Sir
Vince Cable has just said that he believes that “Brexit should
never happen”.... Sorry, I made a mistake there... Sir Vince Cable
has just said that he believes that “Brexit may never happen”.
Cable
was referring to what he called the “enormous divisions” in both
the Labour and Conservative parties. He concluded that people may
think again about leaving the EU. In his own words:
“I’m beginning
to think Brexit may never happen.The problems are so enormous… I
can see a scenario in which this doesn’t happen.”
Firstly,
there are “problems” about all sorts of things in all British
parties. Are the problems about Brexit truly “enormous”?
Possibly. Cable, as a staunch fan of the EU, certainly hopes
so. To
quote the man himself:
“The Lib Dems had
always been absolutely straight and consistent in support for the
European project.”
In
any case, what exactly does he mean by the words “I can see a
scenario”? Again, does he hope there will be such a
scenario? Any scenario can be imagined about anything.
Yet Cable certainly wasn't keen on Ukip not being in
disarray about Europe, was he? And if the Tories weren't in disarray
about Europe, would that make him happy? Of course it wouldn't!
Liam
Fox has just said that the BBC would rather see Britain fail than
Brexit go ahead. Two EU commissars have (more or less) said that they too would like to see Britain fail when it leaves the EU. And now we have Vince Cable, who believes that Brexit should
be made to fail “by any means necessary” (not, of course, his own
words). These people are so committed to the EU's role as Europe's
political, economic and legal powerhouse that the success of Brexit - and
indeed Britain! - pails into insignificance besides the EU's own
far-more-important success.
However,
Sir Vince is right about one person: Jeremy Corbyn. (Corbyn is, of
course, Cable's main political opponent when it comes to taking over
the role of Prime Minister from Theresa May.) Saint Jeremy is indeed
a Eurosceptic. Nonetheless, Cable is wrong to conclude that young
voters may stop supporting Corbyn because of his anti-EU position.
Despite that, there are many staunch fans of the EU in Corbyn's
Labour Party. Indeed some of them are even outright Corbynistas
rather than “right-wing
Blairite vermin” (as one pro-Corbyn t-shirt had it).
However, most young Corbynistas are more turned on by the idea of
Corbyn's extremely-radical socialism than they by the EU's....
what? Radical socialism is far more politically hip (or fashionable)
than any pro-EU position. And young rad socialists place great
emphasis on their being politically hip. After all, Che Guevara and
“Jezzer” Corbyn t-shirts
are far hipper than pro-EU t-shirts.
Cable,
like most other Europhiles, concentrates entirely on economics. In so
doing, he paints the usual nightmare scenarios about the - possible!
- rise in unemployment and the decrease in living standards if/when
we leave the EU. In fact Sir Vince seems to relish
these possibilities. That's because anything goes when it
comes to fighting Brexit.
This
isn't a surprise. Cable is Homo Economicus. He was made
Honorary Professor of Economics at the University of Nottingham.
Before that, from 1966 to 1968, he was a Treasury Finance Officer to
the Kenyan Government.
His
economic fixations aren't just academic or political either: they're also financial and career-based. From 1995 to 1997, for
example, Cable served as Chief Economist for the oil company Royal
Dutch Shell in Nigeria. Indeed Cable's
political – not economic - role came under scrutiny in that
country.
As
I said, Cable is Economics Man. And such men, nowadays, are also very
keen on enlarging the political, economic and legal power of large
institutions such as the EU and even the UN.
In
parallel to all that, Cable - as usual - ignores the problems of
European “open borders” and EU courts making British politicians and
courts impotent against terror, terrorists and the refugees who
aren't, well, refugees. He has nothing to say about the “democratic
deficit” either. Nothing to say about political power
moving away from the UK to Europe. Nothing to say about increasing EU
bureaucratisation. Nothing.
Like
a Marxist or fundamentalist free-marketeer, to Cable (to paraphrase
Bill Clinton), it's all about the
economy, stupid. But it's not, is it? Cable knows that. We
know that. And Cable knows that we know that. Hence his happiness about the
rival political parties are in disarray over Brexit.
It
was said earlier that Economics Man pretends to see the whole Brexit/EU show in terms of economics and economics alone. Thus it's fitting to end with
the words of Conservative MP Owen Paterson. He said:
“I’m afraid
Vince is behind history. If we do not deliver a proper Brexit…
there will be absolutely appalling damage to the integrity of the
whole establishment — not just political, the media and the
judicial establishment.”
True;
though the EU is far more important to Cable than the “political,
media and judicial establishment”. Worse than that, it's far more
important than the 17.4 million people who voted for Brexit.
Is
Sir Cable, therefore, truly a (liberal) democrat?
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