ERIC ZUESSE | 06.07.2016 | OPINION
HISTORICAL PRELIMINARY
The European Union, and opposition to Brexit (or to any other exit from it), reflect the opposite of progressive values, but instead are an important part of the strategy owners of international corporations have for taking over governments in order to increase their own profits (and power). (Click here for an accurate brief history of the US CIA’s involvement in setting up the EU. And this 2004 video documentary supplements that, with a focus specifically upon the popular movement in Britain to exit from the EU.)
The «Establishment», or the aristocracy, favors the type of globalization (the EU, mega-‘trade’ deals such as the TTIP, etc.) that has been occurring after World War II. Aristocrats control the international corporations and want them (want themselves) to rule the world – not democracy to rule the world, not the publics, in each country, to rule their countries.
In any country, the aristocracy is the people who own controlling interests in international corporations, and they therefore possess real power in international affairs – such as they will have in the ultimate decision as to whether or not UK will exit EU.
To clarify: The aristocracy isn’t necessarily descended from aristocrats, nor officially proclaimed (knighted, etc.) as ‘aristocrats’, but is instead the real holders of power, the people who make the decisions as to which politicians to fund, and as to which ‘news’ media the given aristocrat’s corporations will fund by means of his or her corporation’s advertising its products and services in that person’s favored media (irrespective of whether the person happens also to invest in or own those media, not only own companies that advertise in them). Aristocrats shape the public opinion that, in a ‘democracy’, determines who rules, and who does not. Though some aristocrats have descended from aristocrats, others are first-generation aristocrats, but all of them hold the real power – both over the politicians, and over the media – unless the given country is an authentic democracy, which few countries actually are.
Britain’s aristocracy are unyielding that UK remain in EU; the reason they won’t yield is that EU represents Europe’s aristocracies, including Britain’s, and it holds the power to override Britain’s unwritten constitution in favor of Britain's aristocracy: EU is good to aristocrats – far better for them than any nation’s Constitution is. They want it.
Consequently, the UK’s aristocracy is determined that Britain will remain inside the European Union.
Here is how they are carrying out this policy:
I have previously explained the reasons «Why There Will Probably Be A Second Referendum On Brexit», including the reasons why a second such referendum will almost certainly fail to meet the standard set for Brexit (British exit from the European Union) to move forward. In other words, Brexit will probably be reversed. The focus of the present article will instead be on the simultaneous operation by the Western – that’s to say, by the US-aristocracy-led – aristocracy (the aristocracies in America’s vassal-nations), to tighten their control over UK politics so that such rebellions won’t happen again; to do this by weakening, or getting rid of, UK politicians who resist the aristocracy, and by replacing those politicians with ones who have proven themselves loyal to the Western aristocracy. That’s the aspect of the aristocracy’s anti-Brexit operation, which will be discussed here – the replacement of Britain’s pro-democracy leaders, by pro-aristocracy leaders: the aristocracy’s using the current political turmoil in Britain so as to cement even more the power that international corporations have over the British government.
THE CAMPAIGN TO GET RID OF JEREMY CORBYN
The populist anti-Tony-Blair leader of today’s British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, calls himself a «democratic socialist», like America’s populist anti-Clinton US Senator Bernie Sanders does; and Corbyn was expected to favor Brexit because on 17 September 2015 he strongly opposed US President Barack Obama’s proposed mega-‘trade’ treaty with Europe, the TTIP (which Sanders likewise opposes). However, instead, on 14 April 2016, Corbyn unexpectedly came out against Brexit, by «declaring himself to be in tune with the rest of his Party, which, as he put it, is ‘overwhelmingly for staying in’», as Britain’s liberal Guardian newspaper reported, going on to note: «The relief [within the Labour Party] was intense because, without Labour voters, the referendum on 23 June is lost».
