Why does the Labour Party not support Brexit?

[FlatulentStarfish]

Forgive me, I am not brilliantly knowledgeable about politics. But what I can't understand is why are the Labour Party not supporting Brexit? I always understood that Labour supported the British poor and working classes. Surely these are the very people who are being most hurt by remaining in the EU. One newspaper described the referendum as a battle between the Haves and the Have Nots. Why are Labour abandoning their people? The old Labour politicians such as Tony Benn were always anti EU.

Anna this 'reform from within' argument puzzles me. Reform for what aim? The EU doesn't exist for the benefit of any single country, it's a one-size-fits-all economic and social model - and for most countries, the fit is very poor. Why not just leave, and continue to build the society we want without the constraints of the EU?

A genuine question.

To what extent is the EU a system of government marked by centralization of authority, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls with suppression of opposition?

Limer, I agree completely. The EU can't and won't reform. That's why I want out.

What if Germany leave ?

What if France leave ?

I wonder if we stay what would be the impact of these countries leaving. In both counties many are wanting a referendum. I have friends in Germany that believe Germany would absolutely leave as they were the ones that saved Greece and are taking on the refugee crises with little support

If we go will they soon follow

EnthusiasmDisturbed, they are going to leave. It is going to collapse. It is an artificial construct whose time has passed.

Our Establishment and trade unions and Labour Party are trying to breathe life back into it, but it is already effectively finished.

How is the EU an artificial construct any more than the nation state of France or GB?

Because they have existed for centuries and stood the test of time. We are now having a referendum to leave this artificial construct created by political elites for the benefit of big business and the easy management by unaccountable elites of 500 million people centrally. Our referendum will be followed by other countries doing the same as their political elites are unable to resist the will of the European people in their countries.

Christine Lagarde will be busyt flying to other countries, helping their out of touch political elites t convince their people that they should stay in this elitist artificial union of peoples of different customs, languages and cultures which denies self-dertermination and the democratic will of the people.

Its coming to an end even if we vote to remain. Trump is the beginning of the end of the artificially created union.

Trump said "what do you need it for?"

That question will echo across all of Europe as the political elites who have ruled us without proper democratic representation struggle to convince the people that it was for our benefit and not theirs and the big business lobbyists who control them.

'this artificial construct created by political elites'

They told us they created it to prevent war in Europe. But that was 70 years ago. There won't be a war even though David Cameron and his elite mates like Donald Tusk and the other scaremongers among the elite class pretend there might be in order to put the people back in their box.

We don't need it any more. We can cooperate without needing to surrender our sovereignty to an elite of bureaucratic civil servants from Latvia to Lisbon.

"British workers suffering worst decline in real wages on record

Britons are suffering the most severe decline in real earnings since Victorian times, according to new figures.

Workers in the UK face the seventh consecutive year of falling real earnings, the TUC has said.

The current situation has no historical precedent, and even the depression of the 1920s was shorter, with the total decline in earnings since 2007 at over 8 per cent."

www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/british-workers-suffering-worst-decline-in-real-wages-on-record-9789942.html

This is the economic success this elite class of nobodies, sell-outs and servants of bankers have delivered for the European people under their subservience to banker driven austerity for 500 million people. They bailed out the bankers and then imposed austerity to pay for it. They created the rise of teh far right all across Europe, allowed free movement to keep wages low and then allowed over a million migrants, the majority economic migrants to come to Europe, and that is probably only the beginning.

We can't vote them out and even if we vote the Tories out, we get a similar lot of Labour stooges all committed to the same big business banker led austerity policies. We are powerless to change anything, we just witness ever greater decline as fat cats are knighted and politicians claim expenses and bankers are bailed out by the people.

It is going to collapse because it is artificial and the because the elites are useless and out of touch and are imposing it against the will of the people which is why this referendum is very close.

The sooner we make an amicable split, regain our sovereignty, revitalise our democracy and cooperate for our mutual interests without being dictated to by Brussels, the sooner we can recover and restore wages and growth.

Not really, the nation state is (imho) an out dated 19th century concept, perhaps with deeper roots, but none the less essentially created within the 19th century societal paradigm which we've unsuccessfully being trying to modernise over the past 50 years or so. It's time has passed.

"Swedes tell Britain: if you leave the EU, we’ll follow"

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/04/swedes-tell-britain-if-you-leave-the-eu-well-follow/

The lie that it is to the benefit of the people, when 94% of our businesses don't even trade with the EU, and when we are the fifth largest economy in the world and are having to use our wealth to subsidise poorer European countries, and hand over our taxes to big government bureaucrats who have never had a real job just like most of our political class of Oxbridge graduates, so that they can tell us what power vacuum cleaners we are allowed to buy, will all collapse when the people of Europe are allowed to express their opinion on what has been done to them by this unaccountable elite of mates of the IMF, the World Bank, Goldman Sachs and all the other professional political class across the planet paid for by the wages and taxes of the people.

Granted, I think that to much wealth of concentrated at the top of society and should be shared more equally, but also I don't mind sharing with poorer countries in Europe, don't mind paying tax (as long as there's transparency and it's not being wasted on trident) and have no problem with big government.

'Not really, the nation state is (imho) an out dated 19th century concept'

That is what the elites, the globalists and their socialists tell us because the nation state allows a nation to elect their own leaders and they all want a supranational elite to rule us who are above popular control.

