Brexit is a rejection of globalisation

[portlander23]

Brexit is a rejection of globalisation
Larry Elliott
The Guardian

There has been push back against globalisation over the years. The violent protests seen in Seattle during the World Trade Organisation meeting in December 1999 were the first sign that not everyone saw the move towards untrammelled freedom in a positive light. One conclusion from the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001 was that it was not only trade and financial markets that had gone global. The collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers seven years later put paid to the idea that the best thing governments could do when confronted with the power of global capital was to get out of the way and let the banks supervise themselves.

Now we have Britain’s rejection of the EU. This was more than a protest against the career opportunities that never knock and the affordable homes that never get built. It was a protest against the economic model that has been in place for the past three decades.

Europe has failed to fulfil the historic role allocated to it. Jobs, living standards and welfare states were all better protected in the heyday of nation states in the 1950s and 1960s than they have been in the age of globalisation. Unemployment across the eurozone is more than 10%. Italy’s economy is barely any bigger now than it was when the euro was created. Greece’s economy has shrunk by almost a third. Austerity has eroded welfare provision. Labour market protections have been stripped away.

Inevitably, there has been a backlash, manifested in the rise of populist parties on the left and right. An increasing number of voters believe there is not much on offer from the current system. They think globalisation has benefited a small privileged elite, but not them. They think it is unfair that they should pay the price for bankers’ failings. They hanker after a return to the security that the nation state provided, even if that means curbs on the core freedoms that underpin globalisation, including the free movement of people.

There are those who argue that globalisation is now like the weather, something we can moan about but not alter. This is a false comparison. The global market economy was created by a set of political decisions in the past and it can be shaped by political decisions taken in the future.

[BeyondGeography]

2. The 50s and 60s were 60 and 50 years ago

There are serious problems but there is zero to be gained by looking back. Nostalgia just may be an even bigger problem than xenophobia.

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. Thank you. A wee glimmer of light. It's not about race - it's a

rejection of absolutism, which, under the title of the Divine Right of Kings, we dispensed with centuries ago. To replace the infinite rights of absolute monarchs with the Divine Right of the Multinationals would be to permit ourselves to be thrown from the frying pan into the fire. And that is hardly even a metaphor.

Collectivisation of peasant farms in Russia was enforced by Stalin, despite the protests of the kulaks, who understood the inherent unreliability of human beings, and especially politicians, all too well to literally 'bet the farm' ! Europeans ordered without appeal to merge their respective, elementary national identities in one great transnational state. Rejecting that is not nationalism in a negative sense, it is acknowledging a need for a sense of identity that is quite primordial.

'Grace builds upon nature', is not a precept that can be ignored. Goodness can only be legislated so far. The right wing try to avoid it all together; the left, too, each, with its different stated priorities, though with vast overlaps in the reality.

Would you prefer your confederation of states to be abolished, in favour of a single, unified country ? With South America added on, perhaps ? Rule by the agribusinesses under the TTIP ? Or Big Pharma. Or the MIC ? Wait ...

[midnight]

4. Kick

[840high]

5. k&r