Corbyn, in other words, reluctantly supported the EU – which wants to sign Obama’s TTIP (which he hates) – because Corbyn didn’t want to go against the majority of Labour Parliamentarians, many of whom are holdovers from the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown era, the era of «George W Bush’s lap dog» Blair (and Brown). Today’s Labour Parliamentarians are still beholden to the US aristocracy, as much as Labour’s nominal opponents the Tories are, and have been, beholden to them ever since World War II.
In other words: the Western aristocracy knows that Corbyn is against them. So, they want him out, and now they are using the Blair/Brown Labourites in order to get rid of him by alleging that Corbyn has been a weak leader, one who wasn’t «giving the leadership we need» in order to keep the UK in the EU. What the US aristocracy (and their vassal UK aristocrats) want more than anything else is to ram through a passage-into-law of Obama’s massive TTIP ‘trade’ treaty, which (like the original of the EU itself did) describes itself as being about ‘trade’ but is instead a transfer of national sovereignty (regarding the environment, workers’ rights, and product safety) to international corporations. By eliminating Corbyn, the aristocrats would win a Britain both of whose major political Parties are, in effect, owned by them.
Promptly when on June 24th the Brexit ‘victory’ was announced, the anti-Brexit Tory Prime Minister David Cameron quit (effective in October) because he had failed to achieve the demand of his masters, to keep Britain inside the EU. But now the supposedly more progressive Party, Labour, is likewise trying to force Corbyn out because he has been failing the very same masters, regarding Brexit. All of this despite the British public’s having actually voted, by 52% to 48%, to exit the EU. A country like this calls itself a ‘democracy’? But Corbyn is a persistent democrat: he refuses to quit. He thinks that there might be enough of a democracy left in the UK so that the real leadership of the country might reflect, at least to some extent, the country’s public.
Here is how much of a dictatorship the EU actually is: John Hilary reported in Britain’s Independent on 12 October 2015:
«When I asked the [EU’s] trade commissioner [Cecilia Malmström] how she could continue her persistent promotion of the [TTIP] deal in the face of such massive public opposition, her response came back icy cold: «I do not take my mandate from the European people».
So who does Cecilia Malmström take her mandate from? Officially, EU commissioners are supposed to follow the elected governments of Europe. Yet the European Commission is carrying on the TTIP negotiations behind closed doors without the proper involvement [of] European governments, let alone MPs or members of the public. British civil servants have admitted to us that they have been kept in the dark throughout the TTIP talks, and that this makes their job impossible.
In reality, as a new report from War on Want has just revealed, Malmström receives her orders directly from the corporate lobbyists that swarm around Brussels».
Those «corporate lobbyists» are agents of the aristocracy; the EU represents them – not the European public. There is no way that any nation’s staying inside the EU can be authentically democratic. To be in the EU is to be in a dictatorship. Jeremy Corbyn was trying to square the circle in order to avoid his going to war against his own Party’s senior leadership. But now this senior leadership is going to war against him and trying to remove him from the leadership – even though his tepid support of the EU turned out to reflect rather closely the British public’s tepid opposition to the EU. Obviously, the senior leadership in the Labour Party are merely Tories in verbal disguise. Corbyn has a rebellion on his hands – a rebellion from Britain’s ‘Labour’ aristocrats.
In this context, one can understand also such things as the Guardian’s headline on June 21st, «EU to extend sanctions against Russia: Envoys from 28 member states in consensus over punishing Moscow further for annexation of Crimea and presence in Ukraine». It’s what America’s international corporations want. It’s all part of the same package – and so too is NATO.
On June 24th, the Financial Times headlined «Federal Reserve to provide dollar liquidity» and reported that, «In a statement issued hours after the UK voted to leave the EU, the Fed said it was ready to funnel dollars to other central banks via existing swap lines set up during the 2008 financial crisis». In other words, the US aristocracy was pledging assistance to UK aristocrats, to help them weather the storm of their temporary defeat.