Big business wants the end of the nation state, it wants a borderless world and so do its socialist stooges who serve big business while pretending to the people that they serve the people

"Kerry slams Trump's wall, tells grads to prepare for 'borderless world'

www.washingtonexaminer.com/kerry-slams-trumps-wall-tells-grads-to-prepare-for-borderless-world/article/2590596

"'Completely open borders are inevitable,' predicts Labour's John McDonnell
Shadow chancellor said global movements would make borders irrelevant
McDonnell said poverty and climate change would drive migration
He claimed totally open borders 'would occur' by the end of the century"

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3425358/Borders-completely-open-migrants-inevitable-predicts-Labour-s-John-McDonnell.html]]

That is what big business, the bankers, the globalists and their socialist stooges want, and it looked like they had won and had removed the democratic will of the people. But we have a referendum, and even if we lose that, we will still win because the whole world is about to change as Trump is against TTIP, TPP and all the rest of the globalist free trade deals that have removed the sovereignty of the people. It is all over for the corrupt elite, their socialist stooges and their banker bosses.

"Trump warns against ‘false song of globalism’

“We will no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism,” Trump promised during a speech in Washington.

“I am skeptical of international unions that tie us up and bring America down,” he claimed. “And under my administration, we will never enter America into any agreement that reduces our ability to control our own affairs.

“The nation-state remains the true foundation of happiness and harmony.”

thehill.com/policy/national-security/277879-trump-warns-against-false-song-of-globalism

While Scargill calls Corbyn a sell-out, while Tony Benn and Bob Crow would turn in their graves, we the people see the socialists for what they were all along, phony sell-outs to the corporate elite and the big bankers, content to pick up their MP expenses while selling the people and democracy down the river and saying that open borders are inevitable and we all better get used to it.

'but also I don't mind sharing with poorer countries in Europe, don't mind paying tax (as long as there's transparency and it's not being wasted on trident) and have no problem with big government.'

But haven't you seen how they fiddled expenses and paid for their moats and their cleaners and their bath plugs and their flipped homes?

They use our money and hand it over to their mates in what are called charidees, they are mesmerized by some of these people who spend public money while nurses get only a 1% pay rise and while old people's meals on wheels are cut.

The bigger government gets, the more corrupt it gets and the more Oxbridge graduates who have never worked a day in their lives are attracted to it with a job for life and expenses on tap.

Make them accountable, keep them on their toes and have the ability to vote them out, whether in Brussels of here.

They send £350 million a week to Brussels so that the bureaucrats can carve up where it goes, while they tell junior doctors to work weekends without overtime pay.

Who are they working for?

We know they are corporate puppets, but so too and even more so are the unaccountable, unnameable ones in Brussels who are at the beck and call of bankers and who the people of Europe never see on TV , can never question, can never elect and can never hold unaccountable.

Now they are desperate as the people are about to vote in a referendum, and all their mates across the world are flying in to scaremonger the people about war in Europe and the loss of millions of jobs and the loss of the bureaucrats' perks.

...have no problem with big government.

Do you have a problem with big government that can't be voted out?

[I] don't mind paying tax (as long as there's transparency and it's not being wasted on trident) and have no problem with big government

Do you mind it being wasted on the kind of big government that shuttles pointlessly between Brussels and Strasbourg to the tune of around £100 million a year?

Yes the EU should be more democratic, and so should the UK (house of unelected lords?).
No i don't mind the 'shuttling' around, I have more problems with wasting money on subsidising a royal family or pointless nuclear arms.
And relating to the nation state and the elites, I think I'll take hobsbawm over Trump thanks (but you'll probably tell me Eric was a stooge too...)

Hobsbawm was an apologist for Stalin and his atrocities. He was not a democrat and didn't care about the popular will of the people and was of course, Oxbridge. He was typical of the academic elitist class who think they know better than the people. He would have loved a bureaucratic unaccountable class lording it over the hoi polloi because he thought he was above the people and knew what was best for them.

I prefer Trump who provides jobs for people, creates employment, believes in democracy and national sovereignty.

"Why Hobsbawm Defended Stalin’s Atrocities"

"In a 1994 interview with Michael Ignatieff he [Hobsbawn] famously claimed that if the Soviet Union had succeeded in creating a true communist society, it would have been worth the deaths of the twenty million people who perished under Stalin. Didn’t Marx himself say that ”no great movement has been born without the shedding of blood”? So self -sacrifice wasn’t the only kind of sacrifice that socialism might require. "

www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2012/10/why-hobsbawm-defended-stalins-atrocities

Bingo!

It's not a game.

He had dangerous ideas and was prepared to sacrifice the lives of millions of people for his abstract eltist ideal which did away with the democratic will of ordinary people. He was dangerous and the reason he is lauded by the great and the good is because they share his contempt for the people and democracy.

If it's not a game then don't link to a crackpot evangelical blog to support your arguments.
Hobsbawm himself said his ideas were shaken by the reality of stalinist Russia when he visited. Was he controversial? Yes. Was he absolutely right? Of course not. Yet he is one of the influential and important historians and philosophers of our generation. He was an 'academic elite ' because he went out and earned it. More than Trump had ever earned.

But I fear this digression has little to do with the EU!

'He was an 'academic elite ' because he went out and earned it.'

No he didn't. He was boosted by our elite because they agreed with some of his views. An interview on the record with Michael Ignatieff has nothing to do with an evangelical blog and is a matter of fact.

You brought Hobsbawm, the Marxist, up and it is tangential to the EU because it is a similar elitist project run by elites who have disdain for democracy and the people, just like Hobsbawm did.

And in fact as Soviet defector Vladimir Bukovsky warned us, the EU is similar to the Soviet Union and is heading in that direction with an unaccounatble elite driving it and ignoring the will of the people.