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The Left Case for Brexit
Reflections on the Current Crisis
Richard Tuck
polity
Copyright page
Copyright © Richard Tuck 2020
The right of Richard Tuck to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2020 by Polity Press
Polity Press
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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4227-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4228-4(pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Tuck, Richard, 1949- author.
Title: The left case for Brexit : reflections on the current crisis / Richard Tuck.
Description: Bristol, UK ; Medford, MA : Polity, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Why opposing Brexit means opposing socialism and democracy”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019038607 (print) | LCCN 2019038608 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509542277 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509542284 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509542291 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: European Union--Great Britain. | Socialism--Great Britain. | Democracy--Great Britain.
Classification: LCC HC240.25.G7 T83 2020 (print) | LCC HC240.25.G7 (ebook) | DDC 341.242/20941--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019038607
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019038608
Typeset in 11 on 13pt Sabon by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NL
Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Limited
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Preface
As the campaign began over the Brexit referendum which was scheduled to take place on 23 June 2016, I found myself increasingly troubled that there seemed to be few people in the debate putting the old left-wing case against Britain’s membership of the European Union. I started writing short essays for circulation among friends and occasional publication in various online settings, and not long before the vote I was asked to put some of these ideas together into a piece for Dissent, which attracted quite a lot of attention and encouraged me to develop the themes further, and to reply to my critics. The Westminster-based think-tank Policy Exchange invited me to set out my thoughts in a lecture in July 2017, after the referendum and the general election, and that enabled me to develop my ideas further; I would like to thank Dean Godson, its director, for his help and encouragement. I have also continued to write short essays on the subject. This book contains these pieces, in the order in which they were written, to make it clear how I was responding to the complicated twists and turns of British politics over the last three years. Above all I would like to thank the friends for whom they were first written: David Grewal, Daniela Cammack, Alex Gourevitch, Jed Purdy, Chris Bickerton and Maurice Glasman. I would particularly like to thank Daniela Cammack for her help with this text. Many of the essays appeared on The Full Brexit website, the main organ of left-wing Brexiteers; I would like to thank the principal organisers of the site, Peter Ramsay, Lee Jones, Costas Lapavitsas, Martin Loughlin, Danny Nicol, Philip Cunliffe, Mary Davis, George Hoare, Anshu Srivastava and Aislinn Macklin-Doherty. Others have appeared on the Briefings for Brexit website; thanks to its organisers, Robert Tombs and Graham Gudgin.
16 April 2016
On 19 February 2016 David Cameron agreed with the other European leaders on the details of his renegotiation of the terms of membership for Britain in the European Union. The following day he announced that a referendum would be held on membership on 23 June. On 22 February the Commons debated the renegotiation deal, and the campaigning for the referendum began.
Do you remember David Cameron’s renegotiation of the terms of Britain’s membership of the EU? No, I thought not. The details of the negotiation have more or less disappeared without trace from the debate about Brexit, to be replaced by the apocalyptic scenarios of Project Fear, according to which Britain’s exit from the EU will be catastrophic not merely for the British economy but for the entire Western World. At the very least Brexit (we are told) will carve a large hole in the European economy, but – even more urgently – it will apparently disrupt the entire current security system. When American politicians or generals (insofar as the categories are distinct) lecture the British on the need to stay in the EU, they are not doing