By June 26th, America’s National Public Radio bannered, «After Brexit Vote, Labour Leader Faces Open Revolt Inside His Party», and reported that 12 members of Corbyn’s own «shadow cabinet» (people who would become the Prime Minister’s Cabinet if Corbyn were to oust the Conservative government) had resigned in protest at Corbyn’s leadership. «Corbyn is ‘regarded as the most Eurosceptic Labour leader in years,’ as the BBC reported». Neither the American government’s nor the British government’s radio network portrayed in any positive light a politician being «Eurosceptic» – only support of the EU dictatorship was favorably reported (but without mention that the EU is a dictatorship – that fact is never reported by Western propaganda).
Among the mouthpieces of Britain’s liberal aristocracy, all of populism – both left and right – got damned, so that senior leaders of the Labour Party could only have been smiling. Here is George Monbiot’s commentary in the Guardian, on June 28th, under the headline, «Brexit is a disaster, but we can build on the ruins»:
«Yes, the Brexit vote has empowered the most gruesome collection of schemers, misfits, liars, extremists and puppets that British politics has produced in the modern era. It threatens to invoke a new age of demagoguery, a threat sharpened by the thought that if this can happen, so can Donald Trump.
It has provoked a resurgence of racism and an economic crisis whose dimensions remain unknown. It jeopardises the living world, the NHS, peace in Ireland and the rest of the European Union. It promotes what the billionaire Peter Hargreaves gleefully anticipated as ‘fantastic insecurity’».
On Thursday June 30th, Julie Hyland headlined at countercurrents.org, «In Right-Wing Putsch, UK Labour MPs Deliver Overwhelming Anti-Corbyn Vote», and reported:
«Fully 81 percent of the parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) supported Tuesday’s motion of no-confidence in leader Jeremy Corbyn. Just 40 Labour MPs voted against the motion, with 172 in favour. Thirteen did not vote at all and there were four spoilt ballots.
The extraordinary scale of the right-wing coup, which had already seen Corbyn lose most of his shadow cabinet in a series of timed resignations, was intended to force the Labour leader to resign. But in a statement put out moments after the result, Corbyn said that he had been elected ‘by 60 percent of Labour members and supporters’ only last September, and ‘I will not betray them by resigning.’
The no-confidence motion, he said, has ‘no constitutional legitimacy.’
Corbyn is correct in that the motion is non-binding».
The first person proposed as Labour’s replacement for Corbyn was reported there to be a Labour Member of Parliament who had just quit from Corbyn’s «shadow cabinet», Angela Eagle. She had voted consistently for the hardline, George W Bush, Tony Blair, Barack Obama, David Cameron, Hillary Clinton, invade-everywhere, coup-everywhere, position, even to invade Iraq in 2003, and to block a proposal for the government to investigate the decision that had been made to invade Iraq. She «Generally voted for more EU integration». She has been an angel for the aristocracy. Her record also provided to the public the symbolism they needed that she cared about oppressed peoples, such as gays. The idea here would be to replace a Bernie Sanders type by a Hillary Clinton type. But Corbyn wasn’t quitting. And other possible candidates to replace him were also scrambling to win the support of Labour MPs.
CONCLUSION
On the Conservative Party side of things, the aristocracy’s control was more ironclad. Boris Johnson, the (till-then) rising pro-Brexit star in that Party, who had widely been expected to lead his Party into the next elections, suddenly and unexplainably quit on June 30th his Party’s leadership-contest after he found that the Party’s other leaders mysteriously abandoned him and were coalescing around anti-Brexit candidates, including especially one member of his own team.
Such is British ‘democracy’ – namely: less and less, as the aristocracy’s grip is becoming more and more.
And, of course, it’s a global thing, not merely British. For example, on July 2nd, the top of the home page at Huffington Post bannered «THE WEEK BRITAIN CRASHED THE WORLD», as if the «crash» were likely to be permanent instead of overruled, and as if that «crash» were a threat to the public, instead of to the aristocrats themselves.
