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.

Bukovsky on the EU and the USSR

'Yes. For people in China and Mexico!'

But many more jobs in the US and even some in Scotland.

I bought hobsbawm up just to illustrate that there's a whole raft of folks who've given a lot more thought/time/research to the place of the nation state and globalism in the modern world than Donald bloody Trump!

And I just don't get what the hell an 'elite' is, it's making my head spin.....

Bukovsky tells us we "don't have to accept what they have planned for us".

We can vote out and that is why they are calling on all their mates in the IMF and in parliaments across the world to try and scare us to accept the fate they have planned for us.

Don't fall for their exaggerations about war in Europe and the loss of millions of jobs, lies and scaremongering tricks (the more scared and desperate they get, the bigger their lies get and the more like Pinocchio they look).

Keep calm, go into the voting booth and vote out, vote for democracy and the people over the unaccounatble elites

'And I just don't get what the hell an 'elite' is, it's making my head spin.....'

Then listen to Bukovsky. He lived under it and the ideas of Hobsbawm, the antidemocratic idiot from Oxbridge, who was prepared to see millions die on the altar of communism and was honoured and praised by our elite rather than being treated as the dangerous fool he really was.

the antidemocratic idiot from Oxbridge

You are aware that Oxbridge isn't an actual place, aren't you? Nobody comes from "Oxbridge".

Yes, I know, but I like using it to cover the concept of both universities.

Boris is not antidemocratic and is far from an idiot which is why Cameron is doing everything he can to avoid facing him in a debate.

So, if i understand correctly, an 'elite' is someone who has graduated and then gone on to become a politician, or is an academic ?

So essentially you're advocating anti-intellectualism; that the ability to hold office/govern in a fair and open manner depends upon the rejection of he intellectual? So, basically fascism then?

Yourcase is about as good as Cameron's war in Europe warning

"David Cameron's doom-laden warning of Brexit causing war in Europe is rejected by NINE in 10 voters"

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3599354/David-Cameron-s-doom-laden-warning-Brexit-causing-war-Europe-rejected-NINE-10-voters-new-polling-reveals.html

'So, if i understand correctly, an 'elite' is someone who has graduated and then gone on to become a politician, or is an academic ? '

No because Boris graduated and went on to be a politician.

'So, basically fascism then?'

I am against fascism and communism, I am for democracy which is why I am against antidemocratic academics like Hobsbawm who would accept the death of 20 million people if Stalin had brought in communism, and am against antidemocratic elites who support these antidemocratic anti human views.

I'm quite comfortable being the 1 in 10 (a number on a list...) if it means i reject the daily mail

Paul Mason, the left wing academic and former BBC Newsnight economics editor, was on BBC Question Time last night, and was a bit all over the place, but he was essentially right that the EU is undemocratic and antidemocratic and cannot be reformed to be made democratic.

"The leftwing case for Brexit is strategic and clear. The EU is not – and cannot become – a democracy. Instead, it provides the most hospitable ecosystem in the developed world for rentier monopoly corporations, tax-dodging elites and organised crime. It has an executive so powerful it could crush the leftwing government of Greece; a legislature so weak that it cannot effectively determine laws or control its own civil service. A judiciary that, in the Laval and Viking judgments, subordinated workers’ right to strike to an employer’s right do business freely."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/16/brexit-eu-referendum-boris-johnson-greece-tory

Democracy is rule by the people and is the most important thing we have. It protects us from rule by elites, whether Hobsbawmian (who treat human lives as less important than ideology) or right wing corporate ones.

Have you read the article?
He's essentially arguing that while the EU has many many problems, we shouldn't leave now because Johnson, Gove et al cannot be trusted.
That is in fact the sub-heading of the article!!

I have heard numerous times in this last week we are the 5th richest economy in the world

I know it's in London and other wealthy areas of the UK but it seems more and more that he gap is growing there is so much extreme wealth. The NHS is at breaking point, university fees are rising again, house prices in many parts of the country especially London are out of control , rents rising far above inflation and so many people who are working are having to rely on benefit top ups

This wealth is held by a small amount of people. What we need to hear from both camps is how this can be dealt with and we are not. far too many people who are working full time or working around childcare or can't work are really struggling. How is the UK being so wealthy helping these people or those that have just lost their jobs they thought they would have for life in the steel industry

I didn't read it because he is all over the place like he was last night on BBC Question Time where he said the same thing. But the key coherent thing he said was

"The EU is not – and cannot become – a democracy"

That is all you need to know about why it is not a good thing.

