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Bremain redux a lesson for our political class : Comments
By Graham Young, published 27/6/2016It is a powerful coalition because it tends to value experience over theories, which is really to say reality over fantasy.
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Spoken like a true neo-liberal.
“less regulation and free enterprise” might just as well read freedom for the business classes to remove the EU protections on wages and work hours or freedom to pollute and contaminate.
“everyone pulls their weight without expecting a handout” could just as well be read as signalling fresh attacks on the welfare state. A winding back of the National health system is already being floated by leaver Nigel Farage.
Ultimately Brexit can indeed be viewed as a move from human-centric European policies to nationalistic themes and business-centric laissez faire 'freedoms'.
What is most disturbing however is the constant decrying and attacking of 'mindless bureaucrats'. This relatively small group, consisting of members of all the EU nations, made heroic efforts to bring what was such a divisive continent together into a generally cohesive group delivering prosperity, improvements in human rights, and deregulated movement of people and goods for all these postwar years. Quite remarkable really.
John Ralston Saul in his book Volaire's Bastards writes about the fight to bring proper sanitation to Paris. In the 1860s there were suburbs in which 95% of the children who were born failed to reach the age of 5 but is would take over 50 years to get just half the city's buildings on sewers.
Cont..