years�with or without the
anesthetic of a workable trade deal.
The new right wants you to believe that Brexit ignited spontaneously
out of a broad Western backlash against racial tolerance and decadence.
It wants you to believe that these are your �legitimate concerns.� But
as the craven svengalis of triumphant neoconservatism and the gurning
spivs they stand behind try to scrawl their own ugly slogans over the
pages of recent history, remember that it could have been
otherwise.
Remember this, because people will try to erase it from the story.
Brexit is happening because the people of Britain have been through
eight years of savage and senseless austerity. If you take away all of
the things that make community life possible�not just the libraries but
the youth centers, the after-school clubs, the parks and citizens
advice centers�if you do all that and then fix it so people can hardly
even afford to leave the house, presuming they have energy out of their
exhausting jobs, then communities atrophy.
The economic case for the decimation of public spending has been
thoroughly rubbished by everyone from Nobel prize-winning economists
to, you know, actual people who saw the arteries of their lives
constricting while the rich carried on getting richer and the national
debt continued to rise. The political justification was always
threadbare, based on the notion that the Labour party, who happened to
be in power at the time of the 2008 financial crash, was entirely
responsible for everything��The Mess Labour Left Us In� was the refrain
that just wouldn�t quit as the invertebrate centre left scuttled and
cringed its way into culpability for a crisis it did not, in fact,
cause.
Some of what we have lost in this drab decade can be tallied in figures
and facts, unpopular as those are these days. Food banks were
practically unknown in Britain before the Conservatives took power. Now
one million people rely on them, and millions more go hungry in what
is still one of the wealthiest countries on earth. Middle-class youth
have grown into adulthood without jobs or the prospect of security,
becoming a �lost generation� in a catchphrase that has fallen out of
favor not because it has lost relevance but because it was embarrassing
to the authorities. School buildings are rotting and crumbling.
London has been scrubbed clean of the working poor. Thousands of
disabled people have died as a direct result of cuts to the meagre
benefits that were keeping them housed and healthy.
Somehow, this is no longer being spoken of. Yet these are the
conditions in which racism, xenophobia, and bigotry flourished. People
need someone to blame, and they were directed to kick downwards. Of
course they were.
It�s all the stranger that the language of austerity has vanished from
the political agenda because it�s only going to get worse.
This is going to hurt, however you slice it. The cost of the Brexit
negotiations that begin today will include, at very best, a leap in the
cost of living and further cuts to already decimated public services as
the country struggles to foot the bill over years of political
uncertainty. The Prime Minister is clearly banking on the prospect of
making Britain a naked tax haven, which will be disastrous for the
working classes. Major banks and businesses are already toddling off to
the continent, stupefying the willy-waving Brexit apologists who were
convinced they were all here for the weather. Those promised 350
million pounds a week for the National Health Service are not coming.
In fact, the NHS�the real institutional pride of the nation, beloved of
everyone apart from the very wealthiest, and already on its knees after
years of deliberate Tory defunding�will struggle to survive as more
cuts are imposed and thousands of foreign doctors and nurses face
deportation or are simply harassed and overworked until they leave. Why
would anyone want to stay wiping bottoms and washing wounds in a
country that claims to hate you? The last time a victory was this
Pyrrhic, there were thirteen thousand bodies on the battlefield at
Heraclea, and nobody went home happy.
The