Here is a more coherent article from Spiked

"Love democracy?
Then leave the EU

Why optimists, radicals and progressives should vote out of the EU."

www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/love-democracy-then-leave-the-eu/18054#.Vz7GhOT2bx8

and here is an article by a university academic in Open Democracy

"The European elite's politics of fear
...
It is exactly this form of ‘enlightened Europeanism’ that constitutes the true danger to both national democracy and European integration today. By forcing national governments to continue on a path of European integration that is not, or no longer, supported by the majority of their population, they breed and radicalize anti-democratic and anti-European sentiments. Fully aware of this, the EU elite increasingly constrains the already limited avenues for democratic popular control of the process of European integration, most notably by pressuring national governments to refrain from referendums on important EU decisions – as was the case in Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, etc. Importantly, this does not only harm the democratic basis of the European Union, which was never particularly strong anyway, but slowly erodes the democratic basis of its member states too. Now that is something to be fearful of!"

www.opendemocracy.net/cas-mudde/european-elites-politics-of-fear

All of the investment banks, the global corportaions, the IMF and their cadre of compliant, suppliant politicians (on generous salaries, expenses and perks) are using what the professor calls "the politics of fear" to browbeat the people into accepting their undemocratic rule over us.

Paul Mason is all over the place because his argument is essentially "they have got me locked up in prison but I don't want to get out and be free because I don't like Gove and Boris possibly running the country, so I will stay in prison and hope that one day they will let me out and I can be free"

The problem is they won't let him out. This is the one and only chance he has got to democratically vote to be free and leave. They won't be giving him another chance. It has taken over 40 years to get this chance for the people to have their say. Paul Mason will be long dead before there is ever another chance, if ever that happens as the corporates and banks tighten their grip on the people and embed their "politics of fear" ro prevent any escape from their undemocratic rule.

Prison? That's just silly. Mason is not saying that at all, he is in fact very clear and not 'all over the place':
"...the Tories will be free to use the sudden disappearance of our rights as EU citizens to reshape the UK’s de facto constitution. The man who destroyed state control of education [Gove] and the man who shovelled acres of free land into the hands of London developers [BoJo] will get to determine the new balance of power between the citizen and the state"

these are not men who car about democracy or people, they care about pushing their own right-wing, free capitalistic state, big-business ideology.

"So even for those who support the leftwing case for Brexit, it is sensible to argue: not now. The time to confront Europe over a leftwing agenda is when you have a Labour government, and the EU is resisting it"

'...the Tories will be free to use the sudden disappearance of our rights as EU citizens to reshape the UK’s de facto constitution. The man who destroyed state control of education [Gove] and the man who shovelled acres of free land into the hands of London developers [BoJo] will get to determine the new balance of power between the citizen and the state"'

No they won't. They have a tiny minority and have done so mnay u-turns that Thatcher would be turning in her grave. They had to accept a deal with the junior doctors, they are facing a rebellion from their own MPs on making every school an academy school, they are facing a rebellion from their own MPs after saying they will get tough on parents taking children out of school for holidays, they had to scrap the pasty tax, the caravan tax, plain packaging for cigarettes and many more things.

They are a useless, incompetent shower with a tiny minority and have no chance of of removing our rights or reshaping the constitution. In fact , they are likely to fall apart after the Referendum as Cameron and all the Establishment cronies would be severely damaged by their attempt to scaremonger the people into accepting unpopular EU rule. British politics will be totally transformed and there will be a clamour for real democracy rather than rule by this patrnising Oxbridge, Eton elite of clowns.

'these are not men who car about democracy or people, they care about pushing their own right-wing, free capitalistic state, big-business ideology.'

No they don't. Gove s a progressive who wants prison reform and to put power in the hands of people and not an unaccounatble bunch of bureaucrats and mates of Etonians. If we win the Referendum, it will be a loss for JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, the IMF and all their subservient politicians from Eton and Oxbridge. The people will have won and told them to take a hike. Then Paul Mason can get his democratic politics free from the corporatist choke arund our necks and their braying Bullingdon berties doing their bidding.

'The time to confront Europe over a leftwing agenda is when you have a Labour government, and the EU is resisting it"'

The Labour government that will be in place will be the same Oxbridge public school one as the Tory one - Blair instead of Cameron. Unless the entire political system is changed and we are granted PR by our Oxbridge elite, we will never get a true Labour government, just a warmongering, lying rule by Oxbridge Establishment stooges.

I just don't accept your analysis at all. I genuinely fear an exit from the EU, and politicians like Johnson, gove, IDS et al

Palehorse,

I accept your description of fearing Johnson, IDS etc.. Yet at least we do have one very big advantage over being part of Europe..

WE CAN VOTE THEM OUT.... (and yes it does need to be shouted from the rooftops).

You cannot vote out the EU Commissioners. Nor can you vote out the the Council of Europe.