Brexit has destroyed old friendships, or perhaps friendships that were never as well grounded as I thought. Here is a recent email exchange. It began when I sent this link to a Guardian article about the mysterious increase in explosions in Sweden.
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The Guardian is utterly untrustworthy and the editors are a disgrace to their predecessors.
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The whole BREXIT saga is the real utter disgrace, leaving this country deeply, deeply divided for generations to come … you played your part in this - extremely disappointing … thinking this is over now … think again, this is definitely NOT over and not forgotten.
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ME: Since 2016, I have learned a lot about the EU which I did not know. It seems that the policies are dominated by the Franco-German military/industrial complex: Schneider-Creuset, Alstom, Krupp-Thyssen, Siemens, Mercedes Benz, Bayer, BASF, and the corporate and private holders of large agricultural land holdings. These are very same as payrolled the fascists and Nazis between the wars. It suits big business to have a pool of cheap labour from the former communist countries. EU money sent to those countries is pocketed by corrupt politicians. The Euro is at least 10% cheaper than a German currency would be, which means that Germans are working at least half a day a week for nothing. It is exploitation big time. VAT, a requirement of being in the EU, is one of the most inefficient, regressive and damaging taxes it is possible to have.
When the UK joined the EU, within weeks, food prices almost doubled as inexpensive food from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Argentina vanished from the shops. I remember it well. The increased cost of living was the cause of the continual industrial unrest in the 1970s, which led to the election of Thatcher in 1979. The fish off the Sussex coast were mostly hoovered up. Then we got the food mountains, subsidised prairie farming, and then set aside, followed by payments to landowners, which include the wealthiest people in the land. What also came to light after 2016 was the democratic deficit. The elected parliament has no power to initiate legislation. That is the preserve of the commission. A place on the commission was a way of getting rotten politicians like Mandelson quietly out of the way. There is also the issue that the English legal system based on Common Law and habeas corpus is fundamentally incompatible with continental systems based on Roman Law.
My own preference would have been for a radically reformed EU. Unfortunately, they have no incentive to reform.The next thing that will happen will be that the incipient German banking crisis will blow. As you know, they are full of debt from southern Europe which will never be repaid.
The Guardian has never talked about any of these things. Goodness knows why. I am astonished that progressive people supported remain. I can only assume that they were not aware of the economic implications of the EU's policies. The EU has followed a Rake's Progress of economic mismanagement, largely due to the following of what are seventeenth century economic policies, based on a long discredited view of economics known as 'Mercantilism'. Since I am, having studied these issues for the past fifty years, how can I be expected to support such folly, which were no part of the essential EU project? But you will not read about that in the Guardian.
Here in Sweden, public services are now, if anything, even worse than those in the UK. The money pledged to support the million people who have been welcomed into the country over the past ten years has run out. Now we have swinging cuts, and a demand for a huge increase in contributions to the EU to make up for that paid by the UK. It is not fair. We are now a poor country.
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RESPONSE: Oh dear, a lot of sweeping statements based on assumptions, which are “half-cooked” ... evidence please.
The EU is by no means perfect, but is worth defending! I totally and utterly disagree with your very odd assumptions.
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ME (evidence supplied) Which assumptions are odd and what is odd about them? There would not be 30,000 expensive lobbyists in Brussels if their efforts were fruitless. The EU’s trade and economic policies favour EU Big Business: a low paid labour force is available and skinflint employers exploit the situation. The Euro favours German big business and gave them low labour costs and an easy market to sell into, even if the banks had to lend the money to the Greeks and the Greeks couldn’t pay it back.
The CAP gives us high food prices, bolsters the rental value of agricultural land and keeps sub-marginal land in farming use. Taking from the poor and giving to the rich.
As I said, I have been studying this subject, under good guidance with plenty of opportunity to discuss the issues all round, for nearly fifty years. I know more about it than people like Hutton, Rawnsley and Toynbee. Actually, the Guardian's economics editor, Larry Elliott, is broadly in agreement which what I have said, but gets brickbats when he makes the points.
When the history comes to be written, there will be a lot of head scratching about how so many people allowed themselves to be deceived.
I would agree that the EU is worth defending, but the people who have taken over control have wrecked it. The EU was founded on the principle of subsidiarity, but that principle was promptly ignored.
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RESPONSE: Don’t pretend you “would agree that the EU is worth defending”. You evidently do not want to miss a chance to undermine it - your self constructed narrative is a a jumbled mix of out of context arguments. ‘Classic’ for your age group and symptomatic for the deep divide in this country for generations to come. Ce la vie!
I do not share your views and btw nor Larry Elliot’s.
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ME: The EU leaders undermined the EU with trade and economic policies which fly in the face of three hundred years of accumulated knowledge and wisdom. As an intelligent and well informed citizen, I expect better from you than to dismiss my points as “a self constructed narrative” and “jumbled mix of out of context arguments.” “‘Classic’ for your age group and symptomatic for the deep divide in this country for generations to come.” It is like a child putting its hands over its ears and saying ‘Shut up, I don't want to hear”.How about countering the points I made? I expect an adult response.
The next event will be a German bank crisis. German industry has been kept busy supplying goods to people who have had to be lent money to pay for their purchases. The debt is unrepayable. This was never a sustainable business model. If Germany had kept the DM, its value would have risen and the persistent balance of payments surplus would have been checked. As it is, the debt has grown and grown, and Germans are effectively working at least half a day a week for nothing. The economist Nigel Calder long ago warned forty years ago of the dangers of a single currency. What will the ECB crisis do for the EU? As I say, the EU politicians and policy makers are the ones who have done the damage, not the people who have criticised their folly. Don't shoot the messenger.
ME AGAIN: Does the term “self-constructed narrative“ come from Derrida or Adorno?
The postmodern analysis is ultimately solipsistic, because it denies the existence of objective reality. It is the high road to collective madness. It is also an effective tool to shut down rational discussion. The Guardian has been constructing narratives for the past decade or so. It is widespread in the Swedish media and among Swedish politicians. Thus we can be told that explosions and other crimes “happen”, without further information being provided about who was responsible and what might be the motives and causes, since the answers to those questions would destroy the narrative. There is nothing new about the technique, except that it used to be described as dishonest propaganda, or being ‘economical with the truth’, the phrase famously used by a Cabinet Secretary under questioning.
I was taught to use the Socratic method: the use of reason to support or refute propositions and assertions. It seems to have gone out of fashion. That will end badly.
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