Brexit: who benefits?

David Cameron has been touring European cities negotiating for a so called reformed European Union and doesn’t it make you feel ashamed?

The number one on his negotiating agenda is an emergency brake on benefits for migrants.

While he is attempting to woo other member states, and his own euro sceptics on the Tory benches, we are watching Syria being bombed to destruction with thousands upon thousands civilians being forced out of their homes fleeing to Turkish and Greek borders by taking perilous journeys over the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas.

Syria is at the centre of the storm but the death toll in the wider region forever rises.  A recent UN report detailed the statistics of Iraqi civilians killed and wounded.  It makes for horrendous reading;

“Between 1 January 2014 and 31 October 2015 there were at least 18,802 civilians killed and another 36,245 wounded.  Another 3.2 million people have been internally displaced since January 2014, including more than a million children of school age.”

And last year the UN recorded 3,545 civilian deaths and 7,457 injured the highest number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan since its records began in 2009.

Conflagration

Away from these killing fields there is a deliberate conflation of migrants, immigrants and refugees.  It is in this poisonous rhetorical atmosphere that the arguments on an in/out referendum of the European Union (EU) are taking place.

Of course the EU needs reforming but as John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, explained, its far better to go for progressive reforms and to go after those corporations who are not paying their taxes.

Matt Brittin, president of Google (Europe) squirming in front of the public accounts select committee as he attempted to justify Google’s tax arrangements was a sight to behold.

And how he buckled when he was asked by Meg Hillier, the chair of the committee how much he earned.  Up until that point, it seemed pretty clear that Google had bamboozled the Treasury.  Now that would be a reform worthy of its name.

The left used to be in the anti-camp to the European Economic Community (EEC) or as it was commonly known – the Common Market.  And for perfectly good reasons that still exists today.

Savage capitalism

Its embrace of savage capitalism and the EU’s negotiations going on behind closed doors on a trade treaty – TTIP that entrenches transnational corporations and allows them to sue nation states for huge sums of money, are reasons enough.

But when the ones who are so rabidly in favour of leaving include John Redwood, Liam Fox, and Nigel Farage there is a simple answer to the question – ‘who benefits’ – and that is not working people. They want out so that they can undo any of the gains that have been won.

Currently the right in Europe are in the ascendancy, with some exceptions, but Cameron is swimming with the sharks.

There can be a progressive case made for staying in the EU.  We can’t leave it to the sharks to determine and dominate the EU.

Working with other European socialist and social democratic parties the Labour leadership will seek EU reforms on a tax system that means corporations will pay their fair share. And reforms that put democracy, stronger workers’ rights, jobs and growth and public ownership at the forefront.

‘Emergency brake’

Jeremy Corbyn is absolutely right to go on the offensive against the ‘emergency brake’ on benefits for new migrants and make the positive case for European migration.  Hand in hand has to be a demand for a crackdown on the undercutting of wages by agencies.

Some in the shadow cabinet are briefing that Jeremy’s defence is risky and leaves the field open to UKIP.  As if Labour’s approach should be dictated to by UKIP.

They should stop playing narrow political games. This election is too important for that. The referendum campaign is an opportunity to hear different policies and different voices to those largely heard by the right and their allies in a ferocious anti Europe media.

Here too is the lumping of everything together as Europe even those institutions that aren’t part of the EU since it suits their prejudices and clouds the issues.

It’s a commonplace now to condemn the party hierarchy for allowing the Tories to spread the myth that the economic crisis of 2008 was Labour‘s fault.

Go see the film the Big Short – it kills off that calumny. Fortunately we have a leadership that won’t let that happen again.  Now they are reclaiming credibility.  Economic credibility as with arguments on membership of the EU can’t be defined and left to the right of any party.

Content is Joy Johnson’s personal reflections on the EU debate. This feature first appeared in Tribune